Passed through Manchester city centre this afternoon. Somewhere over there –> the annual Pride festival was taking place, but this is as near as I got to it, so let me pay homage by depicting this well-adorned statue outside the uber-hip Gotham Hotel.
I started this blog on 26th August 2011, ten full years ago. Since then I have become ten years older, greyer, stouter. I do not pass judgment on whether I am wiser by a decade; only that the last 18 months have made me more cynical. This morning, our last in Hastings, I sat on the shingle beneath Hastings Pier and, like this couple, contemplated the sea on a warm and pleasant morning.
And the next ten years? If you’re still interested, follow along.
The roller coaster as symbolic of the seaside holiday. The roller coaster as a metaphor for life; are we on the upslope or heading down?
Three weeks and two days until Joe goes off to university, the psychological implications of which (for us all) remain unexplored. But at least we can get the logistics prepared, so he accompanied me to Manchester today to pick up practical stuff, plates, cutlery, you know, things that mean he won’t have to eat off the floor. Will this be the last shot of him in this particular city? Impossible to say what the future will bring.
They start serving early at the Old Gate pub/restaurant in town. The condiments are set and prepared even before 10am. Off they stretch into the distance, like little table-set skyscrapers.
Taking photos for its own sake means that almost anywhere becomes interesting on a first visit. When the destination is a landscape of industrial decline, on the scale of this one — the town of Goole, in East Yorkshire — there’s enough to keep me going for the whole day, and it’s a shame, in this case, that I just restrict myself to one photo per post. This is my choice — the first giraffe to appear on here? Well, it looks like that to me.
Most of Hebden Bridge, as it stands today, was built between about 1850 and 1900. This gives it a uniformity of appearance that is part of its appeal. But add to that the creative solutions that the architects and builders adopted in order to cope with the place’s steep topography, and sometimes, there is real beauty to it. I love Windsor Road, seen here — it’s just so regular in its steps up the hill. How precisely are these houses placed in relation to one another. Could you do this? I couldn’t even think about how to start on such a project.
Here’s 1960s town planning for you. Build a concrete monstrosity of a street in the centre of your city, with a car park on top of it, and name it after a female character from that city’s history who was alluring enough to appeal to its most dashing hero. Maid Marian’s appeal is at least hinted at by whomever decorated the wall, but that’s scant consolation.
An afternoon out, and another County Top bagged; it was a decidedly urban one, that of the city of Nottingham. I thought this shot had a notable 1970s feel to it, so toned down the saturation to fit the mood. The blue plastic bag adds to the desolation. I no longer just walk in the glamorous places…
Latest shot, and first shot after 10pm, since early October last year. Nights out are still not entirely a thing of the past. The Nightjar bar sits under the Hebden Bridge Picture House, and if you don’t see why I’ve appended the ‘Hawks’ to its name in the title of this post, well, maybe this painting is familiar to you.
Being 42 