God, look at the time. If this looks like it is taken over some misty marshland somewhere, it’s an illusion — instead it was captured from the 3rd floor of the Ellen Wilkinson Building, as I made my leisurely way to my 4pm class, which doesn’t even manage to start before sunset at this time of year. And still ten days to go until the solstice.
As seen in Sackville Street Gardens, Manchester. It seems a fairly light workout. It’s a shame he wasn’t stood more in the light but maybe it works better this way. I think he knows he’s being photographed.
Platforms 4 and 5 of Manchester Victoria station, to be precise (making this, incidentally, the 900th shot taken in Manchester). The sign is meaningless in context, but the pigeon seems to be wilfully defying it anyway. On the left (4), the 12:15 to Redcar Central and on the right, the 12:15 to Blackburn, both punctual. But was I on my way into work late, or coming home early?
Manchester’s creative destruction is an ongoing, continuous thing. The pagoda in Chinatown has been boarded up for a couple of years now. Attractive murals were painted on the bare boards — or stencilled on them, as this shot from September 2023 depicts. At some point since then, Michelle Yeoh’s not-unattractive features were added. Time passes. And then everything gets ripped down again, board by board. Nothing behind the screens is any different, and we wait for it to all cycle round again.
Wherever it actually resides depends on the university’s deployment of ‘cloud storage solutions’, I guess, but the interface that allows oversight of this ‘digital twin’ of Manchester resides in the Business School. Want to keep an eye on the city’s start-ups? energy use? property prices? infection rates? It’s all here. There’s something mildly sinister and undeniably impressive about it all, both at the same time.
Happy birthday to the wife: I shall leave the exact number unstated (though you could work it out from looking at past October 26ths on this blog if you really felt like it). One of the weekend’s organised entertainments was to see Gogol Bordello at the Albert Hall in Manchester; they therefore become the first rock band (or should we say Ukrainian-American gypsy punk rockabilly band) to appear on here twice. Until I looked it up I was recalling our first encounter happening in 2017 or something like that but their first appearance turns out to have been 14th December 2013; nearly twelve years ago. Blimey. I’m impressed they have sustained the energy levels all that time. But I suppose Eugene Hütz (putting in a second personal appearance, on the left) is younger than me. (Although he’s older than Clare.) Well, good luck to you my friend — perhaps we will catch up again in 2037, if you’re still leaping about the stage at that point.
It is now dark by the time I get back to the station after my Thursday afternoon lecture — but next week it will be dark before I even finish the class, thanks to the clocks going back this weekend. This is one of the usual ‘sculptures’ (I suppose we can call them that) put up around Manchester for Halloween, in case you hadn’t made the connection. Actually I think there’s been somewhat less overt plastic tat on display this year but maybe that’s just a personal opinion.
It may be yet another abandoned shoe (why is there only ever one, not two?) but dammit, it can still make its own way home. Of course, it isn’t really moving. But I guess the illusion is there.
In the 20 years and 2 months I have been working in Manchester I have driven into work precisely six times. Three of those were in the first couple of months: of the three since, two were forced on me due to train strikes (and for those, I parked north of the centre and finished the journey by tram) and the other one was a Sunday morning. There are reasons for this. I’m not usually still in the area for full-on rush hour/Carmageddon but I was there this evening.
I don’t often present the shots in portrait orientation but it seems appropriate today, as the verticals are what matter here. Taken in Manchester, but don’t get used to it — even with the new term coming up. Campus will be about a hundred times busier next week than it was today, but that’s OK, because I’m not going to be there.
Being 42 