How nice it is that I have a job that frequently permits me the chance to get out of cold, damp, dark Britain in the depths of January. Many people would here make a point of going somewhere warm and sunny, like Australia, or the Mediterranean. I am a contrary bugger though, so I’ve come to Moscow.
As I’ve been saying for some years now it’s hard to point a camera anywhere in Manchester and not have a decent chance of capturing a building site. This particular one is being initiated by my employers at the University as the final piece (for now) in the “£1bn Campus Masterplan” as we must learn to call it. A massive new engineering building will rise here over the next couple of years, unless the whole economy tanks in the mean time of course. Which does not look as distant a project as it did a year ago.
Most of the university campuses featured on this blog — and there have been a good many over the last five and a bit years, at least 20 I make it — have plenty of nice, green space. But the one on which I spend the most time, Manchester, has hardly any, it is the most urbanised, built-up campus I can think of. So it’s nice to picture some of its very rare green space on another very pleasant day. Even if this shot isn’t ‘green’ in the slightest. (It looked better in monochrome.)
First day in Manchester for a while. Ominous clouds, but they passed over without molesting us. I like this shot — trips to deepest Africa notwithstanding, one of my favourite ones for a while.
One of those days where it threw it down with rain for my journey to work — including the walking outside bits — and then two hours later it was glorious sunshine. It’s the gap between teaching and exams so the campus is relatively chilled out. These two seem to be getting on well even if they do only have one leg between them.
A glorious morning. Well-Lit Moments On The University Of Manchester Campus, number n+1.
None of my students are present — they all usually graduate in December — but the summer graduation ceremonies bring a last burst of life to the campus before it really shuts down for high summer. Not that there were any attendees yet present this morning when I took this shot. Not much light in Manchester this morning but the seats have caught a dim flicker.
The weather has been very pleasant indeed for the last 10 days or so. The mugg and rumble of summer is gone, to be replaced by a lovely balmy, Mediterranean vibe. It’ll do me, anyway. Took a lot of photos round the QUT campus and riverfront today on my walks to and from work, and chose this one because it’s such a mundane spot, but looks beautiful in this light.
A flying visit here today for a meeting, so it can become the fourth Antipodean campus to make it onto the blog after QUT, CSU and (for non-work purposes) Otago, in Dunedin. Something about this shot brings to mind those artificial photos used by architects to show us how these wonderful but as-yet-unbuilt new complexes are going to look if only they could be given the money and the planning permission to create their masterpieces: although those won’t have ‘Graduation’ signs hanging up, presumably, and I feel the walkway to the left intrudes a little.
Just to confirm that I am still getting on with the occasional day’s work while on this trip. In Manchester we are lucky if we can get a sight of the smelly and overtrafficked Oxford Road from one of our office windows, here at CSU in Wagga we have a view of miles of uninterrupted hills, scrub and vineyards.
Also a happy birthday to Joe today – 10 years old, born 04/03/03 (and yes, we have all sometimes regretted that he arrived 14.6 hours too late to have a really numerically cool birth date). Sorry I couldn’t be there, my son.
Being 42 