Don’t know what particular TV or movie production was being the latest to use Hebden Bridge as a location this afternoon, but someone was — these huge lights were blasting it out hours after sunset, even our house felt well-lit and it lies a quarter of a mile away.
A somewhat strange day. Apocalyptic weather forecasts led to most of Bergen shutting down at lunchtime; my day’s work at Høgskolen i Bergen was truncated as a result, and it was at the point of termination that I took this picture, which doesn’t quite capture how foul it was here, though I like the greyness of it (I knocked down the saturation a bit, but only a bit). Shortly after this KLM then cancelled my flight home, which explains why I’m still here and won’t be home until tomorrow night, 24 hours after originally scheduled.
Yet in the end the afternoon’s weather in the city, while poor, was certainly no worse than it often can be here. I originally got quite angry about this, feeling that everyone could have done with a little less panic. However, it seems that the coastal mountains may have protected the city somewhat. Apparently areas futher north today had the strongest winds ever recorded in Norway. But hey, I’m still allowed to be pissed off that I didn’t make it home (quite a few flights happily left Flesland airport), particularly on a Friday night. So another day in Norway tomorrow, then. So be it.
The Seafarers’ Monument sits in one of the main squares of Bergen. It’s not the most beautiful of monuments, but maybe that’s why someone decided, presumably before Christmas, to prettify it.
Manchester has a pretty big Chinatown (hence the Chinese Arch, which has made it onto the blog three times by now). The lanterns hung in Albert Square around this time of year (see also here) are also good for a shot each year.
Four weeks after the flood, a positive message. The ‘bobby dazzlers’ in question will not include our parliamentary representative or any of his colleagues elected by constituencies flooded in December 2015, despite the financial resources we expend on furthering their lifestyle, and the moral authority they claim, on the basis that they are “representing the interests of the people”.
Well, 1,610 days in and I’m still here…. Facebook friends may know what I mean. Maybe this is the point though… What you see here is a scene which happens every Thursday in Hebden Bridge at this same time of day. But I don’t think I’ve ever pictured it before, and even if I did it wasn’t in this light, in this slight drizzle, and so on (including heroic flare for the second day in a row). I’ll do my best to keep seeing the moments.
This platform over the Hebden Water has always been there, at least since I’ve been living here. But recently a project began that seemed to be building on it. One story was that this was to be car parking, but I’ve also heard that there was going to be a house built on it. Either way, the state it is in now reflects what happened on December 26th, in the floods, when the river peaked above the surface of the platform, leaving it smashed up and littered with debris (much of which has since been cleared).
The point is that this is exactly the kind of situation where you might think planning permission had been granted without due consideration. Flooding, and damage from flooding, isn’t just about heavy rainfall — it’s also about damn-fool planning. At least this happened before someone blithely bought and moved into this putative house. But who knows, perhaps the project has not yet been abandoned.
This nice round-number blog post is marked by yet another shot of Manchester city centre’s ongoing building works — a theme that is becoming recurrent, because they just never seem to end…
A day’s work in London to finish off the week (and it did finish me off). This creation was being put together outside Holborn tube station as I passed, and was proving quite a profitable enterprise for its sculptor — justifiably.
The building works in St. Peter’s Square, Manchester, do not seem to have advanced a huge amount since they were pictured nearly a year ago (26/1/15). Never mind, they remain good photographic subjects. I like this one because it seems like a collage of shapes and textures, but there is still an underlying logic to it.
Being 42 