Friday 2nd July 2021, 3.45pm (day 3,599)
If you’ve been sneezing a lot lately, you’re assuredly not the only one. The noses know we are at peak pollen season.
Pollen
Being 42
Life, one day at a time
The Palace of Dance
Thursday 1st July 2021, 9.00am (day 3,598)
9am on a Thursday morning is probably not the best time to catch any building at its best, but one certainly feels that this place has seen better days. Even the Bingo has died, if the boarded-up doors are any indication. Is it another place that has died ‘for the good of our health’? Who knows, any more?
Still pondering the future
Wednesday 30th June 2021, 9.35am (day 3,597)
One year ago today, 30th June 2020, I was ‘allowed’ back on to campus for the first time since all the shit started, and took the picture linked here, of a student sat among the lush June foliage, alone, wondering where his future had gone.
One year on, this photo is taken from more-or-less the same point, and little has changed, has it? The huge Manchester campus still just sits there, mostly unused. Maybe my managers, our ‘leaders’, would like to ask, what am I complaining about? These people are still going to get their degrees are they not? They’ve got what they paid for? Yeah, well, if you reduce the experience of getting an education to a pure cash transaction then yes, they have indeed. But what a wasted year it has been, and I mean that also in the sense of wasting away, eroding, no longer vital and healthy. This is not because of some virus, but because of fear and paranoia, a desperate urge not to do anything that could see fingers pointed.
But I say this again, sorry to be repetitive but it deserves repeating. There were more than 40,000 people in Wembley stadium yesterday afternoon. This proves that if the will is there, this ridiculous fear can end. Is it so impossible to accept that once you are vaccinated, and the guy next to you is vaccinated, and the people who can’t get vaccinated (like those under 18) brush off this thing as if it were water in the vast majority of cases — then there is no longer any need to live life in this state? The most worrying thing for me is that such views now seem to be considered subversive. There are groups out there who are quite happy for most people to be frightened of shadows, and they’ve won.
Evening cloud
Tuesday 29th June 2021, 9.45pm (day 3,596)
More an abstract than anything else, today. Although the swallow (if that is what it was — it was certainly flying like one) gives it focus. I felt like putting up an evening shot, anyway: there have been very few of these in the last eighteen months. Nights out are a thing of the past. Mind you, 40,000 people could be accommodated in Wembley yesterday afternoon — but apparently, going out to the Trades Club is still considered ‘unhealthy’. Enough of this bullshit.
Rodney, at home
Monday 28th June 2021, 3.00pm (day 3,595)
Today, just a portrait of a mate in his natural habitat. Where we’ve all spent too much time lately, let’s face it.
As far as I can tell — and I might have it wrong ± a couple — this is the 3,000th English picture to feature on here. Almost half of these (and 41% of the whole total) have been taken in Hebden Bridge, but this one is just down the road in Mytholmroyd.
Day of rest
Sunday 27th June 2021, 3.55pm (day 3,594)
Could not decide between two photos which both epitomised this uneventful and almost totally energy-free day. But the other one was some knitting project of C’s (we age, we age….) that would have taken too much explanation. The flaked-out dog — and its tether to an unseen owner — these are clearer illustrations.
Alleyway
Saturday 26th June 2021, 1.45pm (day 3,593)
Spent part of the afternoon in what you might call the low-rent part of town; which is not to say that it was unpleasant. When Clare saw this photo she said ‘It has a Morecambe feel’ to it. In fact this is Laisterdyke in Bradford.
The Educators
Friday 25th June 2021, 1.25pm (day 3,592)
At this time last year we had our annual ‘staff awayday‘ entirely in Zoombieland, and frankly it was the lowest point of that bleak, lonely time for me. I could return to the point about why a largely vaccinated population is still being told they should live in fear, but let’s not — instead, let’s at least celebrate the fact that there were some work colleagues around today. Only a few, but they were there, and how much better the day was for it. Left-to-right; Steve, Miri, Stephen (pictured in his office two weeks ago), Miguel. Happy Fridays, everyone. Take back your public spaces.
Back of/at the Railway
Thursday 24th June 2021, 2.25pm (day 3,591)
The Railway pub has featured very regularly on here down the years, but it’s had its long bouts of closure in the last decade; two flood-related and last year’s thanks to the Great Fear, with it not even reopening during the relatively Fear-free summer of 2020. And because of that, I drifted away…. until this afternoon, anyway. There was still not much happening on the picnic tables now set up round the back, but it’s an excuse to present a study of shapes and colours, at least.
Wild strawberry
Wednesday 23rd June 2021, 3.15pm (day 3,590)
This is not an eventful period of my life. This is nothing to do with the Great Fear, it’s just how the wheel is turning at the moment. But at least the wild strawberries are out, and waiting to be found.
Being 42 