Our acquaintance Toby is something of a scavenger, the sort of person who will go through the skip outside your house and in five minutes retrieve from it a range of interesting items that you had no idea could be found within. What he has in mind for these various 3-D puzzles, who knows — but I do not think it involves simply putting this one back together.
Some Sundays are eventful and interesting days. This was not one of them, although neither was it unpleasant. But photographically there wasn’t much to look at, so 5/7/26 will have to be marked by a study of drainage. Important stuff, though — you try living without it for a while.
Having celebrated Hebden’s attractive qualities yesterday I am also permitted to be relieved that the football season has restarted so I have excuses to leave it on Saturdays, when it becomes too full for its own good — and go drink in some other town’s pubs instead. Like Wrexham in North Wales, for example. Which, this being taken in a Wetherspoons (if you have ever drunk in the UK surely you know of these places), looks much the same as anywhere else, of course. But I don’t mind them.
If you’ve no idea what the title of this post is referring to then obviously you do not play cribbage. But you might be able to work it out. I get two for a pair as well. No, I am not playing solitaire — the wife has just slipped away for a moment. She won this particular game, 3-2 (we know each other’s strategies so well now that basically it all comes down to the luck of the deal — that’s my excuse anyway).
This is a self-portrait — logically I will be on it somewhere, and you may discern me under the red umbrella nearest to this shiny ball thing. I’m in the garden early — but then again I started work early (7:45) and sat upstairs marking for several hours. Semester 2 is now officially done, though, as far as I am concerned.
One of those occasions where it’s a case of — yes, I’ll go with that. There is nothing more to be said.
Chester is a city that has maintained its pre-WW2 architecture better than most, and going black-and-white seems appropriate today. It also hides the anomaly that is the bright blue of the sign for bus stop S3. Yes, I was in the beer garden of the Town Crier at this point, but at least it was after noon. Just.
Going on the gig posters that still sit, forlornly, behind a metal screen just to the right of this shot, the Retro Bar, on the corner of Sackville and Charles Streets in Manchester, closed in summer 2025. The reason? Because there are no longer any students up at this end of the campus. Whatever is being planned for the acreage of the old UMIST buildings, it has involved gradually emptying them over the last decade or so, and accumulating what must amount to real estate value of tens, perhaps even hundreds, of millions of pounds. I’m sure my employer is well aware of this.
Meanwhile — it was loud and peaceful, so Mark attests. Note the train heading over the viaduct.
This beetle was very purposeful, and it’s a shame that there was no pot of gold (beetle equivalent) at the end of the table outside the pub, but I did help it down to the floor at that point. A test of the micro-focus on the camera, anyway, and its quite precise: the body is pretty much there, but the antennae, they are just that little bit blurred.
After a run of travelling, today marks the start of a period to be spent mostly at home, and ended where many Fridays do, namely the pub. There I noticed that the old logs used, now and again, as bar stools have a rather encrusted look about them which was a worthy subject for illustration. In fact there are a number of regulars of the Railway who affect this kind of thing, with me probably among them, these days.
Being 42 