Pinocchio joined us in the Railway this afternoon courtesy of Toby, the Gepetto in this particular relationship. Toby makes things, it’s what he does, and he’s pretty good at it too. But even he declared this particular creation to be ‘a bit creepy’. Perhaps all puppets are, to some extent.
I have rarely* had cause to complain about the food in the Middle East and the offerings here at the hotel in Dubai are no exception. It is no coincidence that this is the second shot from here to feature food, and in only four pictures thus far — see this similar effort from March 2019.
[*] there was one legendarily bad meal in Jeddah, though — the exception that proves the rule? Either way the memory of a liver-and-banana stew still lives with me.
A study in blue, or possibly, ultraviolet. A study, also, in how full symmetry is so rarely possible, however hard one tries to achieve it. I will be flying out of here tomorrow, but for tonight, the airport hotel.
Anyone who thinks that an ‘antique’ shop these days is a guarantee that the products for sale are somehow all going to be more than about 20 years sold is fooling themselves. But these places are good to visit, and to photograph. This place in Ramsbottom even outdid Hebden’s equivalent spot. Why this mannequin is done up in bondage I have no idea, but even she is upstaged by the Dalek behind.
It’s about time we had some more medieval manuscript and the Siege of Troy certainly gives magnificent illumination. This shot only hints at that excellence but I like the captured enthusiasm of the fellow students. I took plenty of photos of my own, don’t worry.
Rarely has it been more welcome to be spending the night at an airport hotel and then undergoing an airport transfer, back in Cape Town. Which, as airports go, is quite manageably sized and decent: better than most. I suppose most of this stuff may genuinely be ‘African’, but it’s still an imagery for travellers rather than anything culturally real.
Ascension Island is, nominally, a dependency of St Helena and lies about 800 miles from it. Whereas there are many friends who think that when I come here (St Helena, that is) I am swanning away to some ‘desert island’, it’s not like that, as my photos make clear. But, as far as I can ascertain, Ascension really is such a place. The plan is that I will be going there in early April, all as part of the same research project that I’ve been working on since 2021.
But Ascension may well be the most bureaucratically impenetrable place I have ever tried to visit. It might be depicted on maps — this one hangs in a corner of Anne’s Place in Jamestown — but does it officially exist? In practice, can your average person actually set foot there? About these things, I am not yet convinced.
After three pictures of inanimate objects mimicking live things, here we have a usually live thing — campus — as a more inanimate object. Teaching finished last week, and today there really weren’t many people around. And that’s it for me, too, not just in 2024: there will be no more campus shots on here until early February, if things go according to plan.
More inaccurate replication of some animal or other — koalas are just not this big, or this colour, though nevertheless, that is what it is supposed to be. 4th prize in the Christmas raffle of the Hebden Bridge Picture House (£1/ticket, if you’re interested). This was very early in the evening: the place filled up by the start of the movie, which was Conclave: very good (another unsolicited advertisement).
Oh dear, I’m in a pub again, and at lunchtime too. However, the Tite & Locke bar is newly opened, on platform 3 of Lancaster station, a place I pass through reasonably often, and usually with Clare, who is not averse herself to the occasional beer. I think I will be coming back here: it certainly made a good first impression (unpaid advertisement).
Being 42 