Even in Manchester, the Rochdale Canal usually looks a bit more aesthetically pleasing. Perhaps this is an accidental draining — it happens, people sometimes leave locks open. Or there is some big clean-up about to happen. Future archaeologists will love all this crap. Meanwhile, the runner on the left ponders whether a) he will be allowed to proceed more than another few yards and b) whether he is about to step on a pigeon.
When you’ve gotta go, you’ve gotta go, but this sign, at the Belle Vue stadium in Wakefield, promises something like the ‘Worst Toilet in Scotland’ (from Trainspotting) waits around the corner. Perhaps fortunately, a gate just round there bars further progress.
How unexpected, I thought, as I saw this rose poking up, alone, from the undergrowth at the edge of the Memorial Garden. Then I saw it was not a rose. Plastic bag? A couple of bright red serviettes from one of the local eateries? To be honest I didn’t check. I took a photograph of it though.
I despise litter, but sometimes there is, if not beauty, at least interest in it: frankly it’s amazing what gets chucked away. What these ceramic roses had been doing somewhere on or near Abingdon Street in Manchester, I have no idea, and whether they were broken first, then disposed of, or whether the breaking happened because they were chucked, who knows. Either way, call it my homage to the cover of the classic New Order albun, Power Corruption and Lies.
A Tuesday morning in Manchester. Either I was having a major case of déjà vu, or this same guy was still sat in the same spot when I came back past this point in the afternoon.
We don’t normally do spring graduations. These are replacements for the ceremonies that were going to take place in December and then were cancelled at two day’s notice because everyone in ‘Authority’ had another outbreak of paranoia that — let’s look back and be honest about this — turned out to have very little basis in sensible judgments of risk. Anyway, I’m glad they finally made it. It offers a, hopefully singular, opportunity to picture the daffodil/graduation conjunction. And yes, the litter is there but let’s try to work it into the composition somehow.
The Huddersfield Astronomical Society must have once experienced better days, but perhaps these days is in need of some recovery work. Without getting too metaphorical about it, I’d say that’s true of a lot of things in 2022.
Tory cuts notwithstanding there remains a decent municipal waste tip a couple of miles away and even if you can’t drive to that the council will pick up this kind of thing from your house. So, sorry, but what’s the fucking point in dumping a broken chair by the side of the river, in a now-inaccessible but visible and central spot, where it will presumably sit for several months? Mucky bloody bastards. I hate this kind of neglect. I could say it’s a middle-aged thing but actually I’ve always hated it.
Blackburn is where I have to change trains when going to see my parents and/or sister. But it’s a surprisingly photogenic place. On a sunny day the light hits it perfectly. Today’s picture is like a proof of that concept — if the light can make an empty plastic bag look this attractive, then we’re talking something special.
Being 42 