A foul day of weather today, definitely the worst since early April. A reasonably pleasant morning tricked us all into going out without the right gear, a mistake very apparent later on when we had to return home in foul and heavy rain, and with plenty of time to remind ourselves about just how poor is the drainage on Manchester’s streets.
Another early morning in Manchester, where there’s still just about sunlight at 7.15am, but not for much longer in the year. Light, and time, enough to ponder why this establishment can’t seem to decide whether there’s one L or two (or indeed, three) in its name. It wasn’t open at this time, in case you were wondering.
Day one of Welcome Week — and so there came a time in the day when we all needed to have a break. Picture taken through my office window, making it the third in the last five days to be taken through glass. It also adds to the increasing lead of the 3.00 – 3.55pm time slot when it comes to the overall pattern of shot timing (see the stats), a statistical blip I attribute mainly to football matches kicking off at 3pm. But that is just personal trivia.
Not an eventful day at all. I am hiding at home doing my best to get ready for things opening at uni in a couple of weeks’ time. Like these guys, but just on a bigger scale. The Nightjar bar sits below the Picture House and is one of those places that serves a dozen beers, all of them over-hopped and fruity, which is why these guys have beards.
I’m tired of the endless destruction and re-capitalisation being wreaked on Manchester city centre. The yellow hoardings on the right surround what is to become a boutique hotel, called “Brooklyn” — or actually “BKLYN”, clearly this was exactly the configuration of letters which wasn’t already a hashtag — scheduled to open some time in 2019 it seems.
However, an objective assessment of the local building stock leads me to conclude that Manchester is already well-supplied with hotels, boutique or otherwise. What it seems to lack are beds for a growing population of rough sleepers, that anyone who walks through the city centre on a regular morning basis will agree has increased substantially in the last year or so.
Welcome to your neo-liberal marketised future.
Felt obliged to put in an appearance in the big city for the first time (photographically) since signing off for my holiday on 3rd August. The weather brought melancholy in the morning, a feeling of autumn, though it did brighten up. The monochrome adds to the mood though really I only changed it to address a blob of anomalous colour (on the traffic sign in the background: near invisible here, a bright blue splodge in the original).
After a few weeks of getting out and about, my 49th birthday was spent at home in Hebden Bridge, and this is the weather that greeted it. I’m sure it’s not a metaphor for my advancing years…. but it was rather a wet blanket (OK, that’s a metaphor). Onward, anyway, onward with my fiftieth year on the planet (good grief). But the travelling is over for a little while.
Some parts of the old Berlin Wall remain in the city. Probably they could have been demolished back in 1990 but the authorities realised — correctly — that they were valuable as memorials and/or tourist attractions. Or, as in the case of the East Side Gallery, which runs beside the Spree for about a kilometer near the Ostbahnhof, an art installation; this long line of concrete has been decorated by a range of murals, including this one of Soviet dissident Andrei Sakharov, who seems to disdain the busker beside him, playing as he is on a load of old water pipes, or something.
The next burst of summer holiday is taking place in Berlin, where Clare and I travelled today. We didn’t arrive until late afternoon and I feel I managed to do little, photographically, with the various opportunities offered: a few stereotypical shots of the Brandenburg Gate, which everyone snaps (our hotel is only a few minutes’ walk away). But this sausage stand nearby did capture the attention. As anyone who’s been to Germany knows, if you want a roadside sausage, this is the world epicentre. And that German word always gives scope for some dreadful pun or other.
Two days of total indolence are in progress for me, this being the first. I avoided the temptation to present a photo of this afternoon’s football result (Brighton & Hove Albion 3, Manchester United 2 — oh yes oh yes) and so this one will do. The woman in beige maybe regrets encouraging the geese to visit her for a snack.
