Passed through Manchester city centre this afternoon. Somewhere over there –> the annual Pride festival was taking place, but this is as near as I got to it, so let me pay homage by depicting this well-adorned statue outside the uber-hip Gotham Hotel.
The house of Heythrop Park is 300 years old, and built for the first Duke of Shrewsbury (not that we are very near Shrewsbury here). 300 years ago, they clearly believed in symmetry. And I’m quite fond of the principle myself, if truth be told; enough to get annoyed at not only those people who left the spare picnic table out, but who couldn’t co-ordinate the curtains on each side of the facade. The guy taking a break from the conference? Well, he’s just unplanned humanity. Him, I excuse.
I’ve been here before by the way: first visting (for the same conference, or rather ‘strategy forum’) in February 2018.
We can’t have the more resource-efficient carafes of fruit juice because that way we will get the plague, or something Then again, there seemed only three people breakfasting this morning in the hotel, like the scene in Invasion of the Body Snatchers when the main characters go out for dinner and it’s like, ‘where is everyone?’. Nah, we don’t do that kind of thing, in the anticipated future. The mirror in the background doubles up on the number of cartons, and also makes this a self-portrait, kind of.
The sun deigned to make a brief appearance this morning, shining on the chairs of the breakfast room at our hotel. Though it was the last chance to see it on our trip to Eskdale, as we were back in Hebden by lunchtime. But even if the weather has been somewhat dubious, how good was it to have got away for a while.
Today, Monday and Tuesday are going to be the work days on this trip — today, to get ready for the other two. I needed a rest after the journey, anyway. Little to see, therefore: it was either the inside of a restaurant, or the pleasant balcony outside my room where I spent the afternoon hacking away on the laptop. There is, of course, more to see of Indonesia than this, but you’ll have to bear with me.
Why the monochrome? As is often the case — to hide coloured blotches caused by lens flare. It works, too. In the original. most of the top right quadrant is stained red.
After 22 hours of travelling via three tin pipes of varying quality (Manchester – Doha, Doha – Jakarta, Jakarta – Semarang) and then a car ride, I could finally crash in my accommodation for the next few days. This being the mostly very pleasant Kayu Arum hotel in Salatiga, which is in the centre of Java, and which you’ll be seeing more of. Its lush grounds, festooned with palms and shady spots, made me feel instantly at home. Or perhaps it was the red telephone box, which stands there for no immediately obvious reason. Put it this way, there isn’t a telephone in it.
There have been very few morning shots recently. 15 consecutive afternoon ones up to and including yesterday, and only six of the last fifty have been taken before noon. I just wanted to get a morning shot today, and ideally one from Manchester so I can still prove I go to work there, now and again.
None of which really justifies this shot in particular, but what the hell; the little flickers of sunlight, bouncing off the higher windows, were about all we saw today, so maybe that’s enough explanation.
Staff ‘awayday’ at work today — so we went a mile or so up the road to the Principal Hotel. Which is rather an impressive building, I think, although apparently it suffers from various leaks. I quite like this shot because of the flash of ultraviolet, though really, that’s just a white balance issue.
Venue for our conference, which ended today, Cober Hill was built as a private house by some rich Victorian nob, but in 1920 was bought by the Rowntree Foundation and has been a venue for educational, residential courses and conferences ever since. And a fine venue it was, too. Why can’t more conferences be held in some nice house out in the country somewhere? Far more inspirational than some pokey rooms up on the third floor of some anonymous campus building somewhere. Good move on behalf of the organisers if you ask me.
Cartwright Gardens is a gorgeous Georgian crescent built over two hundred years ago and probably not looking a huge amount different these days. You can quite imagine those gentry scenes from Oliver! being played out here, you know, the ones with flower sellers and lots of other proletarians going about their jolly business while toffs in top hats magnanimously tip them a groat or two. Most of it seems to have been converted into hotels in more recent times, including the one in which I spent the night.
Being 42 