One for the occasional series, “machines enjoying doing their jobs”? (A previous entry here….). Or just an additional depiction of the rebuilding of Manchester’s entire city centre? If theories of capitalism and ‘creative destruction’ are right, by 2050 this could become the world norm.
Last day in Manchester, for work purposes, until August 16th. Let’s note this annual moment in time — the threshold of my summer holiday — with a picture of a rather nice room on campus which, grandiose as it is, seems hardly ever to be used.
I had a more artistic photo to potentially use today but if I wanted to epitomise the day then this was the one. The sun comes out, the thermometer rises, and a hundred members of Manchester staff and students queued up at the single ice cream van that had the nous to make an appearance on campus.
A row of tents, from which are emerging a range of nice-smelling foodstuffs each lunchtime, seems to have established itself recently on Bridgeford Street on the uni campus. Probably it is just an exam season thing, but they seem to be getting enough business to make it a viable permanent fixture.
Bless ’em, look, they’re all working…. only took all year 🙂 We have entered the last week of teaching for me in Manchester in 2015-16.
Since the teaching term recommenced for me on 13th April I have offered 15 consecutive pictures either at home in Hebden or in Manchester for work. The fence on the left of this shot represents the limit of my present world.
I know this would perhaps be a better photo if the traffic cone in the middle distance weren’t there. But while I could have moved it, I say that on this blog no shot is posed or staged in any way. So let’s see it as just one of those little blemishes that proves the fallibility of all my efforts, or something like that.
Teaching has restarted after the Easter break so I guess I should put in the occasional appearance on campus. It’s also that time of year when the assignment kicks in on the video production course, and some students develop an urge to point cameras at me and others for educational ends. Shen (left, from China) and Gatya (Indonesia) here anticipate that I will be able to talk about something interesting over the next ten minutes or so.
A rare appearance on the blog for my office: the sharp-eyed may note the newspaper cutting on the wall celebrating Brighton’s League Cup victory over Manchester City in 2009. And why not.
I don’t often do shots of working life, usually because it’s neither very interesting, nor very appropriate to stick cameras in the face of people I’m working with. But today should be a work shot, to mark the end of a bloody busy week. And I get away with it today and I like it because though both these people, Liz and Doug, have played a relatively significant role in my life over the last whatever years they have never met before today. Doug’s second appearance on the blog (after this one), Liz’s first.
Perhaps it’s a political statement. Perhaps it’s a metaphor for someone’s life: perhaps my own. Perhaps it’s just a picture of a car park barrier. Your call.
On the blog’s second-ever February 29th, things didn’t get much more exciting than on 29/2/12, as I pack ’em in for my 1:00 matinee show.
Being 42 