Tuesday 31st January 2017, 11.05am (day 1,986)
Although teaching term has restarted at Manchester, this guy still looked very much on his own in the corner of this particular campus café, and that’s what I was trying to capture.
Greenhouse café
Being 42
Life, one day at a time
Tag Archives: University of Manchester
View from my office (improved)
Friday 18th November 2016, 1.05pm (day 1,912)
Back in the foul summer of 2012, 29th August to be precise, the blog featured a photo of this building (the headquarters of AQA, the examinations authority) with a heavy storm brewing behind it. At that time the office from which I took the picture was occupied by an admin colleague, while I was stuck in a cold and dim room on the north side of the building, without a view, that I never liked and never felt at home in, which is why it never featured on the blog (I think only two pictures were ever taken in there). Happy to say that this summer I moved, and my view is now much better — although the weather looks much the same on this shot (but it’s November, rather than August, so we’ll let it off somewhat).
Campus masterplan
Thursday 10th November 2016, 9.15am (day 1,904)
As I’ve been saying for some years now it’s hard to point a camera anywhere in Manchester and not have a decent chance of capturing a building site. This particular one is being initiated by my employers at the University as the final piece (for now) in the “£1bn Campus Masterplan” as we must learn to call it. A massive new engineering building will rise here over the next couple of years, unless the whole economy tanks in the mean time of course. Which does not look as distant a project as it did a year ago.
Samuel Alexander Building
Monday 7th November 2016, 9.10am (day 1,901)
Apologies for the delay in posting. Mac fell into a coma on Monday morning. But some TLC from the Genius Bar has restored it to full health. Back on Monday, it was another lovely day in Manchester. Here’s the relatively monumental Sam Alex building (as most people on campus call it), named after a former professor of Philosophy at this august institution. I like the rim-lit shadowy figure to the right.
Crossing Oxford Road
Wednesday 2nd November 2016, 9.25am (day 1,896)
Sometimes things can improve. When I first started work at the University of Manchester in 2005 the campus was split in half by this traffic-choked urban throughway, one of the main A-roads of the whole country. It was really rather dismal. Slowly, by incremental steps, it has markedly improved, with most traffic now directed around the sides of the campus. The latest round of roadworks have now mostly gone and it is so much better than it was 11 years ago.
And another thing — there have been many reasons to be unhappy with 2016 in a global sense — but the UK’s autumn weather has not been one of them. Since mid-August it has mostly been tremendous. Same again today, for sure, a glorious autumn day.
After the party, the meeting
Thursday 27th October 2016, 3.05pm (day 1,890)
Took my bad post-party head into a day of teaching and meetings and it really was quite as exciting as this shot reflects. Clare has been trying to deconstruct this photo as I put together this post and seems to think this is about death and life juxtaposed, or something. So who am I to argue?
Wasted windfall
Friday 7th October 2016, 9.30am (day 1,870)
Thanks to the very good weather over the last few weeks (though it changed today), there has been a huge crop of apples this year. Our garden tree has produced so many that for the first time ever we have a surplus. Not as much as this tree however — or rather the tree implied above the upper edge of this shot — which resides on campus, near my office, and unfortunately isn’t the agricultural territory of anyone in particular so all this windfall has gone to waste.
Off on a trip tomorrow…. a new city and new country for the blog. Come back to find out where…
Lecture theatre
Tuesday 27th September 2016, 10.50am (day 1,860)
I’m sure this picture will simultaneously warm the hearts of traditionalists and chill those who believe in progress in educational technology, but the speaker here was not using the blackboard, I can assure you. Or, indeed, Blackboard. A second monochrome shot in two days but the white balance of the original was blown and this made it look a whole lot better (as is often the case).
On campus
Friday 23rd September 2016, 10.05am (day 1,856)
Most of the university campuses featured on this blog — and there have been a good many over the last five and a bit years, at least 20 I make it — have plenty of nice, green space. But the one on which I spend the most time, Manchester, has hardly any, it is the most urbanised, built-up campus I can think of. So it’s nice to picture some of its very rare green space on another very pleasant day. Even if this shot isn’t ‘green’ in the slightest. (It looked better in monochrome.)
Being 42 