This burst of wan and vapid sunlight is about as much as we got today. Not long after this, foul grey rain set in and did not let up all day. Winter is coming… we are in the late November doldrums of the year and as usual, I just hope to get to the end of the semester (mid-December) without any major grief.
I claim that this blog is apolitical but it is hard to avoid touching on certain subjects sometimes. Why does this kind of thing still happen in a world where there are enough resources to lift everyone — and certainly, at least, everyone in a very rich country like Germany, and a very rich part of it, like Bavaria — out of poverty? We become inured to it, it becomes normalised, until we don’t even see it any more. Maybe that’s all I can say with this photo: here it is, still.
It’s becoming harder to crank myself up in the mornings to get the 06:32 — best train it might be, when I need to pull an early start at work, but it’s now still dark even when it deposits me in Manchester city centre, a state of affairs which will last until into February. Some places have the lights on at that time, but by no means all. This should be the last of a run of a couple of months spent only in England, but I’m off somewhere else for a few days tomorrow.
Yesterday’s sunset presaged a bright, sunny day, but I was inside for most of it. A brief foray out this morning did at least offer the opportunity to get my tribute in for the 100th anniversary of the armistice that ended World War 1. Four days late, but the poppies are still in formation.
The immediate vicinity… being that region around my house (not quite visible on this shot)… which I did not leave today, at least not in any meaningful photographic way. The red lighting is explainable by being under the traffic lights at this point: one could get a green-tinted version of the same shot if one so desired.
Not actually a third monochrome shot in a row, although it might as well be on a dull, grey November day. Nearly three years after Mytholmroyd (along with much of the rest of the Calder Valley) was sunk beneath more than two metres of water on 26th December 2015, the stable door is finally being bolted — so we have been told — thanks to massive flood defence works. These pile drivers and giant screwdrivers currently occupy half the carriageway of the main road in the village, and at the moment their main effect is to have created a year-long traffic jam along the A646.
Altrincham Street marks one of the edges of the Manchester campus. Officially, it ends just behind where this shot was taken: here, we are looking through a gate that blocks off this extension, squeezing itself through the gap between the car park and the (overcrowded and inadequate) cross-Manchester railway line on the right. Why this shot, and the second monochrome shot in a row? I just like the perspectives. And it’s a kind of non-space, forgotten, unused. In some cities there’d be a whole thriving community down here.
This building was built in 1899 as a Baptist chapel. Worship (and/or baptisms) haven’t taken place here since the 1970s, but it is now a conference centre and youth hostel. As it is only a few minutes’ walk from my house it was nice to work here today rather than in Manchester, but it does lie halfway up a fekkin’ steep hill, which I had to climb three times in the morning. Maybe that’s why the Baptists stopped worshipping here after a while, and moved to the much more conveniently sited Hope Baptist Chapel down in town…
I don’t make a point of mentioning it on here but my surname is Whitworth and Whitworth Street in Manchester is a significant thoroughfare that I am obliged to cross each time I walk to and from work. It’s about time I tried for a decent photo of it. Taken while crossing the road — I do try always to cross this street carefully, it would just be too embarrassing to be run over on an eponym.
3.55pm and there’s a sunset cast to the sky…. It’s getting later earlier. If you see what I mean.
Sometimes, despite all the bvious faults in a photo (here, rampant lens flare), it’s still worth going with just because it’s different. The ‘mist’ is actually steam from a heating vent being pumped out by the old mill on the way to Hebden Bridge station. A beautiful morning today, but very cold, with a sharp frost.
Being 42 