Sunday 1st December 2024, 1.40pm (day 4,847)
Well, yes. I’d be inclined to pay attention to this one.
Very unnecessary signage
Being 42
Life, one day at a time
Tag Archives: sign
An outstanding evening?
Friday 25th October 2024, 10.25pm (day 4,810)
Maybe not ‘outstanding’, but Friday night was pretty good; the first part of a fine weekend away, to celebrate Clare’s birthday (Saturday).
If you’re wondering what exactly is so outstanding here, it’s a school, trumpeting its Ofsted (Office for Standards in Education) rating. Not a modest institution.
The City of Culture is Unready
Tuesday 15th October 2024, 5.25pm (day 4,800)
In 2025, Bradford will become the UK’s City of Culture, and the sign proclaims this: from the rear, the slope on the left is one of the 2s, with the zero to the other side. Behind, a small part of the gigantic, desperate building site that constitutes most of its city centre at the present time. The bus station is entirely closed, having been declared unsafe a while back. You can’t get a taxi from anywhere particularly near the railway station. And all this with exactly eleven weeks to go until 1st January. City of Culture? Perhaps this chaos and neglect is, indeed, representative of the UK in this epoch.
Please drive normally
Thursday 10th October 2024, 2.40pm (day 4,795)
What is this for, really? Surely if you want people to ‘drive normally’ up Oxford Road into Manchester city centre putting up a sign suggesting that they do so is exactly the way not to achieve this? “Hmmm, I thought I was driving normally, but… now I’m confused, what do they mean….” (screech of brakes as the now-distracted driver drifts to the side and takes out the Deliveroo guy).
Hebden Bridge market, c. 1924
Saturday 22nd June 2024, 3.35pm (day 4,685)
I imagine this scene may well have looked much the same 100 years ago. Only the blue plastic Co-op bag really gives it away. A good day today — proof that while travel can be good, it’s almost always nice to come home. And the sun was shining too.
The old cable sign
Sunday 28th April 2024, 11.40am (day 4,630)
Telecommunications is why I have been coming to St Helena these last few years. To the left of this sign, down in the valley of Rupert’s Bay, the Equiano undersea cable now makes landfall on this little island in the middle of the South Atlantic. But it’s not like this is the first time ever that St Helena has been connected to the global network. This sign was made to be visible to ships approaching Jamestown and while I’m not sure about the exact missing words it’s basically a warning not to land or drop anchor east of this point because of the old telegraph cable that also made landfall at Rupert’s. When the Boer War broke out in 1899, within six weeks this cable was laid to connect the island to Cape Town. This compares highly favourably with the (at least) seven years that it took from the original application for the Equiano funding, to its half-hearted activation in October last year — giving the truth to the joke (made by an MP in Westminster in 1994, though he might have been quoting) that ‘The big tragedy of St Helena is that no one wants to invade it: if they did I am sure that overnight there would be much better ways of communicating with it’. And doubtless he was right.
Canal bridge
Saturday 30th March 2024, 4.10pm (day 4,601)
On the Easter weekend, it’s a good idea to get out of Hebden Bridge — even if it’s only to travel a few miles along the canal. The sun was shining, there were no people…. this is what we want.
Unpromising directions
Saturday 30th December 2023, 3.30pm (day 4,510)
When you’ve gotta go, you’ve gotta go, but this sign, at the Belle Vue stadium in Wakefield, promises something like the ‘Worst Toilet in Scotland’ (from Trainspotting) waits around the corner. Perhaps fortunately, a gate just round there bars further progress.
Roadworks
Tuesday 22nd November 2022, 4.15pm (day 4,107)
Another day that can really only be epitomised by something fairly abstract and meaningless. The back of a road sign, warning of road works (the red lighting being the traffic light in question), seems to fit. I do like the swirl of reflected street light, caught in the window of a passing bus, and the reason why I chose this shot in particular.
Dog karaoke?
Sunday 2nd October 2022, 3.45pm (day 4,056)
I have been looking at this sign for some months now, but only today really understood the implications. I’ve seen dog ice cream for sale, and in the Arndale centre in Manchester there is now a whole stall selling little doggy cakes and pastries. But dog karaoke? Methinks we are starting to pamper our little pooches just that little bit too much. Although I doubt the singing would be appreciably worse.
Being 42 