Tag Archives: cafe

May 26 2026
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Daily Post, Portrait, Stranger

A cup of tea in the Glen

Monday 25th May 2026, 11.05am (day 5,387)

Today was a public holiday, although whether this was actually being observed in Scotland was a matter of opinion (Joe had a class at uni today for instance). Either way, on a sunny day, work didn’t seem like a priority, and I was certainly not the only one taking some form of outdoor exercise this morning. If you find this place on a map (the glen in question being Campsie Glen) you will be able to work out where I and this gentleman took it. But not at this specific point in time. I was just setting out, but he could be at any point in his day.

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Mar 27 2026
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Daily Post, Portrait, Stranger

Waiting in Terminal 5

Thursday 26th March 2026, 4.05pm (day 5,327)

Terminal 5 cafè, 26/3/26

Time for a holiday. This one at the instigation of the wife, for various reasons, but I am happy to tag along for the ride, and for the break. You can find out the destination tomorrow, although it’s somewhere the blog has visited before. As is Terminal 5 of Heathrow airport, where we and a few thousand others waited for the beginning of the fourth leg of our journey (after two trains and the Elizabeth Line).

I went for this shot because of the illuminated cup of hot beverage to the right, and I guess it works, but yes, I would like to take out the plug sockets.

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Jan 13 2026
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Daily Post, Friend, Portrait

David is ready

Monday 12th January 2026, 1.50pm (day 5,254)

Mandi and David, 12/1/26

Three years and four months ago, in September 2022, Mandi and I met David when he arrived in Manchester to begin work on his PhD. Today saw the culmination of that work, and his efforts, when at 4pm or so he was officially awarded the title of Dr David (or Chu-Yang) Chang. Congratulations to him — believe me, if anyone deserved it for sheer level of work, it was him. The culmination perhaps, but not the end of the relationship: we hope he’ll be around for at least a little while yet.

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Sep 25 2025
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Daily Post, Interior

Banjo skeleton

Wednesday 24th September 2025, 1.10pm (day 5,144)

Bano skeleton, 24/9/25

This agreeable piece of whimsy sits in the Cafe Torrelli outside Kew Gardens tube station. I don’t do advertising on here but lunch was pleasant, and I ate better than this guy seems to have recently.

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Jul 20 2025
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Daily Post, Portrait, Stranger

Café Delight

Saturday 19th July 2025, 9.45am (day 5,077)

Café Delight, 19/7/25

It was a nice café and I certainly needed a decent breakfast this morning. Getting down to the fine details of the compsition, I’d rather the pole in the centre wasn’t there, but otherwise this works for me — though of course if she had been smiling I might not have used it. So it goes with irony.

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Oct 15 2024
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Art and architecture, Daily Post

Spinningfields

Monday 14th October 2024, 1.40pm (day 4,799)

Spinningfields is the bit of Manchester city centre by the John Rylands Library, behind me at this point and outside which I was sat waiting for my second 2pm Monday class to start. The lack of people in the vicinity was the first thing I noticed and prompted the taking of this shot; an attempt to get a pleasing mix of line and colour, basically. Clare says she ‘likes the turquoise’, and who am I to argue?

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Aug 10 2024
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Daily Post, Interior

Meeting in the Turing building

Friday 9th August 2024, 12 noon (day 4,733)

Turing atrium, 9/8/24

Paid one of my occasional visits to campus today; I count 22 pictures in Manchester in 2024, so one every 10 days, and not all necessarily because of work. Not that there seem to be many people around when I do turn up, although this is excusable in August.

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Jun 08 2024
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Daily Post, Family Member, Portrait

Self-portrait in Tim Horton’s window

Friday 7th June 2024, 9.40am (day 4,670)

Toronto selfie, 7/6/24

It’s been a few months since I did a self-portrait, and the prospect of this one did occur to me while sat having a pre-meeting cup of tea in Tim Hortons, pondering how we can find ways to continue the collaboration that has brought me here three times now. I am here sat in more or less the same spot from which I took this shot in October 2021, and armed with the knowledge of the venue, the building in the background and Google Maps you can probably pinpoint the exact location should you wish to.

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May 21 2024
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Daily Post, Portrait, Stranger

Early morning flight transfer

Tuesday 21st May 2024, 5.40am (day 4,653)

Istanbul airport, 21/5/24

Since I last changed planes there in 2015, on the way to Kilimanjaro, Istanbul has built a completely new airport about 30 mies out of the city which is now the second-busiest airport in Europe after Heathrow. It did seem to me that you could catch a plane from there to just about anywhere, certainly in Europe, Africa and Asia — a landmass of which it occupies a very strategic point, and always has done.

I was there early, left early, but so did a lot other people — this moment of solitary contemplation was not characteristic of the whole. This becomes only the second shot in 4,652 days to be taken between 5 and 6am — the other also being in an airport, Manchester’s, while on my way to Moscow in January 2017.

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Apr 15 2024
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Daily Post, Urban scene

Roadside refreshments

Sunday 14th April 2024, 12.35pm (day 4,616)

Roadside cafe, 14/4/24

Very little happens in Windhoek on a Sunday, except some football, which is where I went. But enough pictures of football get on here, so I will spare you that. The stadium was on the edge of town, and in anticipation of the long queues which formed for the single ticket booth (behind me as I took this), these guys were opportunistically setting up before the match — and why not, I bought a beer from them, certainly. The landscape seems typical of the surroundings of the capital.

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