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.
There is not a great deal going on in life at the moment; the weather is poor and it feels like dead time at the end of what has, admittedly, been a rather extended summer, at least in personal terms. But like these kids, I’ve gone ‘back to school’ — not that I find it any easier to accept than they probably do.
Looking at this evening’s sky, you don’t have to be a professional meteorologist to confidently predict that a downturn in the weather might be forthcoming.
The door hides itself in the dark centre of the underpass beneath the Mancunian Way. It is always closed. Sometimes it rattles to itself in a sinister fashion, as if there is a mythical beast trapped within, and it’s the entrance to some foul dungeon, Manchester’s Moria. Today, though, it loomed open, but there were no surprises within — as the road sign and glimpsed wheelbarrow imply, just more bloody building site stuff.
Being 42 