It’s getting toward the end of the academic year, and our students would like to get jobs of some kind (I presume) so we ran a ‘careers event’ this evening featuring students old and new. Annalisa, on the left, graduated from the degree a decade ago now: Irene, on the right, last year. Kenji behind seems excited about something. Good luck to them all in their various futures.
Office-wise I’ve been based in the Ellen Wilkinson Building for nearly 12 years now but have little reason to venture up to its sixth floor (if you live in most of the rest of the world, its seventh). When I do I am reminded what a decent view it has, even if today the light wasn’t as it could be. But there’s quite a distance in sight here, south to the Derbyshire Pennines, and the tower of Manchester Royal Infirmary nearer the camera.
I post this picture also to launch myself on one of these mini blog-projects that sometimes motivate me. Coming up: eleven different photo locations in eleven days. Let’s do it.
Found myself in the Physics and Astronomy building on Manchester today, named for Arthur Schuster, physicist and coiner of the term ‘antimatter’ whose bust in the foyer currently sports a rather fetching pink bow tie and fluffy rabbit ears. And why not.
I am here to work rather than just swan around visiting shrines, so here is a picture of that side of my life. We are trying to persuade Japanese potential students to come and study in Manchester — many of whom are vastly intelligent, fluent in English and would be obvious assets to the intellectual community, only you try telling this to certain elements in the reactionary press. Anyway, ignoring this aspect of our lives my colleague James, on the left, and his temporary client, seem happy enough as they discuss how to arrange this. I like this picture, it makes it feel like our presence here has a real positive point.
Not the most exciting photo either but at least it indicates I had schlepped my way down to campus for the first time since March 2nd. Which, like most of Manchester has been throughout the whole lifetime of this blog, is being rebuilt — here, the Business School, part of the whole ‘campus masterplan’ that will turn us into some world-leading something-or-other, if the money doesn’t run out first, anyway.
I do say that on this blog no pictures are staged or posed, and this is the case — I do not arrange any photos specifically to be a blog post, I just take pictures of what’s happening around me at any given time. This is perhaps on the borderline of acceptability then but I did take this photo anyway, for other purposes, and it was the one that I liked best today. My Educational Technology and Communication students on their annual field trip to the National Football Museum in Manchester, with replicas of the Premier League and FA Cup trophies.
An ‘installation’, I guess you’d call this, on campus at the moment…. Probably a huge amount of sociological analysis to be done here.
And how would I answer this question? Well, my bucket list is actually getting a few things ticked off it this year, if all works out (e.g. Japan, midnight sun, eclipse), so maybe I should think of some new ones. Or be all Zen about it, accept that my life could end at any time, and just take what’s coming — while continuing to faithfully record it of course.
As of a couple of years ago our Meteorological Office started naming our winter storms in accordance with the convention for hurricanes, cyclones etc. — it’s more media-friendly, you can tweet about #StormDoris which is the one which apparently hit the UK today. I don’t personally know anyone called Doris, but I have gone off the name after today — however, we could of course have Storm Drew at this time next year.
Our multimedia guy, Peter, gets himself set up ready to film me talking about something or other in my office. I had to sound reasonably intelligent but really, it’s not going to make your day more interesting if you knew what the subject matter had been.
I spent the last few hours of the working week as an examiner for some assessed presentations. A stream of fresh and (usually) interesting 20- to 21-year-olds coming in to convince us of their plans for world domination. And you know? A few of them have a shot at it. I like this shot because of the tea ladies in the background (they had just cleared away the detritus of the morning shift), the left-hand student’s incipient bubblegum moment, the relatively grand surroundings of the very finely-named Whitworth building…. And that it’s Friday. I’ve had a 6-day week, I need a weekend.
Being 42 