At age 16 Joe has his first, but doubtless not last, bout of major school examinations — the GCSEs. The first week is done — the whole show lasts about another month yet, though. Today’s revision schedule: Physics. But we did let him out to go to the cinema later.
Social commentary? Irony? Or just a decrepit but visually interesting corner of the urban world? Interpret it how you will. I was just passing.
These seeds are ready to fly; the next windy day, they’ll be gone. You have to admire the simple efficiency of the pattern. The seeds remain individual and can all escape, but no space is wasted, no more could be fitted on. Like so many other things in nature, the perfect match of form and function.
Buskers have been around longer than most professions. We used to call them minstrels, but the whole singing for one’s supper thing is much the same as it was in the time of King Arthur. Fishmongers have been around for a while too.
This is a rare photowhack — the only photo taken today.
It’s gosling season… the parents programmed to keep a close eye on the brood. There were at least three substantial goose families on the Rochdale Canal this afternoon.
Even Manchester’s crowded, fully urban campus can crank up the architecture quotient now and again, especially on a sunny May day. The Beyer Building and its cloak of ivy have featured before. My only day on campus this week, so I’m glad it was a pleasant one.
I had to put together a plan for finishing off my book. There is no reason why this had to happen sitting around at home — not on a day like today.
I had two strong candidate pictures for today’s shot, following my walk around Honister Pass and Buttermere, in the Lake District. The other one was flowers, this one industry. I think this shot shows that the latter can be attractive too. The spoil heap looks at first like a stark, grey mountain in the distance, but it appears on no map.
The football season comes to an end. At the very top, everything is won by those with the most money; at the lower levels, not necessarily. The Waiters Arms team in yellow shock their previously undefeated opponents, FC Panda, 2-1 to win the Mel Owens Invitational Cup on this sunny Sunday morning. You might not care, but 100 people turned up to see this.
Back in Hebden Bridge. In the afternoon, a sudden storm, but with enough sunlight around to make the drops glisten and shine: beautiful, but not if you were out in it. This is taken from the shelter of home.
At one point during the conference I was attending at the Goethe University in Frankfurt today, there were vague references to ‘our famous building’ that drifted through my Friday consciousness but didn’t take hold. Then, on my way back into the city centre afterwards, I saw the building.
The IG-Farbenhaus has had a chequered history to say the least. HQ to the eponymous company, when built in the 1920s it was the biggest office building in Europe and remained so for thirty years. IG Farben manufactured the world’s first antibiotic — and also the gas that was used in the Nazi concentration camps. After the war the USA used it as a military base — the ‘Pentagon of Europe’; following German reunification ownership passed to the state of Hesse who renovated it and then helped the Goethe-Institut build a new campus around it from 2001 onwards. And all set in parkland (kept free of development by the Americans for security reasons) right in the city centre.
I’m sure this photo doesn’t do the architecture full justice, but what the hell, the sun looks good too.
Being 42 