I’ve been in Manchester most of the week, although this hasn’t been apparent from the pictures. Victoria station, after years of being a rather dowdy old hag, is starting to recover from her major surgery and looking rather promising with it. Compare this picture to the last shot of platform 1: the light wasn’t as good today, but overall, it’s a big improvement. (Having inserted that link I note that shot was taken exactly 400 days ago, day 931.)
Transferred this morning to the second stage of my California journey, the conference I am attending in Palo Alto. Could have picked a photo from there but there will be plenty of opportunities for that in the next two days, so here is a shot that lacks aesthetic qualities but does capture the rather bizarre train I caught this morning. A double-decker arrangement, but with an open trough down the centre of the upper deck, giving the impression of being sat up in a glorified luggage rack for the 45 minutes it took to travel from downtown SF into Silicon Valley.
Definitely don’t think I did San Francisco justice with yesterday’s shot — must have been the jet lag. This is much better. I apologise to the good people of the East Bay — Oakland and Berkeley — where I spent most of the day, but I have to go with this shot today. Could they have posed any better if they’d meant it? And love the cable cars too, one of those beautiful anachronisms that civic activism has preserved, and the world’s a better place for it.
This was just my transit airport, not my final destination. Bearing in mind where I have travelled to, going via Germany seemed rather bizarre, but ask my travel agent. Twenty years ago I once spent one of the worst and longest nights of my life trying to sleep in Munich airport (again, for reasons I can’t remember now), and I don’t like the city’s principal football team either (with apologies to their rivals 1860); so it’s not one of my favourite places. But today’s transfer was problem-free.
Another work trip to London, and as on the last occasion I did this (Feb 27th), the changeover at Leeds station proves far more photographically fruitful than the capital itself. I’m very happy with this picture — one of those occasions where not only did the shot turn out pretty much exactly as hoped, but I got it first go, too.
I don’t feel my photos on here have been that great lately, and one reason has been a decided lack of light. Except for last Tuesday (10th), which wasn’t bad, we pretty much haven’t seen the sun in March. Cold, grey, flat light throughout. This morning was little different. The fog was clearing as I boarded my plane to Bergen, via Copenhagen — the usual Long Commute — earlier flights this morning were disrupted by it but though I had a short delay it wasn’t so bad. I doubt the weather will change much in Bergen however, which is after all The City of Perpetual Rain, so no immediate prospect of a change to sunnier scenes…
I don’t expect this photo to win any awards and I could have done better with the light today on what was a beautiful spring day. But sometimes the opportunities just don’t arise. This’ll do — and it was still a lovely day.
Pictured as I made my way down to London for an afternoon’s work today. The last time — for now — that this journey can be done on a publicly-owned train, a service which was so good that it raised millions and millions for the treasury, which is why the morons that run this country have sold it off as of this weekend.
No commentary today… I just like the composition, the colours, lines and shapes, and that I got it nice and sharp.
“…we are installing automated ticket barriers at Manchester Victoria station. They’re not working yet, but when they are, we’re confident that all you regular station users will agree they will improve the ambience and flow of the early morning rush-hour no end. Hands up those of you who believe that. Anyone? Any takers?”
Being 42 