I did get very close today to the ‘having nothing to photograph’ assessment — but I did get the marking done. Justification for the latest trip to the pub, anyway: I am now officially On Sabbatical. As I ordered the first pint of this period I was reminded that I do like pub regular Jim’s habit of claiming his daily bottle of red wine. But even that, I couldn’t get properly in focus.
A subject that comes round each year, I could have first pictured these at least a fortnight ago; I think that when the ladders were put up to get Manchester’s Christmas decorations down, they just installed the lanterns immediately, to save getting the ladders out again. Thus, at least a month before the Chinese New Year that they are there to celebrate. Never mind — today was my last chance to get them on for CNY 2024; I won’t now be in Manchester for three weeks.
This really is as exciting as it got today. I have a multitude of papers to grade and it rained. The phenomenon of the ‘unsatisfactory orange’ is, of course, a very First World Problem, and even then, I had a substitute to hand. No endorsement of particular biscuit brands is implied: other crunchy and chocolatey snacks are available.
Students from a quarter-century or more ago will know the UoM’s ‘North Campus’ as ‘UMIST’ — but this institution has long been merged out of existence, and quite a few of its buildings, like this one beside the Mancunian Way, have stood derelict for years. But there’s still an aspirational feel to this shot — climb the ladder and jump over the moon? And let’s get some blue sky into things. It’s been altogether too grey lately.
Well, it was quite nice for a day or two. It didn’t last. This picture was chosen for today, in part, because Clare insisted I not use the one of her putting on her slippers, but nevertheless this does epitomise the day.
My first ever visit to Motherwell, in Scotland, which I can tell has been through its periods of post-war reconstruction as there’s something intrinsically 1960s about subways (I mean this in the British sense of a ‘pedestrian underpass’ rather than the American one of ‘underground railway’). There was a definite craze to build them around that time. This one’s been quite well decorated, something I probably fail to capture here.
Sometimes days slip into the past so quickly: I post this on Sunday morning and couldn’t really tell you very much about what happened on Friday. I worked, basically. And it was cold, still. Although I know that some forty-three hours later, all the snow has gone.
My ability to summon a robin now does not even need to involve any digging. Just go and sit down in the garden for five minutes and he turns up anyway, just to check things out. With largely frozen soil at the moment, though, I guess he’s probably hungry. This may well be the same bird as depicted here or here: the photos are all taken in the same place (our allotment) and robins are territorial beasts.
I am on sabbatical, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to stop going to campus. Sometimes I just need to stretch my legs. And there are certain inspirational qualities it provides: today, these included the light, particularly as experienced outside the Stopford Building on Oxford Road this morning.
Snow was forecast and duly arrived, though it was hardly a winter apocalypse. It did make the town look good, though. This graveyard sits on the hillside across the valley from my house: it takes a long zoom to pick it out in a photo and, usually it’s all rather brown and unprominent. But I like the way the snow picks out the headstones, like rim-light, almost.
Being 42 