Well, this has been a fairly unreconstructed weekend — a Friday night out and a Saturday afternoon in the pub, too. The results in the Championship are nothing to speak of at the moment, however. But that does not mean that going out is unenjoyable.
John Owens made his fortune in the early 1800s, it seems in two ways — first through cotton trading, and secondly by “keeping no company whatsoever” and spending every evening in, reading books (according to contemporary accounts). On his death, with no children — unsurprising, with those habits — he left a substantial sum of money towards the foundation of Owens College, now a part of the University of Manchester, and also made it a condition of his will that no student nor member of the faculty in that institution would ever have to “pass a religious test” to achieve their status. He might not have been much of a party animal, but at least he had a sensible lack of zealotry along with it.
This marquee sits outside my building at uni, where thousands of people currently wander around looking half-lost and half-excited. Whatever was going on in here yesterday, though, it’s moved on, though no one has yet thought to clear up the balloons.
As grated into this reflective metal bowl this afternoon, while I was making blackberry wine. The reflections are cool, sort of like the old BBC globe that used to get smeared across a mirror while you waited for the next programme to start, at some point in the 1970s. Clearly I need a weekend.
Day 750. Gosh, three quarters of the way to 1,000 – which I believe I reach at some point in April, and might as well now go for. As it’s a multiple-of-50 milestone I’ve updated the Best of the Rest page with a couple more shots that nearly made the main blog.
Having been convinced, over the three years I have been coming here regularly, that Norway actually doesn’t have any decent bars or pubs, I have over the last couple of visits ended up in three spectacularly good examples, one in Stavanger, one in Oslo and tonight, this one in Bergen — Kafé Spesial — each of which has literally hundreds of different beers. Am I complaining? Not at all. As you may have gathered from following this blog, I quite like beer. The choice and quality of the stuff available in each almost makes the outrageous alcohol tax in this country tolerable. Well, almost.
I’m sure you’ll eventually work out what’s going on with this shot…
These dummies look miserable as all hell, but then again that gives a sense of authenticity to the scene. I like the way the light has caught the ‘woman’s’ smock; actually, as models these two were more co-operative than real husband-and-wife stevedores doubtless would have been in a comparable situation.
The tripod, the docked iPod, the discarded costumery; the wife must want one of her routines filming. Happy to oblige.
If you like football, and you have any kind of countercultural leanings, you gotta like FC St. Pauli of Hamburg. Either you know why or you don’t. This is one of the reasons I wanted to come to the city. Shame they lost today, mind.
Officially I’m still on sabbatical. So you didn’t see me. I wasn’t here today. Nor, really, is anybody else. This is of course the time of year we like the most.
