Dreadful photo, but a fun night out in the Trades Club. This is about the best that can be done with my camera in such an environment, but evening photos have disappeared from the blog lately and I do want to acknowledge that now and again, I do still have a social life.
Went into Bradford today just for something to do that wasn’t sitting on my arse at home, and it did help me get some writing done. These arches stand outside Forster Square railway station, but above them is a road, not the railway line, which sticks to the lower ground: Bradford is a very bloody hilly city, as I was frequently reminded today. They look like they need something to fill them; like they are a row of little stages, micro-theatres perhaps, waiting for performers.
I have no idea what the weather’s been like in the rest of the world but in the UK this late February, as anyone round here will tell you, it has been extremely pleasant. Even 7.55am on a Monday morning looked OK in these conditions. It’d be nice to think this is spring arriving and bedding in, but it must be recalled that this time last year, it snowed.
Just an arrangement of rectangles, colours and graffiti that I liked on this Wednesday morning. But why the alarmed-looking bear? Guess only the artist knows.
The world moves round in its orbit, the North Pole points more and more towards the sun, and we see light in bits of Hebden Bridge that have not seen light since November. It’s always a positive step when the sun comes back to the front of the house in the mornings, which should happen this week.
Today was such an uneventful day that this is a rare photowhack — the one and only photo taken on a given day. There have been about 15 of these days over the lifespan of the blog.
One of those shots where I took it — as one of several attempts to capture the nice morning light at Hebden Bridge station this morning — then thought no more about it. Only when it got uploaded onto the laptop did I notice the effect on this person’s head. Do they have bright pink hair? No, but there is a second red signal light on that side of the tracks.
The big cat leaps into the sunrise of the urban jungle…. I walk past this sign every time I go to work in Manchester, and one nice thing about doing this blog is that I can see things anew; having never thought of taking a photograph of it before, it made itself rather attractive on this Monday morning.
Which is less savoury — the graffiti, or the notices which pepper this wall and try to keep the space private and enclosed? At weekends, at least, the town could do with the parking spaces. Eventually someone will come and paint over the street art, but the warning signs will remain.
Here’s this year’s Spring Festival (Lunar or ‘Chinese’ New Year) shot…. there are always opportunities for pictures like this in Manchester. These lanterns catch a little of the wan sunshine that illuminated the morning. And, it being Manchester, you get a crane photo-bombing, as well.
This is one of those shots that is more about the personal significance than the photographic quality. When I was growing up in Crowborough we knew members of the Chappell family, who owned this pharmacy and (though it’s not so apparent on the picture) a health-food annex to the right-hand side. In fact I think I put in my first ever example of what might be considered a day’s work in the latter, aged about 13. So I do have enough of a clear memory of this place to know that in forty or more years it has not changed ONE BIT. You’d have thought that they’d have spruced up the sign at some point — but no. It’s 1975 all over again.
Being 42 