A day early too. We all need a break — me, him and indeed the trains, which stop running into Manchester for the next 10 days, just for the hell of it really. Who cares: I’m now off work until the 4th April. Happy Easter.
I’m examining a doctoral thesis in Glasgow tomorrow and it’s too far to do as a day trip so I came up tonight. This shot was snapped during a spell of good light on the train, somewhere around Carlisle. The Mac shows that I’m still just about working at this point but it wasn’t to last much longer — then again, you try assimilating Michel Foucault’s The Archaeology of Knowledge past 5pm on a Thursday. But then again I did have wine (as seen bottom left).
Still occasionally to be seen on small, provincial British railways. This monster bombed through Hebden Bridge station slightly in advance of the 8:05 to Manchester, headed for unknown places.
This rail bridge takes the train (in this case a freight) between Manchester Piccadilly and Manchester Oxford Road stations. The building in the background is the Faraday building, late of the University but now empty and awaiting demolition. I like the general drabness of this shot — very January, although it was a sunny and crisp day today.
I have a day’s work to do down south tomorrow, and it was easier (and cheaper) to travel down this afternoon rather than getting up at 6am tomorrow morning. Though as my single-serving companion reflects, it’s still a good opportunity to grab a kip, even if one is trying to do some work on the Mac, while drinking a glass of wine (note: wine not paid for by British taxpayer).
After two blissful days working at home, welcome back to sodding Northern Rail’s dreadful recent performance on the Calderdale line. Just to put this in perspective, over the last two weeks I have lost a total of 7 hours of my life to delays — that’s a whole working day. This is how it feels.
The run ends, as I finally get out somewhere, after 29 days spent only at home or in Manchester. One reason this happened was that the weather through November has been very poor and prevented me from getting up to the Lakes for a walk, but finally we had a decent day today and I managed to bag my last two Wainwrights — the story of which will be up later tonight on my other blog. This involved a long journey round to the other side of Cumbria, hence my presence at Carlisle station early this morning (well, it’s early if you have to get to Carlisle from Yorkshire, anyway).
Depressing and slightly weird day for various reasons so I lacked both inspiration and inclination to get the camera out much. Even when I did I had the ISO setting too low for such a grey, dull day so everything turned out blurred. Even this one is slightly defiled by the presence of the Leeds United shirt. But thus went my day. At least the trains were punctual.
A familiar scene, given added interest by the drizzle caught in the sun. Worth getting a little wet for. The 8:34 to York departs and my train to Manchester will be along in a few minutes.
26th August is my birthday, so today marks the end of the fourth year of this blog. On the day I started it, 26th August 2011, I took a picture of me (and Clare) on a train going down to London, which though it wasn’t The Photo for that day, appears on the ‘About’ page. So you can have a look at it if you like and compare it with this one, taken, also, on a train going down to London. I think I’m weathering OK. I intend to keep the blog going indefinitely… even if its title is now well out of date.
I’ve also added a page which reproduces my favourite 10 photos from years 3 and 4 of the blog.
Being 42 