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.
I walk past this car park every time I come into Manchester, as it lies on the route between my office and Victoria station. That it was cordoned off by the police this morning was notable enough. But as it happened, after last night’s gig we had stayed in the hotel that is built literally on top of it: which made it a little strange, wondering what had been going on below while we slept overnight. I’m not dwelling on it — all was gone again by the afternoon so it can’t have been that serious. Reportage over photographic quality today.
Attended a gig for the first time in ages. A sign of how it has become, as I have aged: gig behaviour now is to arrive early and grab the seats (or in the case of the Deaf Institute, ‘seats’) at the back, out of the way but with a good view. The guy on the left is reading a book for heaven’s sake. But like me, perhaps he has been waiting some 32 years to see Loop play live. This is a band that last year, released their first studio album in 31 years, so they attract a patient crowd.
These have appeared around Canal Street in Manchester, three or four of them with different choices inscribed on each — another reads “I’d rather have true love/megabucks”. This one lent itself best to documentation, however. I notice the ‘half empty’ optional seems to be winning, slightly. Although it always strikes me that the answer to this question in fact depends not on one’s innate optimism level but on whether the glass in question was currently being filled, or drained.
Am I a Communist….? well, ‘from each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs’ always sounded reasonable enough to me. On the other hand, gulags, no freedom of speech, etc. Maybe I should just follow Lila Zing on Spotify instead.
This was one of those shots where the crowning touch was not apparent until I uploaded it — namely the bees. They are not actual insects, of course, but drawn on the doors of the establishment (an ‘aparthotel’ I think) which lies behind these flowers.
Additionally, this looks like it will be the last shot taken with the Canon PowerShot SX740 camera I have been using since 18th August 2021. 20 months is not long for a camera to last, even with the daily usage that I give it: but it never really recovered from the St Helena Tarmac Incident of late January. It limped on for the next three months, and I am grateful for that, but a replacement was becoming urgent. If you’re interested in these things, today I picked up a Panasonic TZ95: let’s see how long that lasts. I think it will be the fifth (and certainly at least the fourth) camera to have supplied the artwork for this blog.
There are some signs of spring, at least. Whether these trees are actually one of the various species known as ‘lilac’ (genus Syringa) I know not for sure, but they certainly can lay claim to the colour. Behind them, the Town Hall gets on with its decade-long restoration.
Seeing as today was Good Friday this seems an entirely appropriate post for the occasion, but I swear that until I came over a rise on Mellor Moor, above Marple, and saw this cross, I had no idea it was there — it wasn’t marked on the map. Apparently it was first erected in 1970. It has a good view of Manchester, you have to say. (Passed on my latest County Top walk — of which there are more pictures on the other blog…)
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.
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.
Being 42 