Category Archives: Friend

Jan 01 2026
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Daily Post, Friend, Portrait

Jax, New Year’s Eve

Wednesday 31st December 2025, 8.40pm (day 5,242)

Jax on NYE, 31/12/25

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.

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Dec 19 2025
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Putting up the poster

Thursday 18th December 2025, 4.30pm (day 5,229)

Poster day, 18/12/25

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.

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Dec 05 2025
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Jaco makes his point

Thursday 4th December 2025, 11.10am (day 5,215)

AI workshop, 4/12/25

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.

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Nov 10 2025
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Remembering

Monday 10th November 2025, 3.40pm (day 5,191)

Swifty's funeral, 10/11/25

Time passes, we are mortal. Swifty (Derek) was only seven years older than me — but he caught pneumonia not long ago, and that was it. Today was his funeral. Too many people now who have featured on here who have died.

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Nov 06 2025
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Peer review session, with lunch

Wednesday 5th November 2025, 1.20pm (day 5,186)

Peer review session, 5/11/25

It’s good to have some sustenance while waiting for colleagues (and Peter is a Professor, a rank I will now almost certainly never attain) to offer their opinions on one’s writing. That paper might even get finished one of these days.

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Oct 15 2025
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Daily Post, Friend, Portrait

Outside the Sports & Social

Tuesday 14th October 2025, 2.50pm (day 5,164)

Sports & Social entrance, 14/10/25

A nice combination of shapes and textures on this one I think. Not that I am commenting on James’s texture. He’s just having a fag.

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Sep 04 2025
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The meeting breaks for lunch

Wednesday 3rd September 2025, 1.20pm (day 5,123)

Meeting break, 3/9/25

There is still just under a month to go until I start teaching the latest intake, but plenty needs doing to be ready for that day. Hence the length of the morning meeting. I skulk around, visible as a shadow in the mirror, while my colleagues emerge in the direction of lunch.

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Aug 27 2025
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Unexpected presence at birthday drinks

Tuesday 26th August 2025, 5.15pm (day 5,115)

Stormtrooper, 26//25

5.15pm on day 5,115 and it’s the start of the 15th year of the blog. All of which is numerologically pleasing but has nothing to do with the shot, and the shot has nothing to do with my birthday as such. As the stormtrooper helmet was there, it got worn by Mark, at least for a short time. Tony looks on in his usual measured fashion.

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Jun 28 2025
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Back of the pub — 2,000th Hebden Bridge shot

Friday 27th June 2025, 5.55pm (day 5,055)

Johnny and Mary, 27/6/25

I knew in advance that today’s shot would be taken at home in Hebden Bridge, meaning it would become the 2,000th HB shot to feature on here. Knowing also that not a great deal was going to happen on the day I thought I might as well make #HB2000 as typical as possible. Hi to Johnny and Mary therefore, who I see often enough in this spot, particularly in the summer. (In the winter we would be twenty yards to the right, and inside….)

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Jun 27 2025
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Keela’s rig

Thursday 26th June 2025, 11.00am (day 5,054)

Keela and VR rig, 26/6/25

It’s nice when my students can still impress me, and, currently, Keela’s dissertation project is certainly doing that — although I can’t tell you what it is, not for any sinister reasons but just because it’s not finished yet and not my business to tell you. But, yes, it involves virtual reality, she doesn’t wear a rig on a regular basis. I do not believe my office noticeboard has featured before so there you go, a chance to check out the randomly accumulated display of items upon it for the first, and who knows, perhaps the last time.

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