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.
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.
