This building has been erected since I started this blog – it wasn’t there a year ago. It stands near Oxford Road station in Manchester. I am particularly impressed with the budget accommodation visible here, but I doubt it’s very suitable for anyone worried about heights.
Since Sunday I have spent the great majority of my time sat on my butt, working. It needs doing, but it doesn’t make for many photography opportunities. What you’ve been seeing here are just snatches of time, unrepresentative of life, really.
Today I was working at home all day and yet, still, there are these little bits and pieces of things to see, moments where the familiar territory of my house of 11 years shows me something new or different. This strand of honeysuckle reached down from the front wall and into the well below the kitchen window by our shed (where the cave spider lives), giving some colour to a grey and autumnal morning.
Found out today that my new camera not only has a 20x telephoto lens on it but also a digital zoom that goes up to 70x. This is just me playing around with it, but I at least feel proud of the timing. Also, this one shows that today, wonder of wonders, was a nice, warm, sunny day with blue skies – perhaps the best one we’ve had since the end of May.
Awwww. Snapped today during a working lunch in the Students’ Union in Manchester. As well as her super-cuteness I like the symmetry of the various hands and limbs of both mother and baby but also the asymmetry of the other face in the background. Iris (5 months) thus becomes the youngest person to feature on this blog.
I have a few small tattoos, not that any of you have ever seen them properly. (If you look very closely you can just see one on my right bicep – or left, as it appears in the mirror – of the self-portrait of me in the gym last October.) But I’ve decided I’m getting another one, a fairly big one. This will give me something to document here, at least – there will be at least three planning and pricking sessions before it’s done, over the next few weeks. And yes, what you see on the right is, more or less, what it should end up like. Consider it a preview, if you like.
When I was in the Lousiana swamp a few weeks back I saw alligators – we definitely don’t have them in Yorkshire. Cypresses and wolf spiders, spotted on the tour, are also not usually seen round here. But when the guide pointed out a sleek, tall drink of water of a bird with a beak like a dagger, a fish’s worst nightmare – oh yeah, we have them in Yorkshire. Really? Yes, really. Herons often fish in the river that runs through the centre of town. And here is one, just to prove it. Handsome beast, isn’t it?
As I move into the second year of this blog, some things are going to recur. Some of them at the same time each year (tomorrow, for example, Clare is running Alice’s Run again), others at different times, like this one. Here we are at Turf Moor, Burnley, for this season’s match-up between Burnley FC and my beloved Brighton & Hove Albion. Last season it took place in April, on a cold, grey day – and the match (and result) lived up to those conditions. Today, earlier in the season, much sunnier and warmer, and a happier trip for the travelling Seagulls. Burnley 1, Brighton 3.
Another walk today. I snuck it in based on a good weather forecast in the morning, and so it was, but after noon we went back to the same old rubbish. Never mind, it was good while it lasted.
A distinctive feature of the walk was being able to have my lunch sat inside on a very comfortable couch instead of outside on some damp mossy rock somewhere. The reason was the existence of Mosedale Cottage, a ‘mountain hut’ or bothy, some three or so miles from any other building. When I turned up there were these three shepherds having lunch there as well, and why wouldn’t you, it’s definitely the most comfortable place to have lunch for miles around. We shared the room for 10 minutes, moved on. It was as good a spot for lunch as I’ve managed on any Lake District walk.
No added comments today except RIP Joan Hall, 28th April 1924 – 13th August 2012. My maternal grandmother – her funeral was today.
Another one of those days: look up, see a sky, want to move to a different city. Half an hour after this came another intense cloudburst: until a couple of months ago I’d have said ‘I’d never seen anything like it before’ but of course we have. (The building is the AQA headquarters on the Manchester campus.)
