This place is a godsend early in the morning, and rarely empty. I’m not normally round this corner, but for once I had my cup of tea sat down at the tables inside instead of on the train. Earliest shot for a while, since late November in fact (and only the fourth shot before 7.30 in the last 12 months). It’s still dark outside at this time.
With 40 minutes to kill in King’s Cross station on our way back from Brighton, I entertained myself by watching these activities. When the new King’s Cross was opened a couple of years ago this little memorial had been installed seemingly by the builders, and was left largely unmolested; when the Harry Potter shop opened and colonised it shortly afterwards, and started charging visitors to get their mitts on the trolley, the queues, absent before, started appearing. QED.
My train was slightly late, but this one left just at the right time. I don’t know if this picture is quite what I expected to be when I took it, but it was always going to be today’s photo.
After the party, the journey home. I do this trip quite a lot. Since they finally removed the scaffolding from around Blackfriars station earlier this year, it really does have a bloody good view, up there with Circular Quay station in Sydney — but with slightly cleaner windows.
The refurbishment continues of the building recently named as one of the 10 worst railway stations in Britain. A mundane shot to mark a day with a good number. As well as being day 777 of the blog it is also 22 years to the day since I moved to Yorkshire.
And there it is coming in, right on time — behind the head of the woman stood second left. A glorious day today, a perfect late summer’s day, I nearly posted something about this year’s Conservative Party Conference in Manchester, but I decided I wasn’t that angry.
Blackburn is where I have to change trains when going to see my parents and/or sister. But it’s a surprisingly photogenic place. On a sunny day the light hits it perfectly. Today’s picture is like a proof of that concept — if the light can make an empty plastic bag look this attractive, then we’re talking something special.
My, this seems a long time ago now… and even after five days, having travelled to another continent in the mean time, the interminable delay we suffered at Blackburn on the way home still drags out like an ocean of time.
Joe had spent the weekend at my parents’ while we were in Hamburg, so I went to pick him up today. I could have hired a car and driven in two hours, but I took my time, went by train and savoured the day. I’m on holiday, who wants to drive.
Incidentally, this line is a rare example of one that was reopened (in 1995) after the infamous “Beeching axe” originally fell on it in the 1960s. The reopening happened under a Tory government too. Probably because it was a marginal seat, or maybe the party was still run by sane people at the time. Anyway; what you see here are the tracks extending out over a high viaduct over the River Hodder.
And so, after one more morning of definite, but rather vague and low-level, looking back — it’s probably some mid-life crisis or something — we all left my old stamping ground for points more northern and, to tell the honest truth, far more interesting. It’s been nice to go back, confirm the continuing existence of places remembered, but there’s no need to come back again.
