I was wondering whether to go with a picture that is a little less dark, dismal, drizzly and not a little bit depressing. On the other hand this seems to sum up the evening perfectly. I’ve seen some tedious football matches in my time but Halifax 1, Morecambe 0 on 21/1/26 now ranks down there with the worst.
On the basis that no fewer than 23 people (because you do need a referee) can be gathered in each area of space that comprises a Saturday afternoon football match, then there must have been at least a quarter of a million people in the UK doing what this guy was doing at the same point in time, 3.20pm. That’s just the people on the pitches, too. At least 30 other people, including substitutes, coaches and slighly weird people (like me) were also persuaded that watching Sheffield Union v Thornbridge Villa in the 12th tier of English football was the best way they had of spending Saturday afternoon. So add another million or two for all of them…. it can’t be completely wasted collective effort, can it? At this level it’s certainly not about making any money.
I’m still marking. This miniature world was found just outside the front door, a little flowerpot full of water and with some long-drowned little clumps of green at the bottom. Maybe it says a lot that it was the most interesting thing seen today. On the other hand, as it has turned out, this is really just a shot of my hands — they’re both on there — and in that regard I quite like the shot.
Three years and four months ago, in September 2022, Mandi and I met David when he arrived in Manchester to begin work on his PhD. Today saw the culmination of that work, and his efforts, when at 4pm or so he was officially awarded the title of Dr David (or Chu-Yang) Chang. Congratulations to him — believe me, if anyone deserved it for sheer level of work, it was him. The culmination perhaps, but not the end of the relationship: we hope he’ll be around for at least a little while yet.
Hull City fans approach their club’s ground for this afternoon’s quite important match against Watford. Both teams are in the play-off zone in the Championship. But what they don’t know yet (and nor, then, did I as I took the picture) that all this anticipation is to be made pointless in about twenty-five minutes’ time. At that point, fifteen minutes before kick-off, the game was postponed, because though the pitch was in great condition, ground staff hadn’t bothered to de-ice the touchlines or the technical areas so the managers and linesmen said, er, hang on — we can’t do our work on an ice rink. I took pictures of that too, and looking at them, they’re probably justified. But all it would have taken was some salt applied at about 1.30. Instead, all these people just had to turn around and go home, including all the poor buggers who had trekked up from Watford on a Sunday and spent god knows how much to do so (and I’m down £35 on the train fare).
The thing is all this happened to me (and, in this case, Clare) yesterday too, at Altrincham. For the same reasons. As I was, almost certainly, the world’s only person to have been at both of these games you understand that I’m somewhat prickly right now.
It’s just a day like any other of course but thanks to its position in the calendar there does seem a certain obligation to mark it. A modicum of sociability was thereby achieved, though we didn’t stay out until midnight. Jax becomes, probably, the person with the longest gap between first and second appearances on here — that is also her to the right of this portrait from January 2015.
Happy New Year to her and to you all. Of all the places I visited in 2025, Orkney was definitely the best — at the end of that week Clare and I were, virtually, both planning moves there. It’ll never happen though. This picture of Stromness was the last one taken there (August 2nd at 6.40am, the earliest shot of the year) and evokes the memories very well. My favourite picture of the year photographically is probably the one of the guide at the Great Tapestry of Scotland on June 8th in Galashiels — it just turned out very well and as I hoped it would. What will 2026 bring? Let’s find out.
Joe’s first appearance since — chainsaw in hand — 4th August. It’s Christmas. It’s time to re-engage.
Re: the title. You do understand Joe is our only child, right? Just checking.
Spent the first few hours of my Xmas break having an extended lie-in, then spent the next few wandering around Bradford, a place I have come to quite like down the years. This complicated selfie was taken in the National Media Museum (which lately has become the ‘National Science and Media Museum’ so it can continue to squeeze funding out of our reluctant state apparatus): a kind of ‘digital hall of mirrors’ installation. As you can see, despite my advancing years, my body still refuses to shed much hair.
Time for the annual ‘student poster day’ where my charges are tasked with demonstrating what they might have learned over the last few weeks. Some even manage to do this: but I suppose they all try. This is happening nearly a week later than last year, and, definitively, marked my last professional engagement of 2025. As far as the University of Manchester are concerned I now do not exist until 5th January. Let there be celebrations, etc.
And most of us were listening to it — honest. (To be fair to the guy on the left, he’s keeping an eye on the Zoom room.) Golly, three days in a row in Manchester: that’s an outbreak of keenness, particularly in a week when I didn’t have any lectures to deliver.
Being 42 