The courtyard within it continues to be the only truly nice thing about the Ellen Wilkinson Building, my place of work for the last 20 years and, more or less, three months. Will I miss it when I finally do manage to leave? Probably not. But it can look nice, at different times of the year.
This big patch of daffs is coming into flower rather later than many others in the vicinity, but some confident early adopters have made a start on it. Actually I like this picture more for the bark of the tree, which looks very ancient and Ent-like. This is all in the middle of the UoM campus, not a space normally renowned for feeling rural.
My first Hebden Bridge picture in one whole month. It doesn’t seem like the pigeons have changed their behaviour much since I’ve been away: still the group callisthenics, tight circles around a carefully-chosen patch of town. They look impressive enough in black-and-white. Except for the one who’s broken formation, to the lower left.
I assume these are sycamore seeds, and so I think they’ve missed their chance to spiral down through the air and find fertile ground on which to start producing more sycamores. I like this shot because of the vivid green contrasting with the dead brown, but posting this the following morning I already know that green is not featuring any longer in the local palette (because it’s snowed, basically). Winter is here.
This is a fairly stock campus shot, but then again it was a fairly stock campus day. At least there are people in it, which is more than has been the case for several other recent photos.
A hidden corner of campus. This shot has no deeper meaning, I just like the textures, of trunk, undergrowth, the wall. Although maybe that stuff on the wall is mould, but then again, you should see our bathroom wall.
Formally this used to be the “Research Institute for Experimental Medicine”, which I am sure is quite as sinister as it sounds, so its being more popularly known as “The Mouse Bunker” does show that Germans indeed possess a sense of irony. It’s a masterpiece of brutalism, anyway, of which no one picture can do justice but you’ll get a better impression looking it up online. It’d be nice if the white ball of the street lamp wasn’t there, but otherwise, the light will certainly do.
It is still September. It is still the first half of September. But the Gospel Oak pub, in Tipton, West Midlands, cares nothing for such pedantries. Here, it is Christmas already, so they can advertise their seasonal ‘wear a shite jumper’ dinners (starting November 11th, if you’re interested). There is something deeply depressing about this.
This little new sprig, coming out from what I think is an oak tree (those do look like oak leaves), is catching the light in a figurative sense — but surely a literal one, too. I imagine that it’s exactly because that little patch of trunk achieves direct line of sight to that ball of helium 93 million miles away that the sprig has been encouraged out into the world. Life’s like that.
Being 42 