Not every photo that makes it up here is picked for artistic reasons (some would say that few of them are). The point of the choices is also to try to epitomise a day somehow. And I spent most of today in rooms, talking to people, while cruddy drizzle came down outside.
Are there bees up on the museum roof (as viewed this morning from my meeting in the adjacent Arthur Lewis Building)? Or have the tropical frogs escaped? What is the builder carrying in the orange swag bag? Inquiring minds want to know.
I mean, really. Did you have to cope with this kind of stuff before 10am this morning?
And bearing in mind this guy is German, a philosopher, with a brilliant mind — does he not (with all due respect) win the ‘walking cliché of the month’ award?
The weather stays very fine. If one can find a piece of green space on the University campus — not always straightforward, seeing as there’s not much of it — there are far worse places to prepare for imminent exams.
I do spend time in Manchester now and again you know, when I’m not being distracted by snails (see yesterday) then campus can be a reasonably attractive spot.
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.
Being 42 