I do appreciate the notion of ‘First World Problems’ and that there are parts of the world where trains can run days late, if they run at all. But for Christ’s sake, Northern….. at this time of year particularly (‘leaves on the line’ plus the cold snap of the last couple of days). This train was due to arrive in Manchester at 10:01, so there went the first twenty minutes of my 11 o’clock.
Platforms 4 and 5 of Manchester Victoria station, to be precise (making this, incidentally, the 900th shot taken in Manchester). The sign is meaningless in context, but the pigeon seems to be wilfully defying it anyway. On the left (4), the 12:15 to Redcar Central and on the right, the 12:15 to Blackburn, both punctual. But was I on my way into work late, or coming home early?
I’ll go with that. In fact I’d quite like this T-shirt, which is one reason I took a photograph of it. As seen on platform 17 of Leeds station this morning.
A Friday night in London, but not for leisure purposes. Technically, I am working here tomorrow. Arrival at my place of residence tonight (a Travelodge, nothing glamourous or particularly metropolitan) was not until about 15 minutes after this was taken.
Still, there is nothing wrong with being in London — it’s a fine city and that fact certainly explains why this is the fourth-most depicted place on the blog, this is shot number 144 from London, meaning it’s appeared roughly once every 33 days, or only just less than once a month on average.
Like, I am guessing, everyone else in this picture I was waiting for the arrival of a train that was due to comprise the 9.45 service from Leeds to London King’s Cross. But sadly we all drew the card that says “Cancelled!” in the regular UK Public Transport Lottery. Not only was our train never to arrive but this vanishing act just prefigured a state of affairs that lasted all day. All this on the first full day of the football season, too. I gave up and went home.
At least I could rearrange my weekend’s hotel room without penalty — others will not have been so blessed. Hundreds of people, not just here but up and down the eastern half of the country, with plans wrecked, because the Powers That Be can’t be bothered to maintain their infrastructrure or design a system that has just those crucial little extra bits of redundancy and fail-safe. Up yours, peasants! Of course this will all change now we have a new government *cough*.
Back at work in Manchester for the first time since the 3rd. This is usually my first proper sight of the city on any given morning.
Passengers in various states of thought and repose, as the train pulled into Rochdale on the way into work. Or, I suspect for the guy immediately opposite me, home after a rather heavy night.
Plans to minimise my time in Manchester while on sabbatical have not been successful this week (or next). The weather turned during the day, as well, and it was quite cool and rainy by the evening. A pleasant morning on HB station though: just the latest in a number of occasions where the arrangement of fellow passengers on the platform has interested me.
The clock on my camera was set to 4.15am when I took this but I can’t remember whether this is before or after I adjusted it out of Emirates time when I changed planes in Abu Dhabi. Maybe it’s Gulf time and maybe it’s UK time and maybe we were somewhere over [insert Eastern European country of choice] at this point; either way the night was endless, timeless. This is only the blog’s third 4.nn am shot and the first two were both in its first year.
Although I have been doing plenty of work trips recently they have all been in the UK, and it’s been six months since I was actually at Manchester airport heading off somewhere for work. Today I changed planes in Schiphol, one of those hub airports that almost everyone who flies probably ends up at some point or another, and what a joyful place it is…. I was sitting behind this fence watching the arriving passengers get off the plane we were about to get on, and I kind of like this shot just for the effect, how the fence and the light make the woman look sort of ghostly.
Being 42 