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).
There was no prospect at all of my leaving the house today. Thoughts — and the discussions with the Zoomland colleagues depicted, vaguely, at the top of the laptop screen — were of planning for next year, not finishing off this one. This is a photowhack: the one and only photograph I took today.
“Some job this is. Waiting around in line for the ice rink to open so we can be pushed around by irritating little brats.”
“Oh, cheer up, Bob. It’s a living.”
“Is it? Shouldn’t we be in Antarctica or something?”
I, and most of the other people on this shot, have just disembarked a train that was due into Victoria at 09:01. As you can see from the time in the heading, it failed to make this commitment. Sadly we are in another one of those periodic troughs in the performance of the local rail network where such outcomes have become normalised. Demands for more Working From Home are as much to do with this as anything else; certainly round here, and certainly for me. And whomever put up the ‘No Entry’ sign can also sod off.
It’s gone from ‘cold and crisp’ to ‘chilly and damp’ so there’s still a need to get the fire going. Indeed this task is not just the responsibility, but the active duty, of those who drink in the Railway during the early shift.
There are plenty of reasons today to withdraw from active engagement with the world, and offer up a shit photo that highlights a slightly pleasing aspect of the day (29 million is a pretty good score on this machine). And, so, I do.
You’ve gotta like this movie. Not all the jokes work any more, by any means, but Young Frankenstein must be the finest parody-homage of any genre, ever. And at a completely decadent time of day, too, thanks to the Hebden Bridge Picture House’s Thursday morning “Elevenses” deal.
“But… I had nothing to do with all those emails! I told them I don’t know anything….!”
“Shaddup. When they come for us, you’re going first.”
Being 42 