This is not a time of the year when much seems to happen. Four years ago I was on St Helena in November but even then, 12/11/2021 was being spent in quarantine (and battling ants). There have been a couple of late November trips. But right now I’m just happy not to have been in Manchester today. Meanwhile, shot n+1 of ‘bloke(s) working on a roof’. With autumn leaves.
There was certainly a decent amount of smoke coming out of one of these stacks; but it seems he was satisfied that nothing was particularly amiss. I pray that I never have to get up on our roof, or the roof of any of these overdwellings, for any reason, professional or otherwise. It’s a long way down from five stories up.
Scaffolding: it’s everywhere. Just as you think it might be diminishing its spread, you look away for a moment and then it’s right on top of you. Literally, for us this morning, and for however long it takes some guys to use it to fix our leaky roof.
Students from a quarter-century or more ago will know the UoM’s ‘North Campus’ as ‘UMIST’ — but this institution has long been merged out of existence, and quite a few of its buildings, like this one beside the Mancunian Way, have stood derelict for years. But there’s still an aspirational feel to this shot — climb the ladder and jump over the moon? And let’s get some blue sky into things. It’s been altogether too grey lately.
I reckon doing this kind of thing well takes a certain skill. Like many of us this guy’s doubtless hoping they’ll never train a robot to do his job; or replace this board with a digital version, that sucks up that little more of the world’s energy supplies.
While we’re on that topic, note for Absolut (other vodkas are available) — making bottles out of recyclable cardboard sounds neat, but isn’t glass recyclable too? Or maybe I’m missing something.
Sunshine has actually been at a premium thus far, and I’ve been waiting to give you more of the panorama from my place of incarceration until the light gets better. But a burst of it after lunch did today illuminate the distant Ladder Hill. So named as it is the top of Jacob’s Ladder, visible heading down to the right — an infamous 700-step climb up from Jamestown below. People run up this for fun, so I’ve been told. Rest assured that once I get out of here, I shall not be joining them.
I too was having a day doing things around the house, but definitely do not share this guy’s head for heights.
This will be the last day for a while I see the Manchester campus in any form of peaceful state. The erection of this marquee today is just one sign that from the next time I’m there, on Tuesday, there will be people. Thousands upon thousands of them.
There are many buildings in Hebden Bridge still in some state of repair or other following the Boxing Day disaster, though to be strict about it, this place — the old Hole in the Wall pub (last pictured fulfilling that role some time in November 2012) — was being rebuilt months before that happened. Still some way to go too, if this sneaky look inside is anything to go by.
A sign of the utter uneventfulness of my day — this was a photowhack, the one and only picture I took today.
Being 42 