It was a nice café and I certainly needed a decent breakfast this morning. Getting down to the fine details of the compsition, I’d rather the pole in the centre wasn’t there, but otherwise this works for me — though of course if she had been smiling I might not have used it. So it goes with irony.
In the mid-1970s the esteemed, and very good, photographer Martin Parr (see this page) moved to Hebden Bridge aged 23 and started capturing scenes from local life. These were published as the exhibition and photo-book The Nonconformists. The picture seen here, of the policeman walking in front of the cinema snack bar, was taken in exactly the same spot that this print now hangs, nearly 50 years later. It doesn’t really look a great deal different, on the whole.
Time to kill before the 11:00 meeting in the city centre. Tea needed to be drunk. Monochrome needed to be used to disguise the fact that this shot is basically out of focus, but losing the colour means I can go for the rustic 1960s bistro effect. Which I’m sure is how Caffe Nero wants to be seen (note: other corporate coffee bar providers are available).
After a spell of wide-ranging vistas and skies, all I saw today was this room, reclaimed from Joe now he has returned to Scotland. The implements of a day’s work are all in place. And my hair did need a brush. Outside, just more rain, anyhow.
Bolstered myself for a heavy day’s work in the library (yes, it was) with a necessary cup of tea on a sunny morning in Oxford. Behind, the Natural History Museum, which has not resisted the current trend for public buildings to be engaged in some major renovation project or other. [NOTE: thanks to follower John, who pointed out I had misidentified the building first time round.]
I like straightforward signage like this: though as should also be apparent, in this case, it was giving false information. The football ground, with its backdrop of very heavy industry, is that of Runcorn Town.
It was my last scheduled teaching of the semester today. Normally we would have concluded this significant moment in the academic year by some kind of group photo, as on 4th May 2018, and said our goodbyes, at least amongst those I will not be supervising over the summer. There can be none of that this year. I sit in a room and talk to a laptop for an hour and twenty minutes and take questions here and there and that’s it. I do plenty of distance teaching anyway, so it’s not that I’m pissed off about this as such — but I miss people, and if you claim not to, then I worry for your sanity.
Despite four HB pix in a row I have in fact spent most of the week in Manchester, but — to repeat a frequently-made recent point — it’s not been very exciting. Nor was today, but at least there was plenty of tea and coffee.
One of the things to admire about Australia is that it leads the world when it comes to the preparation and serving of a proper cup of tea. Always loose-leaf, always in a pot and thus with full ceremony: here, in ACMI (the Australian Centre for the Moving Image). I like the various circles on this shot. It’s also, technically, a self-portrait.
My last full day here in Melbourne — on this trip. I hope there will be more. A fine city.
Travelling, and working, and having a cup of tea, in Munich central station, which is so huge that you go two stops on the S-bahn train before you actually leave its awnings. I found my little corner of it for a time. A decent trip to Germany, but time to go home.
Being 42 