This is where the Hebden Bridge trains join up with the West Coast main line, thus, trains for the Lake District and Morecambe. I spend a hell of a lot of time in Preston station – never for very long at a time, but it mounts up, and I’ve spent far longer here in my life than I have in Preston itself.
This is becoming a regular event both on the Hebden Bridge social calendar generally and also on this blog, having previously featured in October and March in this regular form as well as the one-off event for the Arts Festival in July. It is enjoyable in its own right and gives plenty of photo opportunities, not all of which can be taken advantage of due to restrictions on photography, plus the added challenge of taking pictures in very low light while tanked up with several pints of beer, like this one. It’s not bad though. Do you need faces to get a mood? The night is over, people are about to go home…
Just held the camera high and pointed downwards. Little more to add, about the photo or the day, but both worked quite well, I think.
No work for two weeks. Took Joe to the new National Football Museum in Manchester, in the former Urbis building, which has already featured on this blog on a few occasions (amongst others, here and here). Here he is face-to-face – kind of – with Joe Hart, Manchester City and England goalkeeper. If asked however, I am sure he would claim that Ben Roche of Morecambe is better. And good for him.
Plenty of photo opportunities in Tampere this evening as they are in the midst of some arts festival and there were lots of street ‘happenings’ tonight. But though I thought the capoeira performance would be a rich seam for pictures it turned out mainly to be a kind of monotonous cross between kung fu and hare krishna chanting. This mother and child watching it were much cuter.
Hey, I’ve just noticed it’s day 350 of the blog. 16 to go before I’ve done the full year: and also time to add some to the ‘Best of the Rest’ page. I’ll do that shortly.
It’s Sunday night as I post this; I came back in the afternoon from what I could describe as a ‘weekend away in the Lake District’, but that doesn’t really sum it up very well. Actually I have just spent two days walking, through weather that could best be described as ‘mixed’ (see tomorrow’s post). I have bagged 9 – more than a quarter – of the fells remaining on my project and now have only 23 to go.
I broke the journey at the Black Sail youth hostel. Located at the head of the valley of Ennerdale, this is some two miles’ walk from the nearest other building, let alone road. It sleeps about 20 people and was about two-thirds full on Saturday night. It’s a great oasis in the hills. And it serves beer. These two were part of a group who worked in Edinburgh and were all parasitology researchers, or something. They drank wine with me and we played Yahtzee (Lisa, lying down in this picture, won) and we and the other guests could just forget the rain outside for a little while.
Here I am at the in-laws’ for a bit. It’s the school summer vacation so Joe can stay up until late. Tearing him away from the TV or the DS is a good plan, teaching him the rudiments of cooking, with his gran Carol, an even better one. He can, at least, wield a Worcester sauce bottle with aplomb, as this proves.
Here is not the place for the fine detail, but the ‘significant’ news that hit on my first day in Tuscaloosa, mentioned below, was that the giant ‘pubco’ (pub ownership company) that owns the Railway has decided that it is unwilling to stump up the cost of a refurbishment following the damage caused by the floods on 22nd/23rd June and 9th July. They want to sell the pub, but no one is particularly convinced that they have an interest in keeping the pub in the hands of someone who will, well, keep it as a pub and not convert it into something else. The last few years in the UK have, to say the least, not been kind to the pub trade.
Well, we – the customers – want to keep it as a pub, so today we had a meeting there to discuss what we were going to do. It was a lovely sunny day and there was also a social aspect to it – no one wanted their last drink here to be that horrible 22nd June. But it shouldn’t have to be the last today, either. We’ll try not to make it the last.
I never sleep on planes. The flight passed relatively quickly (a decent movie helped – Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, better than I thought it would be), and there’s the odd feeling of seeing the night flit by in half the time it would normally take, but otherwise there’s no appeal to this mode of travel. Electronic devices are a big help these days, of course. I like this shot because of the light, particularly the rim-light around the head of the guy on the left.
Tough choice of photo today. I saw most of the city today courtesy of a driving tour in the morning from my friend/colleague Sharon, who works at the University of New Orleans, then I walked round the French Quarter in the evening, along with about twenty thousand other tourists. I took the photos everyone else takes, of St Louis Cathedral, inside a jazz club etc., and some I really liked, doubtless one or possibly more will appear on the ‘best of the rest’ page at some point soon.
However, from the five strong candidates for today’s pic of the day I went with this one. This guy was sat by the river, silently, drinking from his can of beer, as I promenaded along the levee which runs along the south side of Decatur Street. He looked so melancholy, a great contrast to all the revelry going on along Bourbon Street just three blocks away. The lights of the city in this, one of the world’s most famous rivers, set his silhouette off very well, so I’m going for this one.
