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.
Posted purely to wind up any Manchester United fans in the audience. I dislike Manchester United because of:
Anyway the drama of Sunday’s game (which I missed altogether, being on a plane back from Copenhagen at the time) was too good for it to end any other way. Well done, City.
Finished off in Nyborg this morning and transited back to Copenhagen for the weekend (for reasons which will become obvious tomorrow). This rather cool model of medieval Copenhagen – nothing of which remains – sits outside the Copenhagen Historical Museum, a few minutes’ walk from our hotel on the Vesterbrøgade.
It’s a new capital city for me, anyway: I think this is the full list of capitals that I have visited at any point: London, Dublin, Oslo, Helsinki, Moscow, Warsaw, Berlin, Paris, Amsterdam, Madrid, Lisbon, Athens, Vienna, Prague, Nicosia, Sofia, Riyadh, Taipei, Washington and now Copenhagen. My favourite? Amsterdam. The most boring? Sofia. The oddest? Riyadh.
Walking back to the station I followed this lady for ages and tried to get several photos – I like this one in particular because of the woman on the left ignoring the whole spectacle (and the photographer). I must have followed her for five minutes and in all that time saw nothing but these feet.
It’s as well these things are appearing in my life as subjects because this is the longest run I’ve had all blog of pictures just in Hebden Bridge (home) or Manchester (work). Today was the 20th in a row in just these two locations. I’m off to the Lake District tomorrow though, then Denmark for 5 days on Wednesday.
