Tuesday 27th January 2015, 4.10pm (day 1,251)
A somewhat disquieting vision outside the White Lion this afternoon. Perhaps the scythe is in the backpack.
Being 42
Life, one day at a time
St. Peter’s Square building site
Monday 26th January 2015, 5.00pm (day 1,250)
Sometimes one must just acknowledge that all the pictures taken on a given day were a bit crap one way or another. This at least epitomises the fact that most of Manchester city centre is currently a building site. Don’t get used to seeing it though — the rest of the week I’m at home, marking. Things will liven up again soon I hope.
Poole and Bowman
Sunday 25th January 2015, 9.40pm (day 1,249)
Cheat it may be to take a photo of a cinema screen, but I don’t care. This is, quite definitely, one of the best half-dozen movies ever made, and tonight it was playing not ten minutes’ walk from my house. These things matter.
On Watch Hill
Saturday 24th January 2015, 11.05am (day 1,248)
Time for a walk. Watch Hill is near Cockermouth, Cumbria. This is my Zen landscape shot. More will appear on my walking blog in due course (probably tomorrow).
Bex and friends, Friday night
Friday 23rd January 2015, 6.05pm (day 1,247)
It’s Friday night, and more than welcome. Bex (Rebecca) is the one in the centre by the way. Have a good weekend.
“It’s the Internet… stupid!”
Thursday 22nd January 2015, 2.45pm (day 1,246)
Manchester was dull, grey and non-snowy today but this blog is becoming quite Hebden-bound lately and I may as well prove that once in a while I do go to work. Here Simon Nelson, CEO of FutureLearn, boils down his philosophy of life into a few pithy words. He’s probably right.
In the snow
Wednesday 21st January 2015, 12.25pm (day 1,245)
It snowed again. A lot. Enough to make it kind of enjoyable, and that’s why I like this picture — the look of pleasure on Clare’s face. OK, let’s self-criticse about the tree growing out of her shoulder, but hey.
Snowy sunset
Tuesday 20th January 2015, 3.50pm (day 1,244)
A familiar scene in so many ways, but we should keep our eyes open all the time, you never know when the same old view will take on a subtle character that you’ve not noted before.
Jehovah’s Witnesses, Oxford Street, Manchester
Monday 19th January 2015, 12.55pm (day 1,243)
The Watchtower is the magazine with the largest print run in the whole world, some 53,000.000 copies each month, apparently. All distributed for free. (Though it seems even the servants of God’s kingdom on Earth are not immune from having to adapt to the Internet, with the magazine having gone down to 16 pages and more emphasis placed on the digital edition these days.) I guess you need a large and voluntary distribution network to handle a publication like that. And so without addressing irrelevant questions of ‘faith’ — that’s what the Witnesses are: unpaid labour. They have to put in timesheets like the rest of us, but instead of getting pay now, they believe their redemption will come when the world finally ends (which according to them has been about to take place since 1914).
None of this persuades a great many people to stop and take a copy.
Maggie rolls in the snow
Sunday 18th January 2015, 10.30am (day 1,242)
A stupendous morning. With our house guests (see yesterday) having brought Maggie the labrador I took the opportunity to make the most of it. I never quite got a version of this shot that was fully what I wanted but this is near enough.
Being 42 