Walked to the station this morning past the skate park, which in the pleasant sunshine looked clean, and colourful, and I liked the shapes and lines and variety of the decorations. Of course, I have also captured it empty, and devoid of life, because it’s there to be used, not least by skateboarders. Maybe paying homage to the other people’s art — a valid way of using the park if you ask me — is what I’m doing here.
Three days of work to go. For me, that is. This is how I feel.
It looks like it’s having a thoroughly good time to me, smashing up the road… right outside the front door of my house. What can one say? It wouldn’t listen anyway.
Only two of the last 19 days’ pictures have been taken in Hebden Bridge, or three if you count yesterday’s in Mytholmroyd, which is just down the road. But I have a couple of weeks here now before my trip to Tanzania, so time to find some inspiration around home. I bet your town doesn’t look quite like this.
This is taken in the same churchyard as the photo a day short of a year ago: the same Saturday of the year, that is. And for the same reason, in that we were seeing Joe’s annual drama club show in the attached church hall. But I am not supposed to take and publish pictures of all that (child protection and all that) so here are some memorials instead. The fact that this has all their blank back sides on gives it a rather eerie feel, I think.
Sir John Barbirolli was conductor of the Hallé orchestra, the UK’s oldest extant symphony orchestra, from 1943 until his death in 1970. The Hallé now reside at the Bridgewater Hall, built in 1996, and this bust of Barbirolli sits outside the venue — as you can see. I hope to be doing a fairly big project here over the next couple of years so expect to see more of this place, if all comes to pass.
This passage between the Manchester Central Library and the Town Hall has been closed for years, literally, while the library was refurbished, but it does now seem to be open again — at least, at this end. So this picture can be considered the latest documentary pic in the ongoing reconstruction of what seems to be the entirety of Manchester city centre.
Manchester yesterday was the exception — I’m back in London. This is Senate House, which contains the administrative offices and the main library of London’s university colleges. It was finished in 1937 and was one of the tallest buildings in the city at that time. In WW2 it was occupied by the Ministry of Information, and George Orwell’s wife Eileen worked there in the censorship department, thus inspiring the physical description of the Ministry of Truth in Nineteen Eighty-Four. It was also a key location in John Wyndham’s The Day of the Triffids.
Hot and sunny in London yesterday it may have been, but in Manchester this afternoon it was neither of these things, particularly not when I had to walk all the way along Oxford Road getting soaked. At least this girl had an umbrella, even if, like me, she was otherwise dressed for rather nicer conditions.
This is pretty much the centre of the archaic, monolithic and largely closed institution that is the British state. Horse Guards Parade is virtually next door to 10 Downing Street, and Buckingham Palace is just a few hundred yards away. On this gravel the Queen Troops the Colour (whatever the hell that means) to celebrate her own “official birthday”. Until 1997 it was used as a car park, unbelievably, and the beach volleyball was played here in the 2012 Olympics.
