I’m travelling again. In fact I still have at least four, and possibly five, separate trips abroad to make before November is finished — so much for my green credentials. I’m flying out of Manchester on three consecutive Sundays, starting today. So this will become a familiar scene.
I’m travelling again; rest of this week I’m working in Norway. But because it’s Bergen (the City of Perpetual Rain) it was throwing it down on arrival, so here’s one from the journey. Rim-light is always worth trying to capture but my attention was also caught by the crates at the top which looked to my eye like a piano keyboard.
Perhaps I have been overdoing the travelling this year and all in all feel inclined to downshift a notch or two, but I still have three trips abroad to make in the rest of 2013, including this one. Here we sit — about 20 of us — on our terribly small and cute little plane waiting for take-off, watching these flunkies do whatever it is they do to confirm we are ready to fly. The shot was taken from out of the window visible in the reflection on the engine, above the ‘I’ between the ‘R’ and the ‘T’.
Well, I made it out of Hebden Bridge – in fact the train this morning was perfectly punctual. No water left in the town but a lot of debris around.
18 hours and a few thousand miles later, I type this sat in New Orleans, but the photo is of Manchester Airport; I boobed and did not get a window seat for the second flight in from Atlanta, thus missing some great shots of the Mississippi delta, Lake Ponchartrain and the city of NO itself, glimpsed as I craned my neck round my fellow passengers from my position on the aisle. And I’m not heading out into the city tonight – it’s too late (in my head) and I’m here until Sunday anyway, so you’ll see it, never fear. I do quite like this shot however.
Whereas yesterday’s picture encompassed a range of, say, about 50mm, I guess this shot covers a range about a million times wider (that is, 50km). This is the view I got this morning as my plane took off from Manchester airport to the south of the city. The prominent building just left of centre is the Deansgate tower (a Hilton hotel on its lower floors, residential apartments above). The main city centre is to the right. The university will be on the edge of where the high buildings start, just to right of centre.
As you can see it was another beautiful day in the North-west of England, 20°C at least – but not in London, where I was flying on this leg (clamped under a foul brown smog when we landed); nor, indeed, in Moscow where I currently reside (-1°C, a few inches of snow, and still thoroughgoingly winter). Ah, what the hell. It’s all the travel experience, innit.
Back from the Lakes yesterday afternoon – and off again today, to Bergen once more.
Yesterday I walked through Skiddaw Forest and talked to no one and had a really good time, felt at peace, part of a natural environment. Today I flew first to Copenhagen then to Bergen and talked to no one and felt isolated, cut off from the world, shuttled through the antiseptic and artificial world of the business traveller. I’m sat now in an anonymous hotel with anonymous food in my belly and while I’m looking forward to, tomorrow, getting on with the next instalment of my work here, today has just been dead time.
To mark the start of its second month, this blog is going international for 3 days – to Finland, as it happens. I wanted to get a shot inside the airport to try to encapsulate the day but they are such intrinsically boring and bland places, and you keep thinking that if you snap away, some security guard is going to come and confiscate your phone. Fortunately while we were on the taxiway waiting for take-off, the evening light shone just so, and something came of the wait.
Being 42 