Sometimes at this point in the year you wouldn’t even know there was such a thing as sunlight. All the way into campus by 8am and it’s only just getting light, making this a study in blue. While I was away this space at the front of the new Royce building has emerged from under the perpetual building site to acquire seats and tables, but I doubt anyone will be using them for a while.
On 4th December 2020, a year ago, I had my one and only day of face-to-face teaching in the whole of the academic year 2020-21. The students last year had a difficult time of it for reasons that were totally (taken) out of their control, but most of them made it through. Including Mithila, seen on the left here, who as a result of having finally received her results, invited me to have a mulled wine on her at the Christmas market. Cheers, and well done all. (And hi to the colleague too, who clearly wanted to be in on the photo as well.)
A considerably more pleasant morning’s weather than on Monday. The buildings at the end of Booth Street in Manchester pretend to be neolithic sarsen stones marking the sunrise.
This container of (presumably) liquid nitrogen, behind a protective fence that allows (like this) only glimpses of the whole, is depicted not just for itself, but because now I walk past it every time I go into uni it reminds me of the 90s German electronic band Air Liquide. Listen to their album Nephology — and particularly the track “The Clouds Have Eyes” — preferably while dosed up with something strong, and have your head completely melted. Marvel at the fact I used to listen to this kind of stuff for pleasure. And still do, in fact I’m listening to it right now.
The end of another week…. and some snacks are required for the journey home. This is one of those where I just saw some good light over on the far platform and tried it out.
Following a negative Covid test this morning — but of course it was always going to be negative — this should be the penultimate shot of around 615 consecutive days in the UK. But on Sunday, I will be leaving for a week; if the clenched-up bureaucracy at each end of this journey does deign to let me through. Destination — well, you can find out on Sunday (or possibly Monday).
Manchester once again plays host to the Conservative Party’s annual Conference, and today was the day that the Party and its state police force graciously permitted the parallel annual Protest March. This was safely kettled somewhere to the right of Deansgate, as we look down it here. The whole city centre was cordoned off to cars, and eerily quiet, apart from the distant drums of the protestors. Ahead are Beetham Tower and the West Tower of Deansgate Square, the tallest habitable buildings in the UK outside London: monuments to a particular kind of property-driven capitalism that the Conservative Party fully epitomise. No one can be publicly seen to question it, to ask whether this is really the way that we want to structure the world. The waiting police vans make sure of that.
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.
Being 42 