Exciting times in the household as the jigsaw map of Brighton that was a Christmas present is finally finished five months later. With all three of us present to witness this stellar event, you can tell it’s the half-term holiday. Life doesn’t get more uneventful than this.
First trip into Manchester for nearly two weeks. Last week I stayed at home and worked, which was the easier option due to the closure of Victoria station. Half-above the station stands Manchester Arena, scene of what we could refer to as ‘The Events’ of Monday 22nd May but which one might also reasonably call ‘the slaughter of 22 people by a psychopath’. *Sigh*. And I had decided to try not to mention it.
I know it’s a cheat to take photos of a movie screen but I don’t care. This was the major event of my day, a film I have admired for a long time now, and my first chance to see it on the big screen thanks to the BFI reissuing a restored print this year. If you’ve never seen it — go! If you’ve already seen it, well, go and see it again, because you know it’s a brilliant movie. (The book’s a favourite of mine too: as this shot proves.)
I love this scene in particular. Is there any doubt here that Jack Nicholson isn’t ‘acting’…. he has utterly become Randall Patrick McMurphy, he is straining with every sinew and muscle in his body to lift that damn control unit and escape from the institution in which he is incarcerated?
The family portrait theme of the weekend continues with my younger sister Vicki paying a visit and making, as a result, what I calculate to be only her second appearance on the blog. She seemed interested in my big world atlas for some reason, perhaps planning a trip — certainly I have been in Hebden for what seems like a while, although June is going to involve more distant locations.
Joe’s first appearance on this blog was on its 9th day, September 3rd 2011, in which he was pictured in this room doing much the same thing as here, drinking a fruit juice (always still — Joe doesn’t do fizzy drinks). He — and the room — look somewhat different now, 2,094 days later.
The good weather broke, to some extent, although there was not the rain that the gathering clouds and rumbles of thunder promised. Dramatic-looking skies though. This was the last sighting of the sun today.
Dropping down from Sergeant Man to Tarn Crag, in Easdale in the Lake District, I saw ahead a small herd of young deer, about three hundred yards ahead. I stopped to get the camera out. They stopped and looked at me for a while; I mean, look at this picture, they clearly know I’m there. They sized me up. I sized them up. Got a few shots. Then off they went, to do whatever they do during the daytime, and I carried on my way. Everyone was satisfied with the transaction I think.
I am seeing out the day of the UK General Election, June 8th, in Siberia (honestly) so have applied for a postal vote. The ballot paper arrived today. Here it is.
I could leave my commentary there of course. But….. OK, just a few words. In my opinion the decision by David Cameron — a man who got the top job mainly because he went to the right school — to call the referendum on 23rd June last year was about the most ludicrously stupid political move made by a British politician in my lifetime. So moronic was it to do that without the slightest plan for what would happen if the vote was ‘Leave’ that Cameron sodded off not just from being Prime Minister but from the whole of public life within about a fortnight and hasn’t been seen since. In the aftermath of this raving idiocy, the increasingly right-wing lunatics he left behind are still scrabbling for power, and in order to fight what they defined as ‘instability’ (but the rest of the world considers ‘parliamentary democratic process’) they…. create more instability by calling this election. The ‘opposition’ parties could in fact have stopped this; then again they could have done many things differently over the last fifteen months, but for some reason have decided not to fulfil their mandate of keeping the autocrats in check. The result? I look at the ‘choice’ I’m offered, and decide to hold my nose and vote tactically for the first time in my life (readers who don’t know what ‘tactical voting’ is clearly live in an actual democracy, where all votes really do count, and not just a mock one, like we do here).
Four years ago today I began my final journey home after those four months in Australia and frankly the ‘Fuck Off Back To The South Pacific’ quotient has not been higher since. Those who voted Brexit and will vote Tory this time will reap what they sow, I just pray I can get out of their way before they drag me and my family down with them.
Sorry if you dislike all this political ranting, but tune in tomorrow when there’ll be some nice pictures of mountains and sunny weather.
A work trip to Liverpool today (which thanks to recent events required a train tour of most of West Yorkshire and Lancashire to reach). After I had finished there was time to pop into ‘Paddy’s Wigwam’, a.k.a. the Metropolitan Cathedral of Christ the King, a modernist masterpiece that started falling down soon after it was finished in the 1960s but seems now to have been finished properly and become a permanent fixture. It is one of those buildings that is very difficult to capture from close up or from any single point within. I changed my mind about this shot at the very last minute but I guess it is my best attempt: I like the way there is no ‘front’ to it, instead the altar is in the centre, which feels more democratic.
The photo was taken, and it does epitomise what was a wonderfully sunny and warm day, particularly later on. But I frankly don’t really care what it was like or about, on what was another stellar day in recent British history. I was supposed to be going to Manchester today, but had an enforced day at home because of the closure of Manchester Victoria station for reasons of which I am sure you’re probably aware. At the moment I feel angry with just about everything.
Being 42 