I did get better pictures today but none which epitomised the day quite so well. Garth Hill became County Top #2 of the weekend, but the weather on its summit was, to coin a phrase, utter shite. What this chair was doing up there I have no idea but perhaps it had just been blown there from someone’s garden half a mile away. For the full tale of woe see my other blog.
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.
Third post in a week to be taken in the garden, but it’s still sunny and there’s not much else going on that offers a change of scene. This tennis ball has been sat pretty much in the same position for weeks now, and both Clare and I have acknowledged that neither of us have the slightest idea where it came from. It offers an opportunity for a still life, nevertheless.
Joe and I were supposed to be going to see The Who tonight — live in Leeds no less — first postponed from just under a year ago, but now cancelled altogether. Another little pleasure denied us. So in the absence of anything actually happening, here’s some abandoned furniture, on a slope. UPDATE; Clare informs me that this is not a lost object; in fact a number of them have been set up in various places in the Calder Valley, as another place for book-swapping. Lift up the top of the seat, and the books are inside, it seems.
The sign is unreadable thanks to the light shining through the wicker, but it says “Please take this chair if you would like it.” And our Clare is the kind of person who gives home to abandoned household objects like this, which is why we have no room in our house to swing a cat. Well, not any particularly big ones.
One of those shots which is a nice arrangement but the OCD in all of us goes, couldn’t you have straightened up the goddamn chairs. Really.
Really didn’t feel like engaging with people today. Let this shot be a metaphor for that state of mind…. or perhaps, just the only thing I really felt like photographing today, up in the garden. At least the sun was shining. This was the day’s only redeeming feature.
Sofas left on the pavement, that’s one thing. But half a sofa? Like the single abandoned shoe, what’s the story here? Was it just one hell of a party? Has it been sheared off, caught in mid-transition through a wormhole to another dimension?
The waiting room as a metaphor for life? It certainly feels true this week, though not in an unpleasant or frustrating way. The travels begin on Friday.
We all need something like this. A place to sit and contemplate life, the sunshine and the adjacent building works (well, this is Manchester).
Being 42 