There still doesn’t seem to be a great deal going on in Manchester, but at least the light was good today. Lancaster House stands on the intersection of Princess and Whitworth Streets, and is a good example of the Victorian tendency to stick these grandiose flourishes at the top of any given commercial building. Does it assert some kind of dominance, or did they just have a lot of stone left over? Either way, I like it.
Certainly a red kite, a species of bird that was close to becoming extinct in the UK some decades ago, but thanks to a number of programmes of reintroduction, now making a fine recovery. I caught a number of these on camera in Wales some years ago, but those were coming to an organised feeding station. This one was as wild as they come, soaring on the thermals above a road in Lincolnshire. It turned into the sunlight just as I had it in the sights.
Last day in Oxford on this trip. While having a cup of tea outside the museum (in the same place depicted on Tuesday), in more pleasant sunshine, my eye was caught by the profuse fruit on this horse chestnut tree. In my youth all these would have been harvested for the playing of conkers, but apparently Health & Safety has done for that tradition, at least officially. Mind you, all of these were some distance up in the air, so I guess they will come down in their own time.
I guess it would be nice to have got both the moon and the leaves in focus, but that would only be possible with a long zoom, and I was standing just below the tree as I took this one. In any case I was aiming more for the nice combination of colours and shapes, and capturing the vivid blue of the sky as the backdrop to it all.
Happily, the sun has come out. Sadly, the people have not. So here is more birdlife: there is little else to bring variety at this time. This jackdaw was determined to get the best vantage point in his immediate area, and seems to have succeeded.
The last few days have seemed a bit drab colour-wise. But the blue skies returned today. This peacock butterfly (not a red admiral, as I originally identified it — apparently) was enjoying the local buddleia bounty.
A colourful scene depicted from under the Mancunian Way this morning, on another beautifully sunny day. By all forecasts a storm is coming in and I’m not in Manchester again for days yet, so this might be the last time you see the city like this all year. Or, indeed, that I do.
“Bring me the Moon”, ordered Gru, cackling as by the force of his will alone he controlled his minions and their new big white contraption.
We didn’t just visit Scotland for a melancholy afternoon at Raith Rovers. On the second day of three, we drove both ways across this fine transportation architecture. The new Forth Bridge was built after the old one started pinging apart a few years ago. Like the other two monumental bridges — now, one rail, two road, and one from each of the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries — it is an elegant structure, worth crossing just for the hell of it.
Sledgehammer symbolism it may be but anyone living in most of the UK today observed that we transitioned rather suddenly from winter into full-on spring. And it’s forecast to stay. On such a day, let us use the Railway as a bridge.
A nice day also to mark the 2,000th picture on this blog taken in the UK. If Cambridge Analytica find it significant that I have spent 82.37% of my time over that period in my home country — there you go, I’ve saved them the bother of doing the maths.
Being 42 