Tensions are clearly running high in the ongoing pigeon-duck war. With negotiations having broken down, the pigeon high command has sent out a brave scout to keep an eye on the mallards. But what it hasn’t spotted is the counter-espionage agent sneaking in from the left.
On the 10th October 1991 I turned up in Yorkshire for what was originally planned to be a stay of a few weeks while I ‘got myself sorted out’. Twenty-eight years later, I am still living here: the last eighteen of those in Hebden Bridge. So let’s make today’s pic a home town shot. This is commercialism again, but of a far less predatory sort than yesterday’s. In the matter of boots, defer to the boot man (Bakunin — paraphrased). I hear the olives on the next stall along are pretty good too.
I did not notice the inaccuracy of the clock at the point of taking the photo. But I can assure you that I could not have been here at 10.15am. If you ask me, the ‘pumpkins’ are also too early. What influence do I have over the ongoing encroachment of The Festival of Utterly Disposable Tat, however.
I’m sure the guy in the sleeping bag looks forward with keen anticipation for M & S’s “lovely new Manchester store” as if it will be radically different from the present one. It’ll be unlikely to offer overnight accommodation, I assume.
Like Tuesday, a day spent in Manchester. But also like Tuesday, I preferred a picture taken early, before leaving home. The view from our back windows hasn’t appeared for a while, but let it do so this morning.
First time on the 6:31 train in a while, and first time rising before the sun in many months. There is something pleasant about it, but only when it is the exception: I do not envy those who have to do this kind of thing all winter.
More rain. The river is high, although I’ve seen it higher. Shelter seemed a sensible option this afternoon.
When I started work in Manchester in 2005, Oxford Road, which runs down the centre of the main campus, was still a carbon monoxide-choked arterial road. Gradually, over the years, there’s been some decent (and much-needed) traffic management, and last year, Brunswick Street was finally closed off and turned into this walkway, “Brunswick Park”. It’s not a very green park, admittedly — but still, it’s a definite improvement. This was the one little burst of sunshine of the day.
I am sure that with better photographic equipment than mine one could have made this look like a lovely soft star of sunbeams, sparkling gently through the foliage on this lovely September morning. But hey, the main A57 motorway — the Mancunian Way — is a few yards to the left of this shot, and this is as firmly big-city as yesterday’s morning picture. So I beg forgiveness. I do like this little spot, an oasis in the morning walk to work — it’s featured before.
The blue skies of the last two days were definitively absent today. The view from the back of the house was the limit of my horizons. Had I not set the monochrome filter you wouldn’t really see a great deal more colour beyond a kind of dull green on the hillside. Happy Mondays.
Being 42 