In Manchester, at some point in most weeks in the autumn there will be an influx of visitors from some European place or other, because either United or City will be at home in the Champions League — or lately, if it’s United, some lesser competition, but they did make the CL this time round. Today it was the fans of FC København (or Copenhagen if you like). They seemed an agreeable enough bunch, but didn’t see a win: United took the game 1-0.
The guy’s still asleep, it seems. Quite a few of the doors of premises on Cross Street, if they haven’t been opened by this time in the morning, are occupied by rough sleepers most days.
Photographically this was one where I was planning for someone to walk past. The coffee cup’s usefully placed too.
I could have been taking a photo of all sorts of things here in this Manchester back alley. But I’m going with the eyes in the background.
Seeing as the garden in question is on the roof of Big Hands, the micro-gig venue round the corner from my office — and no, I’ve never noticed them before — perhaps Roof Garden Dummies is to be the name of some emergent punk/student band, to be appearing (possibly) on a digital feed near you at some point in the second half of this decade. If I was in The Zone, I might consider founding them myself. But possibly Kraftwerk already did it.
No one seems able to leave any empty Manchester space empty for long. Cathedral Gardens is particularly prone to being built on by some temporary structure or other, if it’s not the ‘Davis Cup Fan Zone’ (that was last month) it’s whatever this twelve-hi-vis operation might become. Probably the ice rink; for after all, it’s nearly Christmas.
Apparently “Mood” is the gender-neutral fragrance of the season, if the large stall in the Arndale Centre, exclusively devoted to tempting us to buy it, is anything to go by. But one might advise them to be a little more subtle when it comes to pumping out the scent. By the time I had walked past I was already sick of it.
The Conservative Party can’t even do incompetence competently — and by now, they have had lots of chances to practice it. Brilliantly, some idiot lets slip that the proposed high-speed rail link to Manchester is likely to be cancelled, in the very week that the party are holding its annual conference…. in Manchester. Frankly, I am so disillusioned about there being any prospect of genuine change in the trajectory not only of this country, but the human race, that I have largely stopped caring, but let’s at least document the existence of a political opposition to these clowns: unfortunately, sticking posters to lamp-posts seems to be the extent of it.
Someone else’s art. It was nice, too — when I walked back past this on the way home (it is by the Chinese Arch in Manchester) it was finished and looked good, perhaps it will feature on here at some point in the future.
Protesting outside the offices of a company about to insure a large new oil pipeline in East Africa: this seems valid to me. But they were all so terribly polite about it. Walking past on my way to work I might have missed the whole thing entirely were it not for a voice through a microphone that said (I’m paraphrasing slightly): “*cough* I hope you can here us, Sir Someone, but please don’t insure that oil pipeline” and then went quiet again. And the office was on the other side of the road anyway, ‘guarded’ by three somewhat bored-looking policemen. Throwing oneself under the King’s horse this was not.
Time to kill before the 11:00 meeting in the city centre. Tea needed to be drunk. Monochrome needed to be used to disguise the fact that this shot is basically out of focus, but losing the colour means I can go for the rustic 1960s bistro effect. Which I’m sure is how Caffe Nero wants to be seen (note: other corporate coffee bar providers are available).
Being 42 