I had a really nice, artistic shot of some alley in Manchester city centre lined up as today’s choice. It was a beautiful day, with great light throughout.
But…. this is JUPITER. And Io, and Europa, and (I am taking a stab at this) Ganymede. And there are colours (look how Ganymede to the right is whiter than the rest.) With an ordinary digital camera. Pictured from Yorkshire. It’s awesome.
Joe has graduated up recently from his acoustic to this axe. Note the book of music as well — his choice (he is often observed putting the very brilliant Won’t Get Fooled Again on jukeboxes). A boy of taste.
Sometimes there just isn’t the chance to take many photos. Today was Joe’s birthday party, though not his birthday precisely, that comes next week. We had a gaggle of 10- and 11-year-old boys round at ours for lunch then took them to the cinema (to see Mr Peabody and Sherman), here is the moment at which they launched themselves for the entrance, and one of the few at could deal with photography rather than general mayhem-avoidance and catering.
OK, so I know it’s a bit weird to take pictures of other people’s laundry. But it’s not like I climbed over anyone’s garden fence to do it.
I know this could be sharper but shooting conditions were not ideal here, and this is all behind glass. Rightly so too, because this is the last surviving remnant of the Aardman animation, Wallace & Gromit movie The Wrong Trousers. All but one of the movie’s sets were destroyed in a fire at the studio in 2005. This was safely displayed at the National Media Museum, Bradford, at the time, and thus survived. I love this movie, and I love this miniature set. This is a good museum, we visited today as Joe is on half-term, and this is the best thing in it.
This house sits to the left of the bridge over the Rochdale Canal on the way to Hebden Bridge station and is becoming the most-photographed exterior of any building on this blog, including my own house (which frequently gets in as an interior, but not exterior). There are reasons for this — on any given sunny morning it looks great. Having these guys climbing up onto it today was just a bonus.
A day working at home. The turf roof that has been promised for the Nutclough Mill extension has moved a step closer, it seems, with the delivery of a whole bunch of stones (in bags here) that presumably will form the ‘bedrock’.
I have been doing this blog for 30 months today — that is, exactly two-and-a-half years.
Monday is a regular Manchester day in term-time. Some more random campus architecture then. The Sackville building was part of UMIST until that institution was eaten up by the University of Manchester in 2004. Not for much longer though — I believe the basic plan is to sell it off fairly soon (it’s been gradually emptied over the last few years) and in the near future will probably become luxury apartments with a bar on the ground floor that prices its drinks at a level designed to ensure the plebs don’t get in.
Had to go into Manchester today. Once the errand was done, Joe and I passed some time in the Manchester Museum, which is on the university campus but which I have managed never to properly explore in the 8 years I have worked there. It’s a good natural history and anthropological museum, in fact. These frogs are native to Madagascar and critically endangered in the wild. They’re toxic, though not extremely so.
Joe and I went to York today, which is certainly the most interesting place easily reachable from my house (we have a direct train), and ranks up with Edinburgh and Oxford as one of Britain’s best and most attractive (but also busiest) cities. Today there was some kind of medievalist festival on, and these guys were going through their paces for the cameraman and director to the right. I would like there to be better light on this shot but I think it captures their movement pretty well.
Being 42 