Somewhat continuing a theme from yesterday, but hey. Definitively, the first blossom I’ve seen of the year turns up in the courtyard of the Ellen Wilkinson Building, as it has done before (it’s a finely sheltered spot).
The students are back — fortunately — and campus was busy today. All the same I want to epitomise the day with this unpeopled shot. If even recycling bins, and yellow warning signs, can look pretty, then you know the light is something special.
The last taught class of the first semester, and of 2021. The students show off the ideas they’ve been working on in groups over the last few weeks — including, here, 3-D printing being used to create replicas of famous artworks that people can then touch and interact with, which seems a reasonable idea to me. It was an engaging, interesting class, and one that if I had listened to my paranoid employer, I should have hoiked online at 12 hours’ notice. But I didn’t listen, and the life of everyone involved was all the better for it.
At times in a British December it’s hard to believe there is such a thing as sunlight, so this was a welcome burst on an otherwise grey day, illuminating those of us taking a break in University Place. For once, on this shot, I don’t mind the appearance of litter bins.
I have to stand up in front of a full room next week and intone the names of at least a hundred Chinese people (amongst others); so this was a professional development opportunity that was worth the time. If the recording of this session ever gets out, however, I suspect we will go viral and be a source of hilarity on Chinese social media. A dozen or so middle-aged white academics being tutored by the very patient Luxi (pictured, as she encouraged us to place our lips correctly for the first syllable of ‘Yuxuan’), mangling tones and generally embarrassing ourselves. But at least it was only a rehearsal.
Sometimes at this point in the year you wouldn’t even know there was such a thing as sunlight. All the way into campus by 8am and it’s only just getting light, making this a study in blue. While I was away this space at the front of the new Royce building has emerged from under the perpetual building site to acquire seats and tables, but I doubt anyone will be using them for a while.
This container of (presumably) liquid nitrogen, behind a protective fence that allows (like this) only glimpses of the whole, is depicted not just for itself, but because now I walk past it every time I go into uni it reminds me of the 90s German electronic band Air Liquide. Listen to their album Nephology — and particularly the track “The Clouds Have Eyes” — preferably while dosed up with something strong, and have your head completely melted. Marvel at the fact I used to listen to this kind of stuff for pleasure. And still do, in fact I’m listening to it right now.
I regret the fact that they all still feel the need to wear a mask. I regret that so many of them have not yet been able to arrive, thanks largely to airlines ripping them off and governments (worldwide) still using Covid as an excuse to be mean to foreigners. But I’m still glad they’re here. This is only the second day in more than 18 months — the first being 4th December 2020 — in which I’ve been able to hold a face-to-face class. There seemed to be some work going on at this point.
In some years the return of the students to campus is not always exactly a welcome event — it marks the end of summer, it presages a lot of work for the weeks ahead, etc. But in 2021 it would be impossible not to celebrate it. And anyone who thinks that some kind of future lockdown is an inevitability, please leave the room now, I will have nothing to do with that viewpoint. The only way I will be incarcerated in the future is by being arrested.
Photographer and bride… but there was no groom in sight, so either these two were preparing some photos for a wedding at a later date, or this was a fashion shoot of some kind. The lump of rock behind is the big glacial boulder that stands in the Old Quadrangle of the University of Manchester.
Being 42 