The “Deaf Institute” might seem a strange name for a place that puts on regular gigs, but that’s what its called, or more precisely, it’s what the building was when it was first built in Victorian times. For the last six years it has been running as a rather decent bar, club, venue arrangement. The gig tonight? Tom McCrae, one of the wife’s favourites. I guess he’s decent enough. I quite like this shot because of the microphone.
Joe and his fellow 14-year-olds returned to school. I returned to Manchester. It threw it down. There went the summer…. This picture is dull, I know. But it’s meant to be.
There must be bus stops something like this one in Hell. It’s the blanket that gets me, too. What was I doing here at 5.45 on a Monday? Well, there could be many reasons.
Revenge for a photo-bomb… he then changed his mind about being in the picture. Joe’s 94th appearance on the blog, so it is. A quiet, uneventful weekend, but it was always going to be.
Our leeks in the garden have attained considerable girth. What we did this year that has proved so successful I have no idea, they usually grow but have never been particularly big in the past. I’m not complaining though…
It’s nice to travel — even if it’s for work — but it’s just as nice to come home. I don’t know where this is exactly, somewhere in Derbyshire I’m guessing. Pennines, for sure. And in the middle of a valley like this, I live, so it’s representative enough, welcome home.
Began a long journey home at 10.30am in Indiana. This is the O’Hare stopover. Farewell to the USA, thanks to my colleagues at Purdue for organising it, and I hope to be back…
My third and last full day at Purdue. With both the previous pictures having been taken indoors I thought it was time to get out into the continuing sunshine. This is an old campus but very few of the buildings on it are particularly old, it seems to have been completely rebuilt: the bell tower looks old but was only constructed in the 1990s. It’s been a good trip to the US in various ways but I am very tired and now it’s time to go home.
The very first time I came to the USA was in 1989, to New York City, and I remember that the first meal I had was in a place just like this. That seemed somehow so quintessentially American that I have not forgotten it. This is more of a recreated fake than the genuine diner — being in the basement of the Purdue University Union — but it still served a decent breakfast.
Another campus to add to the list — Purdue University in Indiana, the people who were good enough to invite me to the USA in the first place on this trip. This place is especially known for its programmes in aviation and spaceflight — Neil Armstrong studied here (which is a cool alumnus to have) — and engineering, hence the nickname of its football team, the Boilermakers. This mural in the campus’s new learning center, open only a week, reflects this. It was a day where I was too busy to particularly get around to taking many photos, so this was a rush job I know, but there’s one thing I do like about it, which is the apparent anachronism of the guy standing on the left of the big picture: is that a cellphone in his pocket? Sure looks like one. (Actually it’s a slide rule, apparently.)
Being 42 