Outside Club Bloom on Abingdon Street. Clearly they feel they don’t need a “Deal or No Deal” fruit machine any more, so if you want one — or a traffic cone — help yourself. What we throw away in the modern world, though. In a SF book I once read there was a company called “Dumpmines” who made lots of cash through mining 20th- and 21st-century landfills for their valuable materials. Seems quite sensible to me, I’d invest in it.
Someone Else’s Art — but very fine it is. It doesn’t matter that her left eye is mostly replaced by the window, and the security camera totally fails to intrude, too. Great work. Sometimes even just a minor variation in one’s route to work brings new sights in view.
At the moment it’s a case of — do I sit at home all day working, or trug into Manchester and sit in my office all day? Well, at least going into Manchester gets me a bit more exercise. There always seems to be at least one person smoking outside this building on Booth Street in the city centre, no matter how early I pass by.
A contentious statement… Although if given the choice, I would much rather work early in the morning than late in the evening. Come to think of it there’s many things I’d much rather do in the morning. So OK, I’ll concur. Being on Cross Street, Manchester at 7.35am shows that I had plenty to do this particular morning.
Hardly a great photo technically, and converted to black and white as much to conceal deficiencies as any other reason. But it does suggest that when there is a boat in the Canal Street lock in Manchester city centre, this is often the most interesting thing to see on the walk into work. It’s nice that this old transport system is still used: not everything useful has to be hyper-efficient.
Treated myself, and my PhD student Steve (well, we split the bill) to a rarity for me, a working lunch, courtesy of the huge Tai Wu restaurant that sits just next door to the campus. And the dim sum were very fine. I’m still glad it’s Friday, though.
The second Manchester alleyway of the week — this one known as Reyner Street. Proof that if given a foothold, and a bit of sun for an hour or so a day, foliage can flourish anywhere.
A Tuesday morning in Manchester. Either I was having a major case of déjà vu, or this same guy was still sat in the same spot when I came back past this point in the afternoon.
An excuse today to walk through some parts of Manchester that I don’t frequent often. Although the brick rectangle to the bottom left annoys me somewhat, I think that this shot reflects, for me, the way Manchester seems to have developed in the last ten years or more. Significant parts of it aspire to be the hypermodern ‘skyscraper forest’ these days, but the old industrial landscape hangs on here and there.
Whenever I walk past the new car park on Princess Street in Manchester, just north of the Mancunian Way (the shadow of which is visible), nine times out of ten there is a mysterious, anonymous white van parked in the service tunnel, as here. The metal grille in front of it adds a pointillist effect to what is basically an abstract. Yes, probably it would have been better without the shadow, but it was another sunny and warm day, so I’m not complaining too much.
Being 42 