I must admit that I thought Hamburg would be a rather modern and industrial kind of place. Actually it’s a very attractive city, plenty of old buildings and lots of green space. We walked every day through this park, called Planten un Blomen. My real target in this picture was the dog, but as I took the shot the girl turned round, the runner came past, and I think they all make a nice little set.
Although it has managed to sneak onto the ‘Best of the Rest’ page thanks to an aerial photo (of Frankfurt) this is Germany’s first proper appearance on the blog: and this is probably its most notorious street, the heart of Hamburg’s red-light district. Well, why not. You gotta do these things now and again. Actually compared to Amsterdam’s it’s rather tame, though interesting. Clare’s sat to my right as this picture was taken, in case you were wondering.
The neon guitar in the background, by the way, marks the site of the Kaiserkeller, one of the host venues for the Beatles’ now-legendary Hamburg gigs in 1961. Probably if you counted the number of people who claimed to be there, it’s in the several millions by now.
You saw Whitelocks not so long ago but, well, here it is again. The channellng of the sun down the alley to hit the blonde hair was too nice to resist. This was the prelude to a long weekend away, which I’ve just returned from, so there’s some catching up to do.
Another little corner of town. No symbolic intent, I just like the aesthetics of the shot. This has been the most Hebden Bridge-bound passage of the blog, since mid-June. However, I’ve finished the first draft of the book, am having two weeks off and travelling a great deal more over the next month. So perhaps the arrow does have a symbolic meaning after all.
This demolition site — old industrial premises — in the centre of town has been close to getting on the blog for a couple of weeks now, today it’s made it. Seems a bit strange to be sweeping up at the start of the working day, but I’m just a sedentary intellectual type, what do I know.
I am in the final stages of writing the first draft of my book and literally did not leave the house all day. With rain most of the day and flat light, opportunities were very slim. But in the end, the atmosphere obliged with a cloudscape.
What makes this post somewhat exceptional in the general scheme of things is not so much its aesthetics but the time of its taking. I mean…. on a Sunday? And this place was packed at that time. We’d gone down to offload a bunch of Joe’s old toys, but nearly couldn’t get a plot despite getting up at 4.45am and arriving there an hour later at most. And at 6am people were turning up demanding to know whether we had any PS3 games. Blimey. Free-market capitalism, eh. I guess it works at this local scale.
The new Championship season kicked off. for me, Joe and about 33,400 other people, at Elland Road this afternoon. I enjoyed the first 15 minutes or so.
L. S. Lowry painted a famous picture in the 1930s called ‘Going to the Match’, showing people flocking to Bolton Wanderers’ ground amid a sea of cobbles, factories and back-to-back housing. There aren’t many grounds left where you can still get that kind of vibe 80 years later, but Elland Road is one of them.
It’s Friday. It’s another ‘dog in the pub’ shot. Here is Ellie, a (I think) border collie/doberman cross. A few months old, terribly cute, on her first season, not quite sure about the attention she’s receiving… I like the posterising effect on this shot and the fact that the shoe of Simon, her owner, has snuck into the background.
Yes, those are my teeth. Goddammit.
Being 42 