My first stop on the journey today was York, and here is its fine-looking railway station. I upload this while sat in Stansted Airport terminal along with a handful of other people, and no places of refreshment open. So there’ll be nothing more to picture today before the flight leaves just after midnight. I’ll see you in quarantine, somewhere in the South Atlantic.
Following my comments yesterday, at least the trains were still running in the other direction from home, so as often seems to happen on a Saturday, I found myself changing at Leeds station. I’ve been thinking of a shot like this for a while; taken specifically from the stairs going down to platform 16, and therefore looking across the whole width of the station. Busy scenes, and let’s demand they stay that way.
It’s been nice to come down to London for a couple of days, the weather’s been good and I have met friends and had decent exercise. But there’s been something eerie about it, unnatural and wrong. Difficult to do much else today than post another picture of somewhere that should be very busy on this day and time under normal circumstances, but instead, echoed like an empty cathedral.
Another very beautiful (but frosty) winter’s morning, part of which we spent walking from our hotel back to New Street station through a near-deserted Birmingham city centre. I don’t know this place well; it seems a strange mix of time periods, blocks of urban desolation suddenly becoming US-style skyscraper downtown and then a bit further on, leafy suburbia. Anyway, this shot relies on two things: the narrow slot between two small road signs and the flare effect having behaved itself well.
One of those shots where I took it — as one of several attempts to capture the nice morning light at Hebden Bridge station this morning — then thought no more about it. Only when it got uploaded onto the laptop did I notice the effect on this person’s head. Do they have bright pink hair? No, but there is a second red signal light on that side of the tracks.
Most of the local train service remains a scandal of national proportions (some 2,000 trains cancelled across Northern’s domain since the new timetable was launched, blunderingly, on 20th May) but I must admit I have been a small locus of punctuality all week. But no one should have to suffer a 6.30am train too often. Or, two of them.
Oooh — must be nearly Christmas. The carol singers are out. But it’s a nice way to raise money, in this case for the Railway Children charity (protecting street children in India, East Africa and the UK); and greeting us poor commuters as we stagger home on another freezing cold evening.
One of those days when the sun just comes up at the right time, two minutes before the train arrives to take me to Manchester.
Whatever has happened down the years to the configuration of Manchester Victoria station, this footbridge is definitely less used than it must once have been. The only time it’s really worth using it is if you’re sat at the back of the 8:05 from Hebden Bridge, which stops on platform 6 and the principal footbridge gets clogged up with the contents of the full train, this one is slightly nearer. But hey, it’s got an interesting view.
Taking shots in tolerably good morning light to pass the time waiting for my train in to Manchester, it was only later, after uploading, that I realised this chap ambling down the platform was my next-door neighbour Tom (who also works at the university). And so starts another week for both of us. But the mornings are getting lighter and this is never a bad time of year.
Being 42 