Typical behaviour for the British climate — balmy weather on Saturday, revolting wintry crap the following Wednesday. I have to wipe off a layer of hail each time I come inside today. The blossoms bear it stoically.
This was just seen in passing this morning: my walk to work is so familiar after more than twenty years that even minor alterations are easy to notice. At some point in the last couple of weeks this has appeared in a window near the Old Quadrangle. Information searching reveals that this is a new ‘Infected Blood Inquiry Memorial’, which will be officially dedicated in a couple of weeks’ time.
The inquiry into how more than 30,000 people in the UK were given blood infected with HIV or hepatitis prior to 1996 (3,000 of them have subsequently died) reported its findings in 2024. Amongst the recommendations in the report were that “there should be a memorial”. As it is declared, so it shall be — so here is that memorial. I get the point: as you can see here and there, these specimen bottles are each filled with a little scroll of paper, with handwritten inscriptions — and that one little kiss, which makes the photo, I guess. But a memorial like, say, your average Cenotaph, this is not: and it doesn’t help that it’s inside a building that will only be open some of the time. (This is not a criticism of the University of Manchester by the way.)
This would all be of only passing interest were it not that one of my friends is represented in here. When I first moved to Yorkshire in 1991 I got to know Dave Chamberlain, of Low Row in Swaledale, who was a haemophiliac and was infected with HIV thanks to infected Factor 8. Dave was one of the people who was very friendly to me, a new ‘offcumdun’ arrival into the community, and did not have to be — it is because of these people I remained in Yorkshire and never went back down South. When I heard he had died, in the late 2000s sometime, I was very upset. Whatever ‘compensation’ this inquiry determined was just, imposing this two decades after his death, and nearly 35 years after the fact of his avoidable infection, seems more of a cynical and meaningless gesture rather than any acknowledgement of true culpability. Sticking a bunch of little bottles in a window in a university building, one that is off the main road and which passers-by don’t have a lot of reason to notice, is probably much the same.
I have noticed down the years that one thing that can be guaranteed to astonish foreigners about Britons is the ability of some of them to walk around in clothing that is, manifestly, inadequate for the temperature. I have to say that in this, I agree with them. I could not believe that this guy was wearing only a T-shirt today. It was, to put it bluntly, frigging freezing this afternoon. I was in two T-shirts — a jumper — a big coat — and a scarf, and it was still chilly. Is his blood formed of antifreeze? How does he tolerate this? Words fail me.
The snowdrops always come first. Earlier than usual? Perhaps, but not excessively so, and they are sitting in a nice, sheltered spot. This is not some rural woodland though; in fact these are on the uni campus, just next to the Roscoe building.
Three years and four months ago, in September 2022, Mandi and I met David when he arrived in Manchester to begin work on his PhD. Today saw the culmination of that work, and his efforts, when at 4pm or so he was officially awarded the title of Dr David (or Chu-Yang) Chang. Congratulations to him — believe me, if anyone deserved it for sheer level of work, it was him. The culmination perhaps, but not the end of the relationship: we hope he’ll be around for at least a little while yet.
Time for the annual ‘student poster day’ where my charges are tasked with demonstrating what they might have learned over the last few weeks. Some even manage to do this: but I suppose they all try. This is happening nearly a week later than last year, and, definitively, marked my last professional engagement of 2025. As far as the University of Manchester are concerned I now do not exist until 5th January. Let there be celebrations, etc.
And most of us were listening to it — honest. (To be fair to the guy on the left, he’s keeping an eye on the Zoom room.) Golly, three days in a row in Manchester: that’s an outbreak of keenness, particularly in a week when I didn’t have any lectures to deliver.
Another well-lit shot of flora on campus, taken within a few yards of yesterday’s shot. At least the sun is shining at the moment and we have not yet quite hit the usual early December gloom. And look, people! There haven’t been many of them in the last three weeks… And no I don’t care about the asymmetry.
I believe these clusters of bright and, definitely, orange berries are firethorn [genus Pyracantha] — doubtless someone will correct me if I am wrong. A whole slew of them have grown to cover the fence outside the Ellen Wilkinson Building, anyway. Valuable winter bird food, apparently.
It’s good to have some sustenance while waiting for colleagues (and Peter is a Professor, a rank I will now almost certainly never attain) to offer their opinions on one’s writing. That paper might even get finished one of these days.
Being 42 