The sun continues to shine and it was far too nice a day to extend the whole ‘working at home’ thing past about 3pm, particularly bearing in mind it is now the weekend (cf. yesterday’s comment). These people may well be on their way home too as they wait for the hourly bus to Haworth and Keighley.
I was about to post a picture of the year’s first cherry blossom in Sackville Gardens, flowering above the seated statue of Alan Turing, but then I realised I had done exactly the same in both the preceding Februaries (the evidence is available at this tag). I would still like to avoid such repetition if I can — for my own self-satisfaction if nothing else — but I spent all day in the office and didn’t really capture much else. Bloke on Train with Someone Else’s Half-Completed Crossword is my best alternative. But I guess it at least records a trip to the big city. With a comfortably late start (thanks to teaching until 6pm again).
341 days into Bradford’s reign as the 2025 UK City of Culture and it does, at least, seem to have a) finished the roadworks and b) decided to try to tell people why they should visit (this is one of three similar murals in the bowels of Bradford Interchange bus station). But let’s assume that it has been a useful year for them. It is a decent city, better than some.
R. I. P. Martin Parr, by the way; if there is one photographer who I suppose I might be trying to consciously emulate, it was probably him. Check out his work if you are at all interested in this medium.
Christ Almighty you have no idea about the shite that is the local train service. Don’t think that the one you see here is pictired trundling happily onto the platform — instead it is hanging there, just for arbitrary reasons. Not only that, but it’s the first train out of Hebden into Manchester for some hours. The giuy’s face says it all. In the end I didn’t even bother.
This was one of two photos that I took today which I like despite their technical deficiencies. I was more or less trying for this effect. My third day in a row in Manchester (and blog-wise that’s the first time that’s happened in 2024), but I was not there to work, nor, like the great majority of the people in the city centre, to shop. Instead I was going to the football and just passing through on the tram, nicely insulated from the rush — and the rather poor weather — outside, at least for 45 minutes or so.
With a storm bringing down a number of trees across the north of England, I was obliged to sit on buses for some time today, instead of getting the train. But never mind. This is one of those shots that I like just because of the way the light has fallen, particularly on her face. The little signs dotted around the place — well, those are just the visual litter of the modern world.
Like, I am guessing, everyone else in this picture I was waiting for the arrival of a train that was due to comprise the 9.45 service from Leeds to London King’s Cross. But sadly we all drew the card that says “Cancelled!” in the regular UK Public Transport Lottery. Not only was our train never to arrive but this vanishing act just prefigured a state of affairs that lasted all day. All this on the first full day of the football season, too. I gave up and went home.
At least I could rearrange my weekend’s hotel room without penalty — others will not have been so blessed. Hundreds of people, not just here but up and down the eastern half of the country, with plans wrecked, because the Powers That Be can’t be bothered to maintain their infrastructrure or design a system that has just those crucial little extra bits of redundancy and fail-safe. Up yours, peasants! Of course this will all change now we have a new government *cough*.
OK, maybe just before 11pm isn’t ‘late’ to some of you but I am not a night owl; this is the latest shot in five and a half years, in fact (allowing for a couple taken past midnight that lose the award on a technicality). It isn’t great quality but it is the only one I captured today that might have artistic pretensions.
Not only did this peak hour train turn up with half the usual number of carriages, thus assigning itself instant CTS (Cattle Truck Status) — but it was also 23 minutes late at this point, being scheduled to pass through Rochdale at 8.37. Grin and bear it? Bollocks to that, I wasn’t grinning at this point, put it that way.
It is, of course, wholly dark by 4.50pm at this time of year. Scant weeks ago this guy would have been waiting for his bus home in balmy sunshine. But so it is for all of us.
Being 42 