Wherever it actually resides depends on the university’s deployment of ‘cloud storage solutions’, I guess, but the interface that allows oversight of this ‘digital twin’ of Manchester resides in the Business School. Want to keep an eye on the city’s start-ups? energy use? property prices? infection rates? It’s all here. There’s something mildly sinister and undeniably impressive about it all, both at the same time.
Ascension Island is, nominally, a dependency of St Helena and lies about 800 miles from it. Whereas there are many friends who think that when I come here (St Helena, that is) I am swanning away to some ‘desert island’, it’s not like that, as my photos make clear. But, as far as I can ascertain, Ascension really is such a place. The plan is that I will be going there in early April, all as part of the same research project that I’ve been working on since 2021.
But Ascension may well be the most bureaucratically impenetrable place I have ever tried to visit. It might be depicted on maps — this one hangs in a corner of Anne’s Place in Jamestown — but does it officially exist? In practice, can your average person actually set foot there? About these things, I am not yet convinced.
A day spent at home was enlivened by the arrival of a travel itinerary, map and other stuff from the very competent people I’ve been dealing with at Expert Africa regarding my upcoming travels — which will certainly get me out and about. As I may have already said on here more than once, I do like a good map. It was my flights over Namibia last year that prompted me to want to go there, and in April, I will.
Another bit of travelling begins. First stop, London. Clare peruses possible future destinations in an exhbition at the British Library. This is her 99th appearance on the blog, incidentally.
After yesterday’s fun with the elephants, spent the day working in Nairobi and had very little chance to get a decent photo of anything.
But I did buy this map, and for a reason. Kilimanjaro is the highest mountain in the world that one can just walk up (as opposed to needing specialist mountaineering skills) and I’ve already paid a deposit to do exactly that, on an organised trek, around this time next year. So if I’m still blogging then — and I hopefully will be — here’s an advance notice of what to expect…. Isn’t this a great-looking map? Let’s hope the reality matches the anticipation.
This is my other project.
Up to the day I started this blog, 26/8/11, I had climbed 130 of the 214 ‘Wainwright’ fells in the English Lake District, having started on 19th July 2009. As of today, 2/1/13, I have climbed 212 of them. The last two – Lonscale Fell and Latrigg – are represented by the last two remaining red pins in my board, pictured here. And tonight I booked a room in Keswick for this coming Friday night, so by Saturday 5th at the latest they will have fallen and I will have done the lot. (Compare this to the other time the pinboard appeared on the blog.)
Day spent mainly re-stocking shelves in the newly decorated bedroom, so not much to document. The pinboard which helps me keep track of the Lake District fells I still have to climb has not yet found a place in the new room, but that at least enabled me to see it from a different angle today. What you see here is a slice through the southern part of the district. Red pins are those fells in the 214 which I haven’t climbed yet. (I could tell you what the other colours mean, but then I’d have to kill you.) I’m getting itchy to go again but the weather’s terrible at the moment.
Being 42 