What these ladies in fancy dress were exactly doing outside the ticket barriers at Piccadilly Station, Manchester, today I am not 100% sure, but they all seemed to be having a good time. It’s nearly Christmas after all — also the winter solstice today, in theory we should be celebrating the turn of the year, it all gets lighter from this point on. In theory…
It’s a portrait of a stranger in a pub (the Kro Bar on Oxford Road, Manchester, as it happens), but it’s also a self-portrait. This is me, this is how I feel at the moment. I need a break. But I’m getting one, after tomorrow.
Four weeks ago everyone was going on about the ‘Supermoon’, nearest for 70 years or whatever-it-was…. Well, the moon can’t have moved that far back from Earth in the span of the last orbit, so I guess it is still pretty close. Looks it, anyway. Taken from Manchester Victoria station as I awaited the train home this evening.
Not a very exciting day, nor one that necessarily made me feel good about the wider world, so this being Manchester at the moment, here’s a picture of a bloke in a high-vis vest doing something building- or roadworks-related. There’s a lot of it about. At least it’s now the weekend.
The Contact Theatre was built in 1999 and adjoins the Ellen Wilkinson Building where I work, helping close off my courtyard (you’ve seen that often enough), but it is a separate entity from the university. It focuses on youth theatre and involves young people in programming and hiring decisions, apparently. The picture also demonstrates that we have reached that time of year where I get to leave the office and it’s already dark. So be it… December it is.
I don’t know what had been going on around Manchester’s Chinese Arch but the whole area was cordoned off all day today with lines of blue-and-white police tape. But the managers of the establishment referenced here will clearly be damned before they lose any business as a result.
POSTSCRIPT: Apparently this is the result of a fire in a building, on Monday, in which two people were killed.
I assume Christmas decorations, but on this street who knows for sure.
After three days at home, working, made it back into the big city, to do some more work. So be it. I like this shot because while I’d normally feel that the newspaper stands were clutter, here I like how they feel akin to the people, randomly distributed across the field of view. And the patches of green colour to the right.
Back in the foul summer of 2012, 29th August to be precise, the blog featured a photo of this building (the headquarters of AQA, the examinations authority) with a heavy storm brewing behind it. At that time the office from which I took the picture was occupied by an admin colleague, while I was stuck in a cold and dim room on the north side of the building, without a view, that I never liked and never felt at home in, which is why it never featured on the blog (I think only two pictures were ever taken in there). Happy to say that this summer I moved, and my view is now much better — although the weather looks much the same on this shot (but it’s November, rather than August, so we’ll let it off somewhat).
An early start this morning. This slip road leads up to the flyover under which I cross the Mancunian Way each time I walk to the office.
Being 42 