Our multimedia guy, Peter, gets himself set up ready to film me talking about something or other in my office. I had to sound reasonably intelligent but really, it’s not going to make your day more interesting if you knew what the subject matter had been.
The Railway pub was shut for nearly a year after being mostly destroyed in the flood of 26th December 2015. It has reopened in what feels like a few separate stages; the latest arriving today, when seating finally made a reappearance out at the front. Matt enjoys this fresh luxury, while trying not to mark his coat on the wet paint of the new battleship grey facade.
Mr Cope becomes the latest rock star to feature on the blog: looking every inch the part, he nevertheless is these days as much a mixture of solo busker, stand-up comedian and raconteur (particularly about old megalithic monuments) as he is anything else.
A curiosity: the ninth photo in a row to be taken outside Hebden Bridge, even though I have spent some time at home on each of these days. This is the longest such run: all other long runs of non-HB photos have been accrued thanks to some kind of travel away from home.
I don’t make a habit of photographing work colleagues in their natural environment, but here I did think a nice portrait unfolded itself as Stephanie prepares to launch the 2-4pm session. Thursday is generally a Meeting Day — so there’s a level of appropriateness to it./
We approach the anniversary of last year’s floods on December 26th, which took out most of Hebden Bridge’s town centre. Prior to that, this place, the Railway pub, had probably featured at least once a month for the four and a half years I’d been doing it, so say about 50 times…. But none since 22/12/15. I think this has been the last of all the businesses in the town to reopen after that day, but here you are…. One year to the day since last we drank there. Welcome back.
There is a short version and a long version of how this picture ended up the way it did. The short version is, I was being creative, and the long version is too boring to worry about. Anyway here is our lunchtime seminar speaker, Sean, pictured on my new smartphone, in turn pictured on my usual camera. I like the collage effect of how this one has turned out.
Dina is from Greece but works in Scotland. Ellie is from Iran and works in Australia (she helped look after me when I went to Brisbane back in 2013). Both are here presenting in the Czech Republic at the same conference session as me (from the UK) and other delegates from Croatia and Belgium, helping, in our small ways, to advance knowledge worldwide.
This is why Brexit and the isolationist, racist mentality it provokes is so utterly stupid. I don’t just mean that as a random insult. I mean vicious, ridiculous stupidity of the most damaging kind.
Every year at this time the campus goes from being peaceful and quiet to a heaving mass of people. Still, if it wasn’t for them none of us would be doing what we’re doing. Sam Harris of the International Society at Manchester says hi to the gathered new postgraduates in Education: who collectively I am now responsible for…. (there are a couple of hundred more in the room than pictured here). Let’s hope they all fulfill their potential over the next 11 months or so.
It was in 1990 that I first heard the band Primal Scream, when my then-flatmate Dave played me their eponymous second album. In the two and a half decades since they have released some complete shite, it has to be said, but also many moments of brilliance (like the whole album XTRMNTR for a start). And in those 26 years despite never giving up on them and them refusing to turn into their own tribute band (like so many of their peers) I have never seen them live.
Until today 🙂
