A very happy birthday to the wife, born 26/10/1976 and thus forty years old TODAY. And how can one fail to go for someone with such attention to their make-up. Hun…. love you loads and may there be many more of these.
It’s half-term, so school is closed, and with Clare at university today it fell to me to entertain the Boy. By a few miles into the walk I chose he was probably regretting this, but too late. Still, even he agreed it was better than sitting in school.
On Sunday morning this room was full, but clearly Clare and I were the only people who felt like extending their stay at the Arundel Park hotel into Monday morning. What the hell, it’s been an excellent weekend.
Arundel Castle in Sussex dates from the 12th century, and is a great study in just how much power and privilege remains on this smallish island off the coast of Europe. The castle walls are monstrously immense. This place is like Gormenghast, a vast fortress rising above a small town above, but otherwise relatively isolated, ruling over a huge swathe of countryside. Most countries got rid of their aristocracies a hundred or so years ago, of course, but we in England haven’t got round to it yet, so this place is still lived in — the home of the 18th Duke of Norfolk.
On a gloriously sunny Saturday, there are many worse places to be than by the seaside in Brighton, believe me.
It’s Clare’s birthday on Wednesday, one of those significant ones — or rather, one that we culturally choose to assign significance to because it has a zero at the end. Anyway, the celebrations are taking place in various locations over the next few days and start this weekend with her & I going down to Brighton, where this shot is taken. It’s a mess I know, but so are most things by 10.35pm on a Friday night out; the time makes this the latest shot on the blog since June 2015.
Point one’s camera in almost any direction in Manchester these days and one will hit a building site. This particular one — to be known, once complete, as ‘Circle Square’ (you have to cringe just a little bit) — is on the site of the old BBC building. Creative destruction….? Something to record, at least.
It really has been a fine run of weather over the last two months and still shows no real signs of becoming unpleasant. My train to Manchester this morning was 15 minutes late and I cared not at all, just 15 minutes longer to hang out in the sunshine and take pictures.
Being 42 