Maybe I have seen apple blossom flowering in north-west England, in December, before. But if I have, I didn’t photograph it. Well, there you go. It’s been mild…
(POSTSCRIPT: my mother, fount of knowledge on all things botanical, suggests this is probably a winter flowering cherry. So there you go. It’s still been very mild, however.)
I’m still without proper photo management software and it may be into January before I get it back, so I shall have to make do. It was my students’ graduation day today, I did get photos of the event but in the end I have gone with this one — largely because of Shaun the Sheep’s appearance, which amuses me.
After six days in a row without leaving Hebden Bridge, I make it into campus. Here’s a scene from near our building: the very finely-named Whitworth Park halls of residence (my surname is Whitworth in case you didn’t know).
The more significant event today was that the hard drive on my old MacBook has failed, which is going to make it trickier to do my photos properly until I get my new one, which may not now arrive until after Christmas. Bear with me… the photos are still being taken, but they almost certainly won’t get posted on a daily basis.
This will be a long run of pictures from only Hebden Bridge and Manchester. These will continue to be rich seams for photography as long as the light is right, which it certainly was today. And the other astonishing, perhaps even unrepeatable feature of this shot is that there is NO TRAFFIC. Just for a moment.
A second day beset by more Russians than is considered the usual amount; and two awful train journeys, particularly the one going home. This oasis stands reasonbly close to my office and I’m surprised it’s never featured on the blog before day 819, to be honest.
And no, I couldn’t say exactly what he’s doing. Occam’s Razor suggests ‘eating’, but what, I don’t know.
You’ve seen plenty of photos of me in Moscow; for a change here is a Russian in Manchester, namely Olga, making her presentation at a sort-of conference I organised for them today. I like the way her hand has been caught in mid-gesture. They sure saw Manchester in a diversity of weather today, anyway — wild mood swings from foul to sun to foul again.
This is one of those places that is either totally empty or heaving with people. Better this way, I think. A study in colour and form from the University Place building on campus.
Coat and thermos flask notwithstanding, the fact one can be doing this in Manchester in mid-November is a sign that we continue to have plenty of mild weather. The more insane newspapers in the UK seem convinced that the storm that has hit the Philippines will somehow leap two oceans and half a world and, specifically, hit middle-class districts of the UK in the next few days, but there’s no evidence of this. (There never is very much evidence for anything included in the insane newspapers.)
The building where my office is located in Manchester (better than saying ‘where I work’… I work all over), is something of a concrete monstrosity, but it is wrapped around this nice courtyard with a highly concealed entrance, so no one ever goes there. But I have discovered it; it’s very nice, particularly at this time of year. I know it’s easy to overdo the ‘autumn leaves’ thing but it’s a good standby on days when there’s not much else to capture.
John Owens made his fortune in the early 1800s, it seems in two ways — first through cotton trading, and secondly by “keeping no company whatsoever” and spending every evening in, reading books (according to contemporary accounts). On his death, with no children — unsurprising, with those habits — he left a substantial sum of money towards the foundation of Owens College, now a part of the University of Manchester, and also made it a condition of his will that no student nor member of the faculty in that institution would ever have to “pass a religious test” to achieve their status. He might not have been much of a party animal, but at least he had a sensible lack of zealotry along with it.
Being 42 