I try to keep this blog apolitical, but it’s not always easy. I was educated into the idea that we were making steady progress toward some better future. In 2016 that is a view of the world that, at best, has taken a severe blow. But at least someone is here with this guy.
This is at least the third and possibly the fourth post taken inside the British Museum. It’s as good a place to kill a couple of hours of a London morning as anywhere — lots to see, and remarkably, still free of charge. Of course, this is us Britons being magnanimous in return for all those colonies that provided the treasures, but hey. It’s a nice place architecturally too. (Incidentally this is also the blog’s 50th London shot.)
What significance this sculpture has, I have no idea — it currently hangs above the gift shop of the British Library. I guess I should invent some meaning…. but it’s the weekend.
This was supposed to be a five-day trip down south but I have had to truncate it for reasons too annoying and stupid to bother discussing on here. The picture matches the mood today. Yet another umbrella — there have been too many of them in the last four weeks.
Seeing as these are places I hang out in professionally it is unsurprising that a lot of university campuses have made it onto the blog in some form or another: over 20 by now. Here’s another one, University College London, to where I travelled today to attend this seminar on digital literacy. With big dice, used for an audience participation game of snakes and ladders, if you really want to know.
It’s day 1,750 of the blog, three-quarters of the way to my second thousand pictures. If I keep going — and I may as well — I’ll hit that milestone on 14th February 2017.
After a very good evening, the mundanity of the Tube station on a Saturday morning, first leg of the journey back home.
Another day in London, ostensibly to work (well, I did have one meeting), but mainly to fuel my social life. I took the opportunity this afternoon to wander along the Thames and do the tourist thing, and here’s one of its most recognisable buildings — surely everyone in the world could put a location to this shot. These Italians were chilling out by the river, along with thousands of other people.
This was an urban animal if ever I’ve seen one, striding out wholly purposefully this lunchtime along a busy street. I know the composition of this shot could be better — getting rid of the post behind the goose would have improved it for a start — but some shots you only really get one chance to capture.
The Barbican estate is home to about 4,000 people and is a huge complex in the City of London. When it was finished in the 1970s it was often decried as a brutalist architectural monstrosity. Actually I kind of liked it, I bet it’s a pretty decent place to live, with a lake and garden within its walls and generally a rather peaceful feel. Something tells me the guy seen here has been there for a lot of the last forty years.
Why do I keep taking photos of this building (see also here and here, to identify but two others)? Because I like it, it is fine architecture and great public space.
Being 42 