I know this isn’t the flower known as violet (genus Viola), but it’s certainly the colour. I bet these look pretty good in black-light. Taken on the one twenty-minute occasion on which I got out of the house today — the sun was shining, the Late May Fine Period is properly here, but I had work to do.
I walk past this car park every time I come into Manchester, as it lies on the route between my office and Victoria station. That it was cordoned off by the police this morning was notable enough. But as it happened, after last night’s gig we had stayed in the hotel that is built literally on top of it: which made it a little strange, wondering what had been going on below while we slept overnight. I’m not dwelling on it — all was gone again by the afternoon so it can’t have been that serious. Reportage over photographic quality today.
Attended a gig for the first time in ages. A sign of how it has become, as I have aged: gig behaviour now is to arrive early and grab the seats (or in the case of the Deaf Institute, ‘seats’) at the back, out of the way but with a good view. The guy on the left is reading a book for heaven’s sake. But like me, perhaps he has been waiting some 32 years to see Loop play live. This is a band that last year, released their first studio album in 31 years, so they attract a patient crowd.
Penmaenmawr, on the coast of North Wales, must have been a notable holiday resort in the past. Apparently the Victorian Prime Minister, Gladstone, liked it so much he came for a stay year after year. Hard to imagine him (or Rishi Sunak) doing that now, however. The A55 trunk road came ploughing through in the 1980s, ripping apart town and beach, and based on my visit there today, Penmaenmawr has yet to recover, and probably will never do so.
Still, credit for a little initiative — these beach huts are embedded right into the wall that supports the road above, which must therefore have been built that way. So you could argue that they tried. It didn’t work, though. As a result, most likely this will be Penmaenmawr’s only ever appearance on this blog, but at least it is a colourful and sunny one.
I said on Tuesday that campus was busying up. I withdraw that assessment after today’s visit, on which I reckoned I might have been the only member of uni staff in the whole Ellen Wilkinson Building that turned up today. And I only really did that for the step count. I have worked (occasionally) in the EWB for coming up to 18 years now, and it does not ever get much more visually interesting than this.
No comments to add to this one. Just a portrait of a friend.
“Ssshhh. They’re asleep, I think. We can sneak in….”
“I feel scared. The water….”
POSTSCRIPT (feel free to ignore): You should have had a picture from London today. Specifically, I was going to go inside the Houses of Parliament for the first time in my life. However, thanks to an exquisitely timed cancelled train today — eradicated 10 minutes too late for me to get an earlier one — I couldn’t make it to King’s Cross in time for the event. So there was no point going. So Northern fuck up my day, and I get to just suck it up.
Did something I have not done for 11 days and went onto campus. It seemed busy today: ‘revision week’ has kicked in. This student was one of many using the various little pods and cubbyholes that are littered around the place. This is intended as an abstract, a study in yellow (or is it green?), shapes and shadows. And portrait format rather than landscape, something else I don’t do much of lately.
A whole house has appeared upstairs — a desirable property, it seems, albeit one in need of restoration, and unfurnished. It looks like the wife is on a restoration project. Quite possibly this will be on the office floor until 2026, or thereabouts.
The annual outcrop of bluebells is another one of those recurring themes, and now is the time for it to recur. There seem to be a lot this year. I don’t think this picture captures the extent of the carpet, but I like the focus on it. One flower in particular is definitely the point of attention.
Being 42 