I do not know exactly what principle of physics this straw is demonstrating, but I will take a stab at it: whether because it is black or not, it has absorbed and retained a certain amount of heat. Enough, anyway, to keep the liquid around it just that little bit warmer and thus precipitate out the bubbles. Sounds plausible, right? But I am guessing.
Taken with a good long zoom, so a bit grainy, but I like the composition of this shot and the abstract background (the rooves of the industrial units on Victoria Road, in fact). I think this is a sparrow though to be honest my identification is based more on a process of elimination than anything else (i.e. it’s not a chaffinch, goldfinch, member of the tit family, etc).
Considering that the game being watched involved women footballers, this guy might not even have turned up to play: perhaps he just likes wearing the kit. Dialect note: ‘Eyup’ is Yorkshire for ‘hello’ or ‘what’s happening’.
Yes, OK, it’s another pub, and at lunchtime too — but then again it is a) Saturday, and only a 1-day weekend this time round as I’m working tomorrow and b) Joe’s 20th birthday. But he is up in Dundee, so it became instead the 20th anniversary celebration of Clare’s giving birth, and by now it’s accepted that will be the only time she does so.
This isn’t Clare by the way. Or Joe. Just a random patron. But I like the shot.
Ainsdale Beach is a voluminous expanse of golden sand: so voluminous, in fact, that like many other places on the same coast, north of Liverpool (see our trip to Crosby last November), the nearby land is gradually being taken over. The buildings you see here are derelict, not (this time) because of the Great Fear, but because of the encroachment of these dunes. This is an attractive place, but a melancholy one.
My job title is Reader. That means, as a local Prof once put it to me, that there are times when I should just be doing some f***ing reading. I agree with him, and accept that it’s a perk of the job that there are times I can validly do it while nursing a pint of Old Peculier during working hours.
The book, by the way, is Nick Hayes’ The Book of Trespass and I highly recommend it, particularly if you are (specifically) English. It has a lot to say about how control is asserted over our national psyche.
Two hemispheres… one of them real, atop the Corn Exchange in Manchester, one just apparent. But it balances nicely on the other. Would it be better if the spike pointed right to the terminator? Well, maybe, but then it wouldn’t balance, would it?
Two days in a row of photos at 7:nn am, as well: the last time that happened was May 2017. Must be the good weather making me keen. Or the realisation that I have six months left of my forties, which is true as of today.
All human life is here. If the first set of urinals could make it onto the blog, so can these.
Sledgehammer symbolism it may be but anyone living in most of the UK today observed that we transitioned rather suddenly from winter into full-on spring. And it’s forecast to stay. On such a day, let us use the Railway as a bridge.
A nice day also to mark the 2,000th picture on this blog taken in the UK. If Cambridge Analytica find it significant that I have spent 82.37% of my time over that period in my home country — there you go, I’ve saved them the bother of doing the maths.
The title — and the sign — refer to the closure, as of today, of Manchester Town Hall for restoration, ‘until 2024’.
You know, I was just thinking that what this city really needs is a significant, very extended, disruptive building project. I’ll be fifty-five fucking years old in 2024.
Being 42 