A dash into Manchester and back failed to trouble the camera, so let’s go with this one, there haven’t been many early morning shots for a while: it’s no longer a time of the day I engage with much, particularly in the winter. You’d think that some four weeks after the solstice the sun might deign to start putting in an appearance before 8am, but no, not in this valley anyway.
Decided I’d probably better put in an appearance in Manchester, but at this time of year it’s still barely sunrise when the 06:55 (constantly late-running) finally makes it there. I am pleased with this shot simply because it’s one of those that turned out just how I wanted it to when I pressed the shutter. I know the verticals are out of true, but that’s deliberate.
7:10am on 7/10. People have their observable routines. With teaching having started and my having 9am classes here and there, I have been catching the 6:55am train at Hebden Bridge. This becomes the 7:10 at Rochdale, and each time I’ve caught it, these two have got on. Today, they almost immediately dozed off. I sympathise. They look comfortable enough together, and good luck to them.
I know this photo is technically dubious though I do quite like the way they arrange themselves on it. It’s chosen more to symbolise the fact that, including today, there will be eight Tuesdays between now and Christmas where I will be obliged to be in Manchester at around this time, facing 9am teaching duties. For now, it’s still light, even when I get up, but that won’t be the case for long.
Another train shot, though this is a portrait of a person rather than a locomotive. Somehow yesterday’s loco just seemed much happier to be where it was. Then again, I sympathise: when is 7am on a Tuesday morning in February a time of vim and vigour?
A welcome sight on an early morning: by now in the year the sun is still not up for the first few trains. This is the earliest shot on any day, and the first pre-7am shot, since 30th November 2019.
Flying reduces one to a platelet in a bloodstream, being pushed through a number of tin pipes and artificially-lit domains, with little sense of the outside world passing, particularly on a night flight at this time of year. I left Salatiga just after taking yesterday’s shot, so about 11.30am Indonesian time on Friday, and this shot depicts my arrival in Manchester on Saturday morning, having seen only darkness for about 18 hours since leaving Jakarta. The journey went well, though…. at least until I got to Manchester Victoria and Northern Rail took over. But that’s another (unending) story.
Back home. Such a grey and rainy day today, a total contrast with the last two days in Greece. So dull that I did not feel moved to take a picture at all between waking and sleeping: but I did get this one in the early hours as I waited for my taxi driver to get his parking token. Cars are intrinsically dull too, but that makes it representative.
Second day in a row of some solitary bloke wandering around Manchester. Which is appropriate enough, because that’s how I’ve felt as my Unsabbatical continues this week. I have been walking past the bottom of these steps fairly frequently since the blog began, they make it today because of what I think is a happy combination of pedestrian and tree, the latter framing the top of the shot in a pleasant wave. A split second later and I’d have been too late. But then again I was feeling sluggish at 7.30am on a Thursday.
Blog-wise, it’s two months since I pulled duty on a 6.32 train out of Hebden Bridge — arrives Manchester about 7.10, like this morning, if it’s feeling energetic. The bloke in yellow is the owner of the fold-up bike on the other side of the shot: he looks the least keen of all of them, but then again he has his onward transport sorted.
Being 42 