Those who have spent time in Manchester over the last few years may recognise here components of the disassembled Santa which graces Albert Square, outside the Town Hall, each year. It was being constructed today. But come on! It’s October still!!
Heavens! Can it get more exciting than this? The rain. The puddles. The surface of some random street near home. It’s that late October, early winter feeling, and it ain’t going away.
A dull day today in every sense. Damp grey weather in Hebden Bridge and I spent almost the whole day indoors, teaching online. So there was little to inspire the photography. This shot has little artistic merit I know, but I chose it to show how, now the clocks have gone back, it’s getting dark well early — and there’s much more darkness to come of course, before the year turns.
It’s Joe’s half-term, so to occupy him (and also mark Clare’s birthday) we went to the National Football Museum in Manchester. This is part of the new “From Pitch to Pixel” exhibition, head that bright orange ball and become part of some giant interactive artwork being compiled over several months, called “Hit It!”. And become part of my rather longer-lasting interactive artwork too….
Took Clare out tonight as it is her birthday tomorrow. Proof I am not normally the dirty-stop-out type comes by noting this is the latest shot in any given day for three months, since 24th July. But the clocks went back last night, it was dark by 5pm so I have to get used to shooting in low light again.
This is a fairly stock Hebden Bridge shot, but get used to it — I have a (for me) relatively long period at home coming up. I like this shot because of the varied, yet limited palette. It’s nice because it’s both varied and limited.
Back from Tallinn. Which means that I must, with regret, finally retire my passport; I cannot now avoid the need to renew it. It’s done pretty well for itself, having now only one blank page, 13 visas (1 Chinese, 1 Saudi, 1 Tanzania, 2 Kenyan and 8 Russian) and 34 pairs of entry/exit stamps. Including proof here, for example, that I did indeed enter New Zealand on 17/2/13. There’s a lot of memories in this now-tatty little book.
I picked my Tallinn hotel, the Hotel Viru, basically at random, so it was interesting to discover its history today. It was the first ‘Western’-style hotel built in the city in the early 1970s when the Soviet Union decided that it would try to attract tourist hard currency. The hotel has 23 floors, but the elevators only go up to 22: the top floor officially did not exist, because it was in a room up there that the KGB installed a surveillance station that, it is believed, relayed information from spies in Finland direct to the 1st Directorate of the KGB back in Moscow. One night in May 1991, just before Estonia achieved independence, they cleared out literally overnight, and now the hotel conducts guided tours of the top floor which, they say, they have left exactly as it was found after their departure. You can see more pictures on my Facebook page if interested.
As well as this room there was a surveillance network throughout the whole hotel, which was also used by Communist party luminaries and celebrities as well as tourists. The two pieces of equipment shown here reflect this. The black apparatus is a camera attached to a tube which could be poked through holes in ceilings to photograph guests in the room below. The pink object on the left, which I found particularly sinister, is a purse that would be left lying around as if it had been dropped by a guest. Hotel employees were supposed to return these straight to lost property; if they opened it, checking for money, it would explode dye into their face. They would then be called into see the local KGB and told that if they did not co-operate with them they would be sent to a labour camp for theft. Nice people.
Of course, these days no government ever spies on its people like this or engages in any underhand surveillance tactics at all.
Toompea is the district of Tallinn’s old town elevated up on a hill. Two birds with one stone — the ‘autumn leaves’ shot and also a pleasant district of the pleasant city I currently reside in. In fact this is right next door to the Estonian parliament. Why don’t they feel the need to block it off with fences and roadblocks like they do in London or Washington? I dunno, perhaps because their government aren’t a bunch of assholes? Just a thought.
The ECIL (European Conference on Information Literacy) taking place in Tallinn at the moment is the same gig that got me to Croatia this time last year, and yes, some things just stay the same, like the folk dancing we endured last night; and tea breaks remain the same wherever one is.
Being 42 