I’ve been to more than a few railway stations in my time, and whether in the UK or elsewhere, few are as gloriously industrial as Warrington Bank Quay. Yet on the other side of the tracks — the Town Hall, parks, leafy streets.
By Low Moor station, in Bradford, there lies this huge industrial complex: silos, pipes, frames, boxes, brickwork, but no people. It hums and burbles to itself as it gets on with whatever it is doing — there is no way to tell what this is, no corporate signage, no advertising. In the coming AI- and machine-ruled future, perhaps the whole world will look like this. But it is interesting to look at, all the same.
It’s the longest night of the year. On my walk to Low Moor station in Bradford tonight, I passed through this industrial zone in which all the factories were still lit, burbling away internally, though no people were in sight. The robots may well now be in full charge. It would explain a lot about current political trends.
I like straightforward signage like this: though as should also be apparent, in this case, it was giving false information. The football ground, with its backdrop of very heavy industry, is that of Runcorn Town.
Even after seven years, I do try not to repeat myself on here, and so a steady drip-feed of new places has become the means by which this is facilitated. Brighouse lies south of Halifax, not far away from my home but until today, undepicted on here. I was just passing through today however, and this factory caught my eye — it now functions, I believe, as an indoor climbing gym, perhaps for obvious reasons.
We are at the low time of the year: no light, and I’m largely working at home, recovering as best I can from the exertions of the last semester but not yet ready to call it Christmas. Not much to take pictures of then: except dimly-lit attempts to capture the atmosphere of my home town in one of my rare ventures outside.
Tampere is the largest inland city in Scandinavia and known as the ‘Manchester of the North’ as it was the cradle of the Industrial Revolution in this region. Unlike Manchester itself it does still have a sense of industry about it, like things continue to be actually made here. I’m here for a conference (which traditionalists will say has nothing to do with ‘making’ anything, and they’d probably be right). This is the city’s second appearance on this blog, the first being way back in September 2011.
Being 42 