Here’s how to play the hat throwing game. Take two four year olds, one hat, and a stairway. Have the four year old at the top throw the hat down to the other. Change places, and repeat for quite a long time.
Not quite the week I had planned, but today was always going to be a day in Manchester. This colonnade — there’s one on each side of the building — is a scene I pass most times I walk from the station to work, been meaning to photograph it for some time, today it got its chance.
I committed to spending the whole day in, working at home, and it turned out to be the nicest weather in some time. Ah well. This guy, at least, got to do some work outside today, up on the roof of the Nutclough Mill.
In need of distraction from the various (minor) personal and (major) political and institutional cock-ups afflicting my life at the moment — so I did what I usually do in these circumstances, took a book to read on the way and got myself up a mountain. On the top of Dollywaggon Pike (2815 feet, or 858m, above sea level), this tableau awaited…. is the stone on top of the bear a kindness, to keep it there until its owner returns? Looks more like a sacrificial altar to me. Still, there are worse places to be exposed to the elements.
Some creatures, like birds, seem in my experience to not like having cameras shoved in their faces. But insects don’t generally mind. The problem with capturing them is that they don’t stay in one place for very long. My technique largely involves setting the shutter to continuous capture then hoping the auto-focus does the work. I like this shot, though — also because of the overdwellings captured in the background, very Hebden Bridge.
This was supposed to be a five-day trip down south but I have had to truncate it for reasons too annoying and stupid to bother discussing on here. The picture matches the mood today. Yet another umbrella — there have been too many of them in the last four weeks.
The idea for this photo came bit by bit, as I sat on the train down to London looking at the first picture in the sequence, which is of Hebden Bridge station. Decided to take a photo of that on the screen for some reason and then just ran with it. I suppose I could have gone further and further, but I did have other work to do….
One of my more indolent weekends. In twenty years’ time I’ll probably be this guy.
And you thought our putative withdrawal from the EU was the major problem facing us at the moment.
Saw this shot coming this morning, so played for it — I think it’s worked out. I like the almost random mix of colour and shape. These are about all we have to play with at the moment, ‘cos there’s no goddamn light.
The red plaque, by the way, commemorates the 1872 visit of a Japanese delegation to Manchester, a visit from which they returned inspired to kick start their own industrial revolution.
Being 42 