Monday 4th January 2016, 10.30am (day 1,593)
How awesome is this. I want to go and get my next tattoo at this place simply because of this mural. Which, I suppose, is the point, but it doesn’t make it any less impressive.
Being 42
Life, one day at a time
Category Archives: Urban scene
Cinema reopened (balcony only)
Saturday 2nd January 2015, 4.35pm (day 1,591)
Good news… the Picture House has reopened. Just the balcony — visible here is the front part of the ground floor, or stalls, where now no seats remain. The heating’s not working either. But at least this particular community asset has survived.
Debris
Monday 28th December 2015, 11.10am (day 1,586)
I haven’t felt like taking many pictures over these last three days. Media coverage of natural disasters encourages us to see the flood just as a spectacle, a series of dramatic images, and all these things we do on social media are part of it. Voyeuristic citizen journalism is little different from the voyeuristic corporate kind. I wish I had something else to document, though.
This to me is the saddest sight; virtually every house and business in the town centre now has these piles of stock and/or furniture outside on the pavements, waiting to be cleared.
Counting the cost
Sunday 27th December 2015, 1.45pm (day 1,585)
UK Prime Minister David Cameron today announced that he would ‘do all he could’ to help the victims of flooding across the north of England.
In June this year, his government’s Climate Change Committee warned that previously unprecedented weather events would become more common and that the UK state was not doing enough to protect its citizens from flooding. In October 2015 Cameron’s government finally responded to this, by announcing that a new flood defense and prevention strategy was “not appropriate” at this time.
In December, two days after the signing of a new international agreement in Paris, aimed at alleviating climate change, UK Chancellor George Osborne slashed all subsidies for renewable energy, while retaining them both for fracking, and for the burning of peat and heather on the moors of northern England, a land ‘management’ strategy that greatly increases run-off of water into the valleys during rain storms.
The gentleman pictured here is the owner of Paradise, a successful and long-established take-away joint in Hebden Bridge. He has just lost £30,000 worth of kitchen equipment from his business; even if he can reopen again he will have to be closed for many weeks. He was uninsured for this, not through neglect, but because the free market in insurance would not deign to cover him or other businesses in Hebden Bridge after the 2012 floods.
Calder Valley has a Conservative Member of Parliament, Craig Whittaker. His email address is craig.whittaker.mp@parliament.uk and his Twitter handle is @CWhittakerMP. I just thought I would mention these things.
Old door
Saturday 19th December 2015, 4.20pm (day 1,577)
Second of five days in a row where I guarantee I am not going beyond the home — pub — shop axis. Time to dig into some creative corners; I’ve had my eye on this door for a while.
Pub doorstep
Friday 18th December 2015, 5.20pm (day 1,576)
Friday night in the pub – the world outside passes by, but the working week (a 6-day one for me) is over.
Shoe, St. Peter’s Square
Wednesday 16th December 2015, 9.00am (day 1,574)
Why? Why are there abandoned shoes in this world, particularly just one of them, and particularly with a heel like this, right in the middle of Manchester city centre on a Wednesday morning? Who knows, but let’s make it number 3 in this occasional series…
As good as it gets (for mid-December)
Tuesday 15th December 2015, 4.15pm (day 1,573)
Very, very far from being a satisfactory photo but it does sum up a terribly dull, grey and dark day, in which very little happened of note. Thus, the turn of the year etc etc.
Outside Bush House
Monday 14th December 2015, 10.50am (day 1,572)
So many advantages to coming down last night instead of this morning — no 5.30am alarm call, and the chance just to amble through London streets and see what came into view. The monumental Bush House belongs to the London School of Economics, but I was just passing. I love the tableau made by these guys. Is the one on the right missing out?
Chinese arch
Monday 7th December 2015, 2.55pm (day 1,565)
Crap news about the floods in Cumbria which have left several places I am quite fond of under considerable amounts of water, including Carlisle (featured on this blog only just over two weeks ago), Lancaster and various chunks of the Lake District. Unbelievable amounts of rain fell, around twelve inches in 24 hours in some places.
Meanwhile, a little further south, it’s been a bit wet but that’s all. In fact today in Manchester was rather pleasant. The Chinese arch makes its third, and most golden, appearance on the blog.
Being 42 