In some years the return of the students to campus is not always exactly a welcome event — it marks the end of summer, it presages a lot of work for the weeks ahead, etc. But in 2021 it would be impossible not to celebrate it. And anyone who thinks that some kind of future lockdown is an inevitability, please leave the room now, I will have nothing to do with that viewpoint. The only way I will be incarcerated in the future is by being arrested.
The gentleman with the somewhat alien purple hue and the ‘P’ branded on his forehead (this is what happens when you sit in front of the data projector) is Andy Burnham, the elected Mayor of Greater Manchester. For a politician, he spoke a reasonable amount of sense at the meeting I attended today. 40 people in a room, about the same number attending online — all expressing freedom of choice either way. Seems fair enough to me.
In recent years I have adapted my walk into campus so I don’t go down Oxford Road, but today was an exception, for trivial reasons. It’s the main thoroughfare between the two universities and the city centre, and walking along it today at least allowed an appreciation of the fact that there are people back in view, doing things, enriching the local environment. The big influx of students hasn’t happened yet — but next week this should be heaving. And it’s all the better for it. I heard from an academic colleague today about the research showing how lockdown, spending 100% of our time in one place, is devastating for our ability to actually form new knowledge and long-term memories. Why are there those who love it and crave it?
Anyway, no more pandemic politics for now. I merely regret, slightly, that the angles are not quite right on this one.
Did something I had not done since 28th July, and went to campus. The scenes are much the same as they have ever been, but the weather is certainly very fine at the moment. A ‘goodlife’ indeed, even at 8.05am.
Passed through Manchester city centre this afternoon. Somewhere over there –> the annual Pride festival was taking place, but this is as near as I got to it, so let me pay homage by depicting this well-adorned statue outside the uber-hip Gotham Hotel.
Three weeks and two days until Joe goes off to university, the psychological implications of which (for us all) remain unexplored. But at least we can get the logistics prepared, so he accompanied me to Manchester today to pick up practical stuff, plates, cutlery, you know, things that mean he won’t have to eat off the floor. Will this be the last shot of him in this particular city? Impossible to say what the future will bring.
I had a work meeting today, that included lunch, face-to-face with two other people. The rail service is having its annual summer ‘upgrading’ spasm and so my journey to and from this meeting was a complex — but not, it should be said, unpunctual — tangle of three different trains, two buses and a taxi.
All in all then, a sense of normality returns (perhaps leaving out the bit about punctuality).
Photographer and bride… but there was no groom in sight, so either these two were preparing some photos for a wedding at a later date, or this was a fashion shoot of some kind. The lump of rock behind is the big glacial boulder that stands in the Old Quadrangle of the University of Manchester.
After a good and enjoyable weekend — the comedown. Rain all day and the streets of Manchester still empty, this is a city with a lot of ‘recovery’ needed; and at the moment it’s not happening. From next week there’s more of a chance but there are a lot of political interests who, seemingly, would rather it didn’t — for whatever reason. “The struggles of the past have resulted in great gains”, quotes the Guardian (via its sponsored deckchair). Not this one, so far.
The bee is the symbol of the city of Manchester (something to do with ‘industry’), so it seems appropriate that this guy and his colleagues were busying themselves on campus this afternoon — certainly they are showing more industry than the human inhabitants are at the moment.
Being 42 