On this day last year I was on my way to Moscow (at 5.20am) whereas five years ago today I was in Nairobi having a rather good cup of coffee. No similar travels this January however. Got to look around the local neighbourhood for inspiration: lousy weather makes even hiking off the agenda. Consider the smudge on the lens artistic license.
Don’t worry, Manchester has not made a sudden return to the depths of winter. In fact this is the Christmas ice rink being callously disposed of. That’s your festive fun over for another year, sod off back to work the lot of you. Then again this was the establishment that was publicly playing Wizzard’s I Wish It Could Be Christmas Every Day as early as November 8th this year, so I have no sympathy. Doubtless it’ll be back in ten months.
Since 30th December, a photo that featured a cast of thousands, not a single person has featured on here; but then again there haven’t really been many chances to depict them. Nor was the Manchester campus this morning very busy, it does not crank up again until next week student-wise. This photo is a fine example of how all the litter and recycling bins around the place are good for the environment, but not photography. I suppose here it’s just about tolerable.
I’m still not getting a great distance away from home… at least not this morning.
Why is this sign here? No idea. They never tell us anything. Perhaps it is purely metaphorical….
Mildly aggrieved at having to go back to work today, but I reflected on the fact that without this kind of infrastructure, I’d have had to yomp into Manchester and back today, as indeed I would every other weekday. It’s therefore as good a subject as anything else to epitomise the day. Was it Rimmer from Red Dwarf who had a photo collection of late 20th-century telegraph poles?
A dull, non-festive shot? My apologies, but yes. Nevertheless to find the Blue Pig open as we went past it towards the end of our Christmas morning exercise walk was a great Christmas bonus. This pub, run entirely by volunteers, is like Brigadoon, sometimes it’s there, more often, it’s not.
I managed to not document anything particularly ‘Christmassy’ about the day but then again seeing as it was mild enough to sit and drink a beer outside by the river, it didn’t particularly feel like it today and I get bored with all these cliches anyway. Either way… hope you enjoyed your version of the day, whatever you did with it.
Winter, as such, I don’t mind. I can take the cold and it tends to look nice (as here). It’s the darkness that pisses me off, and we haven’t even reached the Solstice yet. On winter days when I’m around home I can just about get it in me to go out when the sun finally struggles up, but otherwise, if it can’t be bothered, usually neither can I.
A bit of play in the processing. But what the hell, I feel like the country’s regressed a century or so. Last-but-one day in Manchester this year — with the state of the trains at the moment, that is no bad thing.
Clare and Joe walking back from a visit to Clare’s gran — who certainly lives in the kind of place toward which grans seem to gravitate. This is the epitome of seaside suburbia in early December. Whatever you think of this photo, I like it because it’s just the pic I wanted to take when I pressed the shutter. We can ask for little more.
Being 42 