Is the title of this post self-referential? Perhaps. This advertising truck might well have been gainfully employed over most of the last 14 months and tonight was just having a break — but somehow I doubt it. The bird doesn’t care either way. A somewhat gloomy photo, but that epitomised the day: we have lost the sunshine that we’d been enjoying for much of April.
Since advertising — at least of anything interesting, like gigs, movies, etc. — became just one among many casualties of The Great Fear, this billboard under the railway arch on Princess Street has displayed a variety of messages, several quite subversive (e.g., anti-Brexit) and some only being up for a day or two. This one has been there for a while, though. And raises a valid point. The Joshua Brooks pub/club next door remains shuttered and dead.
On a day working at home and a quest for something, anything, to photograph, my eyes alighted on this sunlit pair of purples. Well, why not take a photo of cash. We’re seeing decreasing amounts of it — I don’t mean money (I admit that my income has been unaffected by the Covid crap and I sympathise completely with all of those for whom this is not the case), but just cash, the stuff you hold. Even then it’s all an abstraction, isn’t it. Yet look at the detail in these notes. They’re aesthetically pleasing if you ask me.
A glorious Sunday in the Lake District. The title of the post has layers of meaning. My walk today (see my Wainwrights blog for the details) involved a circuit of the placid and remote tarn of Devoke Water. It was a feature in multiple photos taken along the way, of which this was the last of the day.
But as I walked back to the car, I mused — is this perhaps the last ever? I have visited some of these marvellous places multiple times as I have gone round and round Cumbria over the last 12 years, but the project will end at some point (next year probably), and after that — will I find an excuse to return?
Some might say, that is in the hands of God/Inshallah/fate/whatever you believe. But in the end, I believe it is up to me. If this blog does make it to, say, day 8,000 — perhaps we will see this place again. I certainly hope so.
Three minutes after I had dug over the garden a little and this robin perches not six feet from me and virtually demands that I capture its close-ups. Seeing as this is taken in pretty much the same spot as the picture of the last robin to grace this blog, only 22 days ago, it might be the same one — either way, it is the latest example of how this particular species really has learned to not be in the least bit bothered about us humans. Perhaps it, too, is slightly annoyed by the presence of the white plastic tie, but what the hell.
Lately most of the ‘likes’ on this blog have come from bots — can I just say hello to the five or six different accounts, all with the same profile picture, who have supported my efforts lately? Clearly I need to spice up this photo-feed a little, so here’s two beetles getting it on in the springtime. So attached (in both senses) were they that they remained entwined even after I manouevred them up onto my finger, in order to avoid squashing them when sitting down on the bench (at university) on which their amorous activities were occurring. I hope they and their babies are now grateful for this consideration.
It’s been a hard few months. Photographically I mean (of course there have been other reasons). But lockdown, in all its arbitrary ways, has drained the land of life, at a time of year when we really benefit from the company of others and the things they bring. In that respect, at least, things are slowly looking up. Manchester now seems to have some energy back, as befits a big city. Finally.
In a week when the ‘big clubs’ either took the piss by calling a massive bluff, or finally over-reached themselves with their hubris, it seems apposite to put up a picture of some actual football: you know, the sort where there’s still competition, intimacy, and interest. Plus, a nice background at Brighouse Sports FC of the West Yorkshire League D2 (they’re the ones in yellow, and won 4-0). I find it ‘Super’, anyway.
A day working at home gained interest through getting a masterclass in roofing from these guys working on the house over the road. At the beginning of the day that roof looked like the one of no. 31 next door. Roofing’s one of those specialist talents that very few people have, but which we all need, isn’t it? And I’d take some persuading to spend a whole day on that scaffold (constructed by another professional group that we need to just trust).
This morning was one of those occasions where a minor diversion from my usual route — in this case, leaving Victoria station by a different exit — helped me spot an opportunity for a picture. I had never noticed the S & M nature of this war memorial before. People pay to get trampled in this fashion: or so I’m informed. Actually I think the sub creature is an imp, or little devil of some kind, rather than a cherub: but the wings took longer to see.
Being 42 