Which, of course, is something I do frequently: though not as often as some. Either the 0652, if I don’t have to take Joe to school, or the 0856, if I do. Today I did. It was a nice sunny morning, and though I got a couple of other decent pictures throughout the day, I’ll stick with this one: it’s nice to be on the way to work and still feel quite mellow about the day, and the shot captures that I think.
Looks like something’s going down in Starbucks. What is more interesting is the guy on the right striding off in the direction of ‘The Wonderful World of Waxing’. Did he have an appointment? Inquiring minds want to know.
Tomorrow (Weds 20th) is day 300 of this blog, so I’ve added some more pictures to the ‘Best of the Rest’ page to mark the occasion.
A couple of years ago the BBC moved a substantial portion of their operations up to the new Media City complex in Salford Quays. Apart from the wounded pride of a chunk of the London media set, fearful of having to deal with Northerners on a regular basis, the other casualty was the old building on Oxford Road, pictured here. Now completely empty, it is fenced off and – according to this sign – awaiting demolition.
In its place will be built an eco-friendly, natural piece of parkland, along with some discreet business premises and workshops that will ask for a peppercorn rent and be reserved for local enterprises who otherwise could not afford to be based in Manchester city centre.
Or possibly I imagined all that and it will just be turned into another supermarket.
Today in Donetsk the Ukraine v France game started, but was then suspended for an hour because of heavy rain.
This June in Hebden Bridge spring started, but has since been suspended for a couple of weeks because of general crappiness, of which today saw more; including this attempt to emulate the weather in the Ukraine, except it’s nowhere near warm enough for a decent thunderstorm. It’s just rain.
Urbis has already appeared on this blog more than once; but seeing as it’s right outside Manchester Victoria station, I walk past it an awful lot, so it has plenty of chances. And I think it’s a relatively handsome building. This shot came about because just as I walked up the ramp, on another drizzly day, a truck drove off and left this perfectly rectangular dry patch. My in-camera shot had the wrong white balance setting on it and was a bit fuzzy, but a fiddle in iPhoto and here we have this abstract. Not bad.
What little stories there are all around us sometimes. Who abandoned this pair of grubby, but otherwise serviceable-looking shoes by the side of this crossing over Oxford Road today – and why? Or have they struck out on their own, striking a blow for the freedom of brogues everywhere?
Back in the UK, where there are occasional bursts of paraphernalia left over from the Jubilee celebrations last weekend, missed due to my being in Norway. So here’s a belated reference to all the pro patria stuff.
Today at 5.45 am (Norwegian time) there was a transit of Venus across the sun, the last such event until 2117. Through a series of lucky events, I did actually get to see it; not many people would a) be up at that time b) be somewhere where the sun was shining (particularly in Norway), c) have sight of it while sat in an airport departure lounge and d) have access to a pair of plastic, cheap children’s binoculars which nevertheless did project an image of the sun onto a whitewashed wall – on which the tiny black dot that was Venus was clearly visible. I did try to take a photo of it, but that proved beyond me, which I was disappointed about until reflecting that I was, after all, trying to take a picture of the dark side of a planet some 20 million miles away with a compact digital camera. So here’s another picture of an impressive astronomical object instead. (Chosen also for the novelty value of the time: one of the earliest shots on the whole blog.)
This is rather boring and abstract. Then again, so was my day.
It’s definitely a dull one to mark the 9-month anniversary of this blog. Three-quarters of a year done: one quarter to go.
Every year I invite my students to come to Hebden Bridge for a day out in the countryside. The end of May usually does see good weather but – especially considering what it was like a week ago – this year we were spectacularly lucky.
I like this photo because although Myu is at the back of this line of people (and I cropped a couple more off the right end) she is also quite clearly its focus, with that happy smile. Incidentally she is also the striker for the University of Manchester women’s football 2nd team, who have just finished second in their league: so she’s probably better at football than you are, as well.
Being 42 