Well, here we are again. And as usual – just for a quick visit. Things to do, then I’m off home again. This is how London has become the fourth most-depicted place on this blog. A place to come to and depart from…
Shinjuku railway station is a few hundred meters from my hotel, and is not only the busiest railway station in the world, but the busiest transport hub of any kind. 3.5 million people DAILY pass through here — that’s the entire population of Greater Manchester plus Leeds, or more-or-less the population of Los Angeles, through one single railway station. Every single day. It beggars belief. This picture was taken at a relatively quiet point in the daily cycle, but still gives an impression of it all, I think.
I don’t make a habit of getting the 06:59 service from Hebden Bridge to Manchester — a two-carriage cattle truck most days. But when I’ve a 9am meeting that can’t be missed, it’s the safest choice. At least it is getting light at that time now. Don’t normally frequent the waiting room either, but it was raining outside today. Welcome to Monday.
Once again, Leeds becomes the place to change trains when on the way to somewhere else for an evening out: but once again it was quite fertile territory for photography today, bathed in golden late afternoon light. I had a couple to choose from today but in the end went with this one due to the randomly bendy child. Like a stray piece of wind just tried to whisk him away.
Sunny but chilly day in Manchester, trains being obedient. Got out of the house at least, even if it wasn’t a very profound change of scene. However, some very good travel news received today — looks like in two months’ time I will be in Japan for the first time in my life, a long-cherished dream destination.
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…
When the 07:42 cattle truck to Manchester turns up half an hour late, like it did this morning, you can be damn sure there’ll be a few people wanting to get on it. Why was I not among them? Because there was another three carriages along three minutes later, with blissful peace on board. Take this picture as an illustration of how humans typically fail to delay gratification.
Peterborough becomes the latest station to feature, I don’t know how many different railway stations there have been on here by now but 20 or more seems a reasonable estimate. I spend enough time on trains for this to be an inevitability, but that’s OK, the mixture of people passing through and the general sense of waiting (here for the 18:18 service to Cambridge) makes them interesting to me.
After three days at home, working, made it back into the big city, to do some more work. So be it. I like this shot because while I’d normally feel that the newspaper stands were clutter, here I like how they feel akin to the people, randomly distributed across the field of view. And the patches of green colour to the right.
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.
Being 42 