Tag Archives: 42

Sep 06 2011
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Daily Post, Family Member, Friend, Portrait Gallery

First day back at school

Tuesday 6th September 2011, 3.05pm (day 12)

Joe and ishmael, 6/9/11

Recently, any emergence of the topic of the return to school has meant that grouching and complaining is sure to follow from Joe. Nor does he profess himself ‘bothered’ about seeing his friend Ishmael again after their weeks off.

At 3.05pm out come this fairly bouncy pair of kids and Ishmael asks if Joe can come round for tea. ‘How was school?’ ‘Boring!’ J cries in an enthusiastic voice. It’s like the Lord’s Prayer. It’s just one of those automatic responses you give without conscious thought.

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Sep 05 2011
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Daily Post, Hebden Bridge, Urban scene Gallery

View from my living room

Monday 5th September 2011, 10.55am (day 11)

Flower, rain and mill, 5/9/11

Joe goes back to school tomorrow after his summer vacation. On this photo you can almost see the rain still falling. Someone’s telling us, ‘That’s your summer mate. That was it, gone. It’ll be back in another three-quarters of a year.’

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Sep 04 2011
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Daily Post, Hebden Bridge, Urban scene Gallery

Alice’s Run, near the railway station

Sunday 4th September 2011, 11.00am (day 10)

Alice's run, 4/9/11

It was my attempt to train for a marathon in 2007 that half-destroyed my left knee: so I don’t run any more. The Wainwright walks are my compensation, so I don’t regret this, most of the time. But seeing an organised event like ‘Alice’s Run’ (named after a teenager whose premature death inspired the event) does give me occasional pangs of nostalgia and I admire the fitness and dedication of the people who do it.

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Sep 03 2011
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Daily Post, Family Member, Portrait Gallery

Joe in the Railway, Hebden Bridge

Saturday 3rd September 2011, 5.30pm (day 9)

Joe in pub, 3/9/11

One of the nice things about Joe is that he will engage very well with adults, having no problem at all with social situations. It makes it much easier to also be ourselves when among friends, to relax after the efforts of the week just gone, and not have to constantly be looking out for him. (That’s orange juice he’s drinking, in case you were wondering.)

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Sep 02 2011
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Daily Post, Flora/Fauna, Landscape Gallery

Wasdale and Ennerdale walk – Thursday 1st and Friday 2nd September 2011

Great Door, Yewbarrow (2nd Sept, 9.10am – day 8)

Great Door, 2/9/11

I left Wasdale Head in grey but dry and tolerable weather. As far as Dropping Crag the way was steep but unproblematic. Then everything changed. The cloud came down and the rain started, making the rocks slippery, and the climb just got steeper and harder. It was an unpleasant 90 minutes to say the least. But there was this one dramatic moment, as this huge crack opened up in the world ahead, mist rising up through it like something out of Tolkein. For a moment I did not have to worry about getting down again and could just wonder at the sublime nature of it all. Did it make the horizontal hail on the summit worthwhile? That’s an open question.

Frog on the Dore Head scree-run (1st Sept, 5.45pm – day 7)

Frog, 1/9/11

Halfway down the torrent of scree which drops a thousand feet from Dore Head to Wasdale, descending by a mixture of precarious clambering and simply sliding down on my butt, this frog hops across the ‘path’ and just sits there, waiting for me to do something. Whatever it was doing up there, only it knew for sure. Perhaps it spends its days hopping up a couple of hundred feet then climbing on a little flat piece of rock and schussing down to the bottom again when no one is watching.

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Aug 31 2011
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Daily Post, Interior Gallery

University Office

Wednesday 31st August 2011, 10.00am (day 6)

Motivational card, 31/8/11

I’d like to say this is a piece of corporate motivational crap, but actually I find myself nodding in agreement…

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Aug 30 2011
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Daily Post, Interior Gallery

Waterside Gym, Hebden Bridge

Tuesday 30th August 2011, 9.00am (day 5)

Waterside Gym, 30/8/11

So far there are no other people in these photos. To me places are more interesting when they are quiet. I like being first one in the gym in the morning, but don’t think I do it because I am particularly keen: more the case is that if I don’t do it first thing, I don’t do it. And I need to do it.

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Aug 29 2011
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Daily Post, Flora/Fauna Gallery

On the hills above my house

Monday 29th August 2011, 12.25pm (day 4)

Scene on the hills, 29/8/11

I remember that on the very first day I moved into my house I walked up through the woods to the point at which they thinned out into fields and bramble patches. I looked at the scenery and thought, bloody hell, I live somewhere. This is a place. The environment round here can still do that.

Today I gave myself a break from work by going out and looking for blackberries. It’s been a cold, grey day and I didn’t find much fruit, but I did see these plants, and while I’m not botanist enough to identify them properly, this was the one point today at which the sun shone and it still felt like there was a vestige of summer in the air.

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Aug 28 2011
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Daily Post, Interior Gallery

Working in the attic

Sunday 28th August 2011, 9.50am (day 3)

Attic, 28/8/11

I like my house. I wouldn’t have been here more than 10 years, otherwise. Although it’s on a main road, and bits of it have a tendency to fall off now and again, I like the fact that it’s not some identikit Barratt Homes bollocks. I like the way the sun shines into the attic in the morning and turns it golden. I like that I can work here and not have to trug into Manchester every day. There will be many days over the next year where the defining feature is that I spent most of the time here. But I hope that will never be a problem, as it has not been for the last decade.

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Aug 27 2011
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Daily Post, Interior Gallery

It begins. Friday 26th & Saturday 27th August 2011.

I turned 42 yesterday (26/8/11). Douglas Adams famously made that number the answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe and Everything. If this is, then, to be the year in which I discover the meaning of life, perhaps it will be encoded here.

27th August 2011: The Science Museum, London.

Science Museum, London, 27/8/11

The Museum heaves with people, pressing buttons, touching screens, watching displays in the new, ICT-heavy wings. Meanwhile the fustier old cabinets in the Victorian sections seem neglected. But it’s in them that the history lies, and the interest; Joe likes the mechanical calculators, where you have to turn levers and clank gears to do the sums but the working of the machine is there in front of you. The newer sections, all about climate change and DNA, seem bland. There is a veneer of interactivity to them but it’s still the museum authorities telling us things. What we are shown – what they have chosen to show us – does not change, whatever we might think about it, whatever buttons we press, whomever and whatever we are.

26th August 2011: London College of Communication.

London College of Communication, 26/8/11

It shouldn’t matter, as long as you are using it to look out onto the world and learn.

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