Thursday 29th September 2011, 12.10pm (day 35)
‘An original idea? That can’t be hard to find. The library must be full of them.’ (Stephen Fry, Making History)
Being 42
Life, one day at a time
Category Archives: Interior
MindTrek conference, Scandic Rosendahl hotel, Tampere, Finland
Wednesday 28th September 2011, 12.50pm (day 34)
This wasn’t the most dynamic of academic conferences – I mean, they never are, really, but this was more sedate than most. So not a huge range of pictures to choose from today. I like the semi-random pattern of reds and greens on this shot.
Watching Brighton v Leeds in the Railway
Friday 23rd September 2011, 8.40pm (day 29)
God, it’s been a busy week. Even something like the Hippodrome seems a month ago. Came back from work late and knackered but instead of doing the sensible thing and going straight home I went and watched my lot on TV for the second time in 48 hours – my lot being Brighton, and as I live in West Yorkshire, I did so in a pub full of Leeds fans. At least they know me. 2-0 down after 25 minutes, we went 3-2 up with five minutes to go: buggers still equalised though didn’t they. Final score 3-3. I need to sleep.
Vicky in the old Hippodrome theatre, Hulme, Manchester
Tuesday 20th September 2011, 5.05pm (day 26)
No single photo or few lines of text can do justice to this place. Several people I spoke to today, from the district of Hulme, said that this used to be a real asset to the area.Derelict, but still just about hanging in there, this place is owned by an evangelical ministry and seems also to have a community group on its case, trying to stop it either falling down completely or being ripped down by developers. Hulme was one of the places hit by the civil unrest back in August. Right-wingers want to strip ‘benefits’ from anyone caught nicking a bottle of Lucozade at that time but they won’t raise a finger to restore an incredible place like this for the REAL benefit of the community. I could go on and this page would get angrier, but you get the point I’m sure.
(Thanks to Vicky for showing it to me and also not complaining as I snuck her into the corner of the pictures…)
‘Something Sweet’, Hebden Bridge
Wednesday 14th September 2011, 3.20pm (day 20)
Hebden Bridge is known for being packed full of ‘independent’ stores. This means that you can’t buy many useful things, like a pair of pants or a washing machine, but you can find five or six retailers here from whom you can buy a chamomile-scented candle shaped like a pyramid.
However, when one wants to get an otherwise reluctant child to do something with you just after school chucking-out time, the fact that we have an old, traditional sweet shop (candy store) is something of a bonus.
University Office
Wednesday 31st August 2011, 10.00am (day 6)
I’d like to say this is a piece of corporate motivational crap, but actually I find myself nodding in agreement…
Waterside Gym, Hebden Bridge
Tuesday 30th August 2011, 9.00am (day 5)
So far there are no other people in these photos. To me places are more interesting when they are quiet. I like being first one in the gym in the morning, but don’t think I do it because I am particularly keen: more the case is that if I don’t do it first thing, I don’t do it. And I need to do it.
Working in the attic
Sunday 28th August 2011, 9.50am (day 3)
I like my house. I wouldn’t have been here more than 10 years, otherwise. Although it’s on a main road, and bits of it have a tendency to fall off now and again, I like the fact that it’s not some identikit Barratt Homes bollocks. I like the way the sun shines into the attic in the morning and turns it golden. I like that I can work here and not have to trug into Manchester every day. There will be many days over the next year where the defining feature is that I spent most of the time here. But I hope that will never be a problem, as it has not been for the last decade.
It begins. Friday 26th & Saturday 27th August 2011.
I turned 42 yesterday (26/8/11). Douglas Adams famously made that number the answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe and Everything. If this is, then, to be the year in which I discover the meaning of life, perhaps it will be encoded here.
27th August 2011: The Science Museum, London.
The Museum heaves with people, pressing buttons, touching screens, watching displays in the new, ICT-heavy wings. Meanwhile the fustier old cabinets in the Victorian sections seem neglected. But it’s in them that the history lies, and the interest; Joe likes the mechanical calculators, where you have to turn levers and clank gears to do the sums but the working of the machine is there in front of you. The newer sections, all about climate change and DNA, seem bland. There is a veneer of interactivity to them but it’s still the museum authorities telling us things. What we are shown – what they have chosen to show us – does not change, whatever we might think about it, whatever buttons we press, whomever and whatever we are.
26th August 2011: London College of Communication.
It shouldn’t matter, as long as you are using it to look out onto the world and learn.
Being 42 