Today’s picture might have been of the Christmas markets being built in Manchester — but November’s not yet ten days old, for pity’s sake. A remnant of summer is preferable, even if it is mostly deceased. What it was doing out on this table in the afternoon, only the Contact Theatre Café knows.
How many IT helpdesks round the world look like this, I wonder? Still, they did help. On an iatrogenic problem, though.
“Hi. I’d like the chicken caesar salad, a potato salad, and a plate of glutamine synthetase, please.”
“Certainly madam. That’ll be £3.50 for the two salads, and we have a special on glutamine synthetase today at just £2.50 for a plate. Unless you’d prefer an orotidylate decarboxylase wrap, at just £1.95?”
I know I did this one yesterday, to some extent, but hey, it’s a different spot with added gold. Ominous skies all morning but although it’s got very windy this evening, major stormy weather doesn’t seem to be brewing up. Which is a good thing, seeing as thirty years ago today (16th October 1987) the village I lived in at the time, Rotherfield in Sussex, had its 500-year old church spire blown down by the massive storm that hit the south of England that night.
Today, 10th October 2017, is the 26th anniversary of my coming to Yorkshire to stay for a short while, and never leaving. But here’s a picture from my workplace in Lancashire: a better attempt than the rather boring shot from last week I think.
I have never noticed before taking this picture what a masterly piece of architecture the National Graphene Institute is. The crane you see in this picture is not a reflection. In fact, it stands behind the building, which is therefore translucent in its upper portion. Graphene was discovered by Andre Geim here at Manchester by how it adhered to pieces of sticky tape used to clean graphite, and look — here are those pieces, lined up, black, translucent — just like graphene. It’s brilliant, actually.
I had managed to keep a low profile for the last week or so, by being in France, but there really was no avoiding it today. Welcome back to them all anyway — after all, they are why we here. (Yes, I do believe that still.)
However you make ‘miracle substance’ graphene, or go about making it into things once you’ve got it, you clearly need a lot of liquid nitrogen to do it with…. Early morning delivery here at the National Graphene Institute, from the big tanker out of shot to the right. And yes, I was on campus by just after 8am. How keen of me.
Joe and his fellow 14-year-olds returned to school. I returned to Manchester. It threw it down. There went the summer…. This picture is dull, I know. But it’s meant to be.
Definitely the most important Directorate of the University at this point in time. It is almost impossible to take a photograph anywhere in Manchester city centre without hitting some kind of building site at the moment (as I have observed numerous times recently); the University is certainly doing its bit for this architectural movement of 2017.
Being 42 