If I feel like reconnecting with nature I don’t have to go far. Over the road, into the woods and up to the old millpond usually is enough. There was a time a few years ago when this looked like it was drying up entirely, but its lower parts now seem to be developing into a natural swamp, and quite attractively.
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.
In effect, this was the last leg of my journey home from Scotland — I had to take the hire car back then came home on the train. There’ll be plenty of shots of the local area in the next three weeks, I’m not going anywhere. You find all of this stuff fascinating, I know.
To me it looks like the goose is paddling through paint, a Jackson Pollock-style approach to imposing its artistic views on the world, or at least, this part of the Hebden Water, below the line of shops and apartments on Valley Road. Maybe the bird itself could be a bit more prominent — although its not as if Canada geese are bright red, is it — or I might have zoomed in more, but never mind.
A foggy morning, but fortunately not enough to delay us nor any of the others who were planning to leave Berlin this morning. Swissair’s service was in the gate next to ours: the BA flight was there too at this point, though unseen behind the ghost.
This one is the result of me sitting on a train (somewhere in the vicinity of Bolton) and feeling experimental. I did my best to capture the reflection of this man in the hat in the train’s window, really just to see how it turned out. And, well, it’s OK. It’s the shot I intended to take, anyway, and that’s always the source of at least a little satisfaction.
I’m still marking. This miniature world was found just outside the front door, a little flowerpot full of water and with some long-drowned little clumps of green at the bottom. Maybe it says a lot that it was the most interesting thing seen today. On the other hand, as it has turned out, this is really just a shot of my hands — they’re both on there — and in that regard I quite like the shot.
Once more, London. I spend far more time here now than I ever did when I actually lived down south. This portrait came about because of noticing the bendiness of the windows on this Central line train. A kind of Daliesque thing? A little bit, anyway.
There is still just under a month to go until I start teaching the latest intake, but plenty needs doing to be ready for that day. Hence the length of the morning meeting. I skulk around, visible as a shadow in the mirror, while my colleagues emerge in the direction of lunch.
Once again, not the most exciting day, photographically or otherwise. But this one can make the cut for the curiosity factor of a pre-8am shot in Manchester: the earliest taken there since December 2022. These used to happen a lot more often; in 2019 alone I count six. But in 2019 I was still trying to be some kind of ‘manager’ at work. Not any more. These days, the Exchange Square pigeons can have their early morning paddles without me. In fact that was the last day I will be on campus until the 22nd.
Being 42 