In our garden, this evening. It had friends. All contributed to a very nice, 100% foraged mint & wild strawberry source which I made to go with the lamb. I wish I was better at making food grow, to be honest.
Stayed at home almost all day writing, and it wasn’t even a sunny day, so no real light. Here’s a study of form and composition from my locality that I’ve not yet covered, however. The School in question is Stubbings, the steps go up to its lower entrance. (Not a contradiction in terms – that’s Hebden Bridge for you.) I make this the first post box to appear on the blog, though I might be wrong.
Went here for a meeting today, it’s not a particularly exciting place but unlike the last time it featured on the blog in December, Blackburn at least delivered a) good weather and b) the event I actually came to the town for. I have no idea what this sculpture commemorates, but perhaps it doesn’t commemorate anything and is just some public art. Which is fine. That’s a teddy bear the boy has dropped, by the way.
Incidentally it is also a year to the day since what was certainly the least pleasant day I had to somehow document on here: the flash flood of 9th July 2012.
I worked yesterday, so walked today. This is my usual walking county — Cumbria — but so far away from my usual haunt that it’s outside the Lake District National Park, on the very edge of Morecambe Bay. Forty years ago this area was marked on the map as mud and sand, but changes in the currents around the Bay (caused by sea protection works in Morecambe, some say) have seen the sea retreat and leave these salt marshes. There were a few clouds around when I arrived at nearby Kents Bank railway station to start my walk a few minutes before taking this photo, but they soon burned off, and it was another very hot one today.
Despite being there this morning as well Blackpool fails to trouble the blog at all, and may well now never do so. Here we are back in familiar territory, all enjoying a gorgeous day, including the Muscovy duck who seems to have stuck around for the last 18 months since it last appeared on the blog in far less clement conditions.
One of the criteria for choosing which pictures get onto this blog is whether one encapsulates the day on which it was taken. That is not true of this photo. I had a busy day today, visited my parents and then had a Saturday night out with Clare, in Blackpool – and one could do an entire photo essay on the subject of ‘a Saturday night in Blackpool’ (though I think it might be a job more fitting for a war correspondent than a humble amateur like myself). There was great light today, a beautiful high summer’s day, and I took plenty of photos I was happy with.
Nevertheless, this wins. If the art of photography is not about capturing moments, those coincidences of place and time which raise any experience above the mundane and everyday, then I feel happy with what I’ve done here. This place could not be less exotic really, just a tunnel I pass through at least two or three times a week when I am here in town. But this morning I loved the way the light was spilling down the steps and giving it a warm feeling. This photo is exactly what I wanted it to be when I took it, and that happens only occasionally.
The title of the post says it all. It’s sunny, warm, Friday evening… this is where your friends are… what would you do?
While citizens of the USA were presumably celebtrating their Independence Day today, I had a day spent mostly at home writing. These books caught my eye later on though, bathed in a small pool of afternoon sunlight. It would be nice to claim our Joe was a voracious reader but I think these are on their way to the car boot sale. Indeed it would probably embarrass him to reveal to the world there are still around 20 Thomas the Tank Engine books visible here. So I won’t point that out.
Second day in a row in Manchester, that hasn’t happened since January. Familiar territory, but new in that I’ve never managed to catch anyone blowing their nose before. I didn’t set out to take such a shot; but that’s street photography for you. Taken on the steps of St. Peter’s, the University’s Catholic chaplaincy.
As being uploaded on the train to Manchester this morning, by the inefficient but highly effective data collection form known as ‘reading’. The book in the background, by the way, belongs to my fellow Manchester academic Mike, whose surname I can never remember but who teaches English & American literature so reads things far more obscure than my relatively populist novel.
Being 42 