Manchester Victoria was significantly less populated at 8.15pm this evening than it would normally be on a Wednesday. In the end though, the reason was obvious. But I did make it home in time for the second half.
As will be made obvious by my photographs, I don’t go into Manchester every working day by any means. But when I do, if arriving on platforms 4 or 5 this will invariably be the first thing seen there. Up we all go, to then distribute ourselves through the city by some other means of locomotion.
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?
This pub at Manchester Victoria station has not been opened all that long (a couple of years by now, I think) but it has rapidly become a Pub of Choice in the city. I don’t do advertising on this blog, except when I do. The dog belongs to one of the regular bar staff: when she’s working, it just hangs out, happily enough, with the rest of us.
These days it’s 8:52 that is my more usual arrival time into Manchester Victoria, on days when I deign to show my face there. Today was early, for me. I had forgotten how much busier it is. Everyone is being sucked towards the ticket gates as if by a tractor beam.
More specifically, skulking right down the far end of it, where the trains never stop. It looks like he may have busted the photographer but actually, looking closer up suggests he’s oblivious to his capture for posterity. I quite like the lighting on this one.
Watching them, watching me? Actually it’s very unlikely anyone is actually ‘watching’ at any given moment, but that’s Michel Foucault’s point about the surveillance society — people discipline themselves anyway. What I’d really like to know is why someone felt two cameras, pointing in the same direction, were really needed to monitor the ‘forgotten footbridge‘ at Manchester Victoria station. Why buy only one, when money can be wasted on two to do exactly the same pointless job?
Back at work in Manchester for the first time since the 3rd. This is usually my first proper sight of the city on any given morning.
Don’t read the time from the light here. Victoria station is much improved from twenty years ago, when I first started using it, but platforms 3-6 are still mere warrens, skulking under the overhead bulk of the Arena. Dark holes in which one can wait a while to find out if they’re running your service today.
To cake or not to cake, that is the question, at the end of not just a working week but a whole term — I’m on my Easter break. Unless the French air traffic controllers stymie the deal, the next few posts should come from a country that has not yet appeared on this blog.
Being 42 