As anyone with a lawn, or responsibilities for some other kind of open grassy space, knows, it’s dandelion season. Soon these will sprout their seeds and fill the air with them, and later on, there will be a bunch more dandelions. That’s nature for you, I guess.
Half-time, time for refreshments for players and fans alike. The match we are watching is to have a great last five minutes, but all that is in the future at this point.
For the second time in a week Bradford proves a decent choice for an evening out, even if it was a little wet, and the city can continue to ascend the rankings of Most Depicted Places on the blog, a list on which it now rises to 9th (see the stats). It is one of those northern towns which celebrated its Victorian wealth, here based on wool, by building a magnificent municipal headquarters of the kind no local authority or government would dare to risk now, for fear of being slagged off for misuse of public funds. But why not do it this way? Works for me.
OK, not that late I suppose, but nevertheless this is the latest shot in a given day since 30th September — which, as this one is, was taken in Bradford. Clearly that city has become my go-to spot for evenings out. I did do more interesting things today than hang around this empty car park for some industrial unit or other, by the way. But as a subject for the camera it worked OK. The manhole cover to the bottom right does annoy me a bit, but I couldn’t crop it without also losing the important red.
Until recently this was a field. Now, see for yourself. Soon, it seems, this will be “Heather” (sic); touted on the nearby advertising board as “Original Housing for Modern Lifestyles”, which is as bland and meaningless a piece of blurb as I’ve ever read (tell me just what will be ‘original’ about it all, and we’ll start from there). By the time they’re done I guess they hope someone will still be able to afford to buy them.
Spent the first few hours of my Xmas break having an extended lie-in, then spent the next few wandering around Bradford, a place I have come to quite like down the years. This complicated selfie was taken in the National Media Museum (which lately has become the ‘National Science and Media Museum’ so it can continue to squeeze funding out of our reluctant state apparatus): a kind of ‘digital hall of mirrors’ installation. As you can see, despite my advancing years, my body still refuses to shed much hair.
341 days into Bradford’s reign as the 2025 UK City of Culture and it does, at least, seem to have a) finished the roadworks and b) decided to try to tell people why they should visit (this is one of three similar murals in the bowels of Bradford Interchange bus station). But let’s assume that it has been a useful year for them. It is a decent city, better than some.
R. I. P. Martin Parr, by the way; if there is one photographer who I suppose I might be trying to consciously emulate, it was probably him. Check out his work if you are at all interested in this medium.
This giant wheel, tipped over onto its side but still propped up a little by its axle, lies by the top of New Works Road in Bradford, remnant of, and memorial to, one of the various coal mines which used to operate around here, but no more. These days, it indicates the point at which the chemical factory district turns back into the real world. I’ve done various pictures of the factories in the past, so today (tonight), let’s see the wheel.
Possibly she has known this guy for years and considers this just normal behaviour. Possibly they met last week in the gym and their Sunday in Bradford city centre is a first date. Possibly I should stop speculating about the lives of total strangers, but let me retain my little entertainments here and there.
With little better that was worth doing this morning I wandered over to Bradford where the local Sunday leagues were running their first round of fixtures for the season. Three games were taking place simultaneously on Peel Park and this shot is taken from a point kind of in the middle of each of them, but with this pitch slightly elevated, hence the low viewpoint. This was one of those pictures which is being used here because it was what was intended when the shutter was pressed: always a good thing.
Being 42 