On average, you probably haven’t heard of this guy, but in my field he’s quite a big name. We are lucky to have him as a part-time academic at the University of Manchester. I’ve heard him talk before, he’s a very expressive speaker, so I knew it wouldn’t be too hard to catch him in some kind of animated pose. The ‘practice’ on the board behind it also makes the shot — if you know the work he does.
First day in Manchester for three weeks; also the greyest, dampest day for some time. These things may or may not be connected. But it’s not yet term-time so things were much more subdued than normal.
Monday is a regular Manchester day in term-time. Some more random campus architecture then. The Sackville building was part of UMIST until that institution was eaten up by the University of Manchester in 2004. Not for much longer though — I believe the basic plan is to sell it off fairly soon (it’s been gradually emptied over the last few years) and in the near future will probably become luxury apartments with a bar on the ground floor that prices its drinks at a level designed to ensure the plebs don’t get in.
Another campus scene. I am reminded of that Terry Gilliam short film at the beginning of Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life, when a Victorian office building swathed in scaffolding like this sets sail as the covers billow out in the wind. Does the hole spoil it? Maybe, but I left it in anyway.
Now I said back in December that I thought I had seen very, very early blossom on the University of Manchester campus, but it turned out to be a winter flowering cherry. However, this, definitively, is traditional, spring cherry blossom in flower on 19th February; they are in the courtyard within my office building on the campus. Well, I said it’d been a very mild winter — unlike in North America where the Great Lakes are almost fully frozen, and very unlike last year here.
I took my students around the library today, hoping to look at it with active and fresh eyes, at least, that was the plan. I’m trying to do the same with this photograph. Not one of them admitted to having used microfilm before as an information medium — and it’s a good 10 years since I did, and then only once or twice.
Incidentally it’s a year to the day since I arrived in New Zealand.
To mark day 900 of the blog let’s return to this common theme — Well-Lit Moments on the Manchester University Campus. And as it is a round number day, I’ve got round to updating the Best of the Rest and Stats pages, if you are interested (though I admit I do these mainly for myself…).
The Academy is the University of Manchester’s principal music venue, and has appeared a couple of times on this blog from the inside, most recently a few weeks ago when we saw Gogol Bordello there. So here it is from the outside, one of its facets anyway, a study in line and shadow.
Snapped for no other reason than I liked the image. There is no deeper agenda. Another pleasantly sunny winter’s day in Manchester.
Rainbows are a kind of cheap shot, but they usually offer something — you at least know there will be colour, shadow and light all around somewhere. This was taken from inside, after I glimpsed the possibility while drifting off in the post-lunch death slot at the seminar I attended today. There’s a double rainbow visible if you look closely.
Incidentally, this is Alan Turing’s second memorial appearance on the blog after his statue made it back last year.
Being 42 