Congratulations to my parents, Ian and Angela Whitworth, on being married an amazing 50 years today: 14th May 1966 saw them hitched in Dukinfield, Cheshire, so today was their Golden wedding anniversary. But the picture of the day has to be this one of my gorgeous wife chilling out on platform 2 of Blackburn station while we waited for the train to join the party this lunchtime. A good day was had by all I think.
The truly superstitious probably wouldn’t have booked to fly on Friday 13th, but I am not among them, and the flights didn’t seem any less busy to me. This one was taken somewhere between Moscow and Amsterdam on leg one of my journey home.
So here I am back in Moscow, and the city thus appears on the blog for the first time since 29th October 2014, 558 days ago. The weather that day was glorious, and so it was today too. It was a public holiday here, Victory Day, but only the oligarchs and Putin confidantes get to hang around Red Square watching the tanks roll past these days, so I just worked a bit and wandered out in the early afternoon to take in the rays by the Moscow River, along with several thousand of the locals.
The bridge in the background has two decks, by the way — upper for the road, lower for the Metro red line (line 1).
In the first 1,520 days of the blog, that is, up until my return from Estonia last October, 341 of the pictures were taken outside the UK, around 22.5% of them. However, in the 196 days since, only five of them have been (on my trip to Norway in January). Whether this marks a sustained change in my travel habits is hard to say, for various reasons there probably will be fewer trips coming up but it is impossible to say for sure. Anyway — off today — as to where, you can find out tomorrow. At least it wasn’t a very early start, though this doesn’t seem to have made any difference to the guy stretched out on the seats.
Even on May Day this kind of behaviour is inexcusable. Really, you shouldn’t do this kind of thing in public, guys.
Although a chillier day today than it has been, I think we can still say that spring is here. Not sure whether these two were feeding themselves, or the ducks in the river below their feet (and cropped out of shot), but either way the title still applies. Why the black and white? Why not? Sometimes the colours just don’t work out so well.
Since the Boxing Day floods took out 95% of the town centre four months ago, five of Hebden Bridge’s pubs have reopened: the White Lion (which never shut), the Old Gate, the Crown, the Trades Club and the Fox and Goose. However, this leaves seven that remain closed: the White Swan, the Shoulder of Mutton, Nelson’s, the Sports & Social, Stubbing Wharf, the Albert and the one that I and many friends feel most keenly, the Railway. Martin and Shelley, pictured here, are members of the Railway diaspora, drinkers in exile (in this case in the Old Gate). Perhaps we will all return home some time soon but to be honest at the moment there is little sign of it.
Teaching has restarted after the Easter break so I guess I should put in the occasional appearance on campus. It’s also that time of year when the assignment kicks in on the video production course, and some students develop an urge to point cameras at me and others for educational ends. Shen (left, from China) and Gatya (Indonesia) here anticipate that I will be able to talk about something interesting over the next ten minutes or so.
A rare appearance on the blog for my office: the sharp-eyed may note the newspaper cutting on the wall celebrating Brighton’s League Cup victory over Manchester City in 2009. And why not.
My friend George featured on the blog fairly recently (in February in fact) — but I like her purple hair, just right for this very pleasant morning in West Sussex, so let’s feature her again…
One reason for going down south was to attend a game at Brighton & Hove’s other football team, Whitehawk FC. Why? Why not? They have an active set of Ultras, anti-racist, anti-sexist, a no bad language policy (exemplified by the chant, “the referee’s a… referee”) and the atmosphere put many much bigger clubs to shame. Right result too — Whitehawk 3, Wealdstone 0. Perhaps I have just found my second team.
Being 42 