Thursday 17th November 2016, 8.10am (day 1,911)

An early start this morning. This slip road leads up to the flyover under which I cross the Mancunian Way each time I walk to the office.

An early start this morning. This slip road leads up to the flyover under which I cross the Mancunian Way each time I walk to the office.

Anyone unfamiliar with Manchester might imagine for a moment this pic is Photoshopped, but no, you really can see upward of 11 buses in a row on Oxford Road at certain points in time (not to mention the two or three more that were just to my left as I took this). On the one level this kind of phenomenon amuses me, but on the other hand I can’t help thinking of the other communities out there (like Sabden, Shap) that might benefit from having a spare bus or two now and again.

The line of pylons that reaches over the railway line around Mills Hill station has of late been the subject of building works, as seen here. So this photo fits itself into two vague categories of picture that I have been nurturing recently: blokes high up doing their jobs (like this one) and pictures of power installations taken at high speed from trains, as depicted last week. Do pylons count as ‘architecture’ (a more formal category of picture on this site)? Yes, I think they should. They dominate the landscape as much as any other engineered structure.

Having never been to Cambridge in my life until January this year, it’s a definite discovery of 2016. I returned today for a seminar and will be back there in a fortnight, too. Parts of it are as beautiful as anywhere I have ever been, like a fairytale almost, particularly with the golden leaves of autumn. This picture depicts none of that, but I like it anyway; most of the place seems to look something like this, including all the bicycles.

I try to keep this blog apolitical, but it’s not always easy. I was educated into the idea that we were making steady progress toward some better future. In 2016 that is a view of the world that, at best, has taken a severe blow. But at least someone is here with this guy.

The leeks have grown way better this year than in any previous year. We could say it’s the good weather — and it continues to be mild and pleasant, Wednesday’s sprinkling of snow notwithstanding — but actually I reckon it’s the discovery of ‘Baby Bio’ fertiliser. Which probably means these no longer count as ‘organic’, but what the hell, the one we ate this evening was very tasty. Not that you eat these bits of the plant, however.

Well, I did say a few days back that there were likely to be a lot of Manchester urban scenes over the next few weeks, as that’s where I’ll be spending most of my time. Got to work now and again, I suppose. It’s an attractive enough city, at least, the bits I walk through are.

As I’ve been saying for some years now it’s hard to point a camera anywhere in Manchester and not have a decent chance of capturing a building site. This particular one is being initiated by my employers at the University as the final piece (for now) in the “£1bn Campus Masterplan” as we must learn to call it. A massive new engineering building will rise here over the next couple of years, unless the whole economy tanks in the mean time of course. Which does not look as distant a project as it did a year ago.

The first snow comes to Hebden Bridge only 194 days, or 6 months and 10 days, after the last snow (29th April).
Winter is coming… In more ways than one, I fear.

This weeping willow stands at one end of the 16th century bridge over the Hebden Water after which my home town is named (viz, Hebden Bridge). It has featured in the background or periphery of several photos before, but today I make it the prime subject, thanks to the late night street lighting and the sleet which was barrelling out of a damp grey sky on the way home (see tomorrow’s picture…).
To prove I occasionally still — but only occasionally — have nights out, this is the latest shot in any given night out since my 3am aberration on 9th Jan 2016, and the latest shot in a calendar day since, embarrassingly perhaps, 15th November 2014.