What these ladies in fancy dress were exactly doing outside the ticket barriers at Piccadilly Station, Manchester, today I am not 100% sure, but they all seemed to be having a good time. It’s nearly Christmas after all — also the winter solstice today, in theory we should be celebrating the turn of the year, it all gets lighter from this point on. In theory…
First day of everyone’s Christmas break, and we spent it indoors watching movies. To give some coherence to this, we ran our own Film Festival, specifically the movies of Rob Reiner, so watched, in order: When Harry Met Sally; The Princess Bride; Stand By Me; This is Spinal Tap; and Misery. Not a bad day’s viewing by any standards. Joe here watches Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan do their bits in the early scenes. Not exciting photography but a good and needed day of relaxation.
Amen to that… We could all use some.
Celebrated the first day of my Christmas break by doing what I often do, go for a walk in Cumbria. But this was not ‘fellwalking’ by any stretch of the imagination: not in the National Park today, even. This picture is taken in the flat hinterlands by Morecambe Bay. Though a bit fuzzy, it’ll do I think — I like its painting-like quality. And anyway, you try taking a picture of deer, particularly when they know you’re there (as these three clearly do) — and through the mist, too.
My last day of work before my Christmas break. Some such breaks burst upon the scene with fireworks and celebrations. This was not one of them. More a slow fade out. And with this one of Joe, you wait ages for pictures of people holding magazines in front of their faces, and then two come along in less than a week. Happy Fridays, anyway.
It’s a portrait of a stranger in a pub (the Kro Bar on Oxford Road, Manchester, as it happens), but it’s also a self-portrait. This is me, this is how I feel at the moment. I need a break. But I’m getting one, after tomorrow.
Four weeks ago everyone was going on about the ‘Supermoon’, nearest for 70 years or whatever-it-was…. Well, the moon can’t have moved that far back from Earth in the span of the last orbit, so I guess it is still pretty close. Looks it, anyway. Taken from Manchester Victoria station as I awaited the train home this evening.
Whatever happens to football, and/or to my club, I hope I never lose the simple enjoyment of just going to a match, and that moment of excitement as you see the ground ahead; particularly for night matches when the floodlights pour illumination onto the as-yet-unseen pitch. I’ve posted before about how Ewood Park, Blackburn is a good, old-school ground (one of only three used in the first ever football league season in 1888 that is still used today — trivia fans may note that the other two have also appeared on this blog over the last five years); I like the terraced house which gets into this shot on the right.
That’s three seasons in a row that the ground’s appeared on here but if our clubs keep going in the direction they are doing, it won’t be on again for a while. Blackburn Rovers 2, Brighton & Hove Albion 3. We are top of the Championship tonight…. they are at the other end of the table.
Time for my annual trip down to Rose Bruford College in Sidcup, Kent, where I sit on an exam board for reasons lost in the mists of history. But I don’t mind going down, and it’s always good for a photo opportunity thanks to being located in the middle of the very pretty Lamorbey Park, the natural life of which has graced this blog before (like the parakeets, and the fly agaric). So here’s some more.
I did consider giving you another photo from my Saturday night out, but taken at 1.30am so it would have counted for today. But in the end I preferred this one, taken on the train to London as we waited for it to depart from Leeds station. I have no idea who the magazine photo is of, but it’s a damn good picture.
Being 42 