It may be yet another abandoned shoe (why is there only ever one, not two?) but dammit, it can still make its own way home. Of course, it isn’t really moving. But I guess the illusion is there.
At the start of World War 2, a good portion of the British Navy was berthed in the immense natural harbour of Scapa Flow, the entrances of which were defended by a range of methods including the sinking of obsolete ships in the channels. That these defenses were inadequate was proven when a U-Boat snuck in anyway and sunk HMS Royal Oak with the loss of hundreds of lives. As a result, Churchill ordered the building of the barriers that now bear his name and block off all entrance to Scapa Flow on its western side — though, in a move typical of many public works projects, these were not in fact finished until literally four days after the war had ended. Anyway, the Barriers now act as causeways linking Orkney’s south-eastern group of islands to the Mainland, and the blockships still sit there, rusting away and playing home to the occasional lobster pot.
Campus is hardly the most exciting, nor populated, place at this time of year — somehow this object symbolises this. Or maybe it’s begun its summer migration, and got beached on the shingle. A boring shot I know, but this was a day in which all the photos I took seemed to be crap. If the sun would shine, it might help.
I despise litter, but sometimes there is, if not beauty, at least interest in it: frankly it’s amazing what gets chucked away. What these ceramic roses had been doing somewhere on or near Abingdon Street in Manchester, I have no idea, and whether they were broken first, then disposed of, or whether the breaking happened because they were chucked, who knows. Either way, call it my homage to the cover of the classic New Order albun, Power Corruption and Lies.
The latest in an occasional series on this blog — Abandoned Shoes, n+1. (A previous episode is here, for example.) As this one is waiting at the top of the subway that leads down and into King’s Cross station, perhaps it’s just trying to get home. I am reminded of a joke from an early series of Red Dwarf about “shoes having souls”.
In the Blackness area of Dundee there is this huge old industrial complex, now abandoned and crumbling. Open doors and windows allow views inside here and there, like this one, which I nearly entitled ‘Arson attack waiting to happen’: tyres burn most satisfactorily, and for a long time. The place is for sale, and I wonder whether there is profit in buying it and keeping it this way, as a film set or somewhere that urban explorers can simply be let loose to play.
Outside Club Bloom on Abingdon Street. Clearly they feel they don’t need a “Deal or No Deal” fruit machine any more, so if you want one — or a traffic cone — help yourself. What we throw away in the modern world, though. In a SF book I once read there was a company called “Dumpmines” who made lots of cash through mining 20th- and 21st-century landfills for their valuable materials. Seems quite sensible to me, I’d invest in it.
If this garage did ever offer the services suggested here, it doesn’t do so any more. This abandoned lot sits near Batley rail station, a town making its debut on the blog today, albeit unglamorously. The nob graffito is the final touch.
A brief stopover on the way home from Newton Stewart. If I was filming a classic 1970s British horror movie in the Dumfries and Galloway region, and I wanted an abandoned church as a location, I’d come and use Anwoth’s, just as did the makers of The Wicker Man. (See this page.)
11 different locations in 11 days — Manchester, Burnley, Brighouse, Mytholmroyd, Leeds, Hebden Bridge, Huddersfield, Carlisle, Polbae, Glen Trool and Anwoth. That’s the second time there’s been such a long run of variation in place.
My latest post in the occasional series, “random items strangely abandoned by the roadside”. There have been a number of shoes in this series, a pair of spectacles once. But kitchen utensils? That’s a new one. There must be a story behind this. Not just that a perfectly servicable wok was dumped, but dumped in this specific place. Someone, somewhere, knows why.
Being 42 