I am writing. For all that it is still warm and sunny outside, the bedroom gets too warm in the evening if the curtains are left open on days like this. The outside world must be closed off, at least for today.
Hull City fans approach their club’s ground for this afternoon’s quite important match against Watford. Both teams are in the play-off zone in the Championship. But what they don’t know yet (and nor, then, did I as I took the picture) that all this anticipation is to be made pointless in about twenty-five minutes’ time. At that point, fifteen minutes before kick-off, the game was postponed, because though the pitch was in great condition, ground staff hadn’t bothered to de-ice the touchlines or the technical areas so the managers and linesmen said, er, hang on — we can’t do our work on an ice rink. I took pictures of that too, and looking at them, they’re probably justified. But all it would have taken was some salt applied at about 1.30. Instead, all these people just had to turn around and go home, including all the poor buggers who had trekked up from Watford on a Sunday and spent god knows how much to do so (and I’m down £35 on the train fare).
The thing is all this happened to me (and, in this case, Clare) yesterday too, at Altrincham. For the same reasons. As I was, almost certainly, the world’s only person to have been at both of these games you understand that I’m somewhat prickly right now.
The University of Gibraltar is why I am here, indirectly anyway. It is one of Europe’s newest, founded in 2016 and built into a converted old barracks. It’s also one of Europe’s smallest: what you see here is a considerable proportion of the whole. Something about it reminds me of the atrium where Heywood Floyd and the Russian scientists have a conversation in 2001: A Space Odyssey. It’s the red-and-white theme that does it. And no, there didn’t seem to be any students around. They’re all ‘on placement’, apparently.
Thirteen and a half years, plus one day, into the life of this blog and it’s nice that I can still sometimes find new things to see that are literally just down the road from my house. This metal construction at the back of the gym has been depicted before from underneath — let’s see if I can find one… ah yes, here you go. But the shadows falling on it this morning — yes! the sun is shining — were rather pleasing.
A sunny day in Manchester, and a good one for light rebounding off glassy and metallic buildings in various pleasing ways. The block in the middle has been a work-in-progress for at least a year now and so is still neither glassy nor metallic but surely this is planned — for now though it offers a good contrast to what turns out almost like a collage.
The match is over, they are happy their team won (these are Blackburn Rovers fans) but it’s a cold night — time to go home. Which I also tried to do from this point, but another two hours were to pass before I enjoyed its comforts. That’s another story however.
After a few weekends recently which have ended on a Monday morning at King’s Cross station — like this one, say — a weekend that, instead, ended on a Monday morning at Cardiff Central station. At least I managed to get on the first truly punctual public transport service experienced since leaving home on Friday morning. I like how the light falls on this one: this is not direct sunlight, instead it is being reflected off the facade of the BBC building across the plaza, behind me.
Another nice morning and a sunny day followed. Off we all go to work in our various ways — or possibly, come home again.
As a few recent photos have suggested, we are entering a good time of year for dramatic skies. I like the NGI building, it somehow matches its main host substance — which I guess is the point, architecturally. Well, my employers have spent enough on it, so it’d better be good I suppose….
As pictured on the steps of the St Peter’s Chaplaincy at the University, a location that has featured once before.
Being 42 