On a wild and windy day at Salford Quays
Wednesday, December 28, 2011
One hundred and thirty-seven: paper dragon
Bought in London at Muji, and now living on top of the television set.
One hundred and thirty-six: ruined landscape
This is what happens when you roast a sticky-glazed prime rib in a cheap roasting tin, and then try to use caustic soda to get rid of the sticky baked on goop. Needless to say, the pan is ruined.
Monday, July 4, 2011
One hundred and thirty-three: mushrooms
From what I would call the muti market, in Guangzhou. The market where the stalls sell all sorts of things that could be food, could be medicine, could be magic. Could be anything at all
One hundred and thirty: shandong pancake
These are incredible, crispy pancakes filled with veggie things and this tangy, spicy sauce. He makes them in front of you, from his little stand at the campus gates, and they cost all of 3RMB, about 25p. Yum
Saturday, June 4, 2011
One hundred and twenty-seven: faces
This is a wall of mediaeval carved faces in the V & A, all gazing at the opposite wall.
One hundred and twenty-six: alien
I have always been fascinated by this glass object that hangs in the main atrium of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. I don't know much about it, but it is so weird and compelling that I can't resist. It wasn't this dark - I was tryig to catch the flare of light around the sides of it.
One hundred and twenty-five: picture-in-picture
This is a picture of a picture by David Goldblatt of Strijdom Square in Pretoria, now known as something else. JG Strijdom was one of the several people credited with being the "father of apartheid", and this square in central Pretoria was one of the many examples of an architectural style that can only be described as 'brute Afrikaner'. When we were kids we spent some time in this square, being as it was, close to where we had speech lessons (do kids still take speech lessons - learning how to recite poetry and read?), and I remember waiting here many times for Elizabeth's class to finish so we could go home.
I also remember my mother being very entertained by the fact that one year after rag week a group of students had planted empty beer bottles in Strijdom's ears.
At some point in the late nineties, the parkade under Strijdom Square collapsed, sending old JG's head plummeting into the depths. A more fitting end I cannot imagine.
One hundred and twenty-four: newsroom
Well, so much for the paperless office. This is the desk of an unidentified reporter, and well, it looks like many other reporters' desks that I've seen over the years. I am an anomaly in that I can usually see my keyboard, mouse and phone, and can even find a place for my coffee cup.
One hundred and twenty-three: Holland Park
Holland Park is one of London's many parks, and one of my favourite. It's not hugely touristy, not being close to major attractions, or famous in and of itself, so it tends to have people just kind of hanging out, exercising, picnicking, playing frisbee, just doing stuff. It's a great place to people-watch, in fact.
One hundred and twenty-two: ummmm, ok
This is the unlikely sight that greets visitors to the office of both The Independent newspaper (as well as its sister publication, "i" and the London Evening Standard), along with The Daily Mail (and Metro). That's the esteemed Lord Northcliffe under the fountain, the man who invented the tabloid newspaper, and that's a couch shaped like a giant pair of lips.
OK.
Monday, May 30, 2011
One hundred and twenty-one: hamentaschen
I'm baking today. It's a bank holiday, and tomorrow there is a three-hour-long academic meeting. Way back when, I promised my colleagues that if they distrubuted my survey request to all of their former students, I would bake them cookies for this meeting. I don't know whether they have done that, but since then I've also had to deal with the chaos of getting people to double-mark sixty project modules, and while it is part of everyone's job, I do feel like I've been asking favours of people, so I figured I'd bake cookies. These are hamentashcen, which I love, although filled with plum jam, not poppyseeds, this time.
One hundred and twenty: couch surfing
There is a discussion going on among friends of mine about cats on the backs of couches (yes, I know, we have such intellectual and high-brow conversations), and well, this is my contribution: Giles on the back of the couch.
Thursday, May 26, 2011
One hundred and nineteen: homeward bound
These geese on the King's Staithe in York have such an air of purpose to them: marching off home after a hard days' paddling, I like to imagine.
One hundred and eighteen: classic
This is the river Ouze, in York, and a more classic scene of English river tranquility you could not imagine.
One hundred and seventeen: waves
This is actually the roof of York railway station. I love the Victorians' ways with iron, glass and brickwork, and the grand sweep of the rail lines into York is reflected in the sweep of the roof, which curves round, like a shell.
One hundred and sixteen: futility
When the solar panels went up on campus (there are two of them) people cracked lots of jokes about the futility of trying to make electricity from sunlight in the [supposedly] wettest place in England. I like them, though, they add a certain eerie sci-fi feel to the place, moving as they do, to follow the sun, or the place where the sun should be.
One hundred and fifteen: zombie apocalypse
Another phone pic, this one explaining why the university bookshop has closed. It's appropriate, as far as I'm concerned: a university without a bookshop being one of the harbingers of the apocalypse.
Saturday, May 21, 2011
One hundred and fourteen: Stickers
The sticker in the middle originally said "why not hang a fascist from this lamppost?" It's been there a while, and I've wondered about it a lot. Recently, someone scratched out "a fascist" very clearly and deliberately, later, someone added the sticker for the Manchester Ant-Fascist alliance. I don't think the Gohar Shahi poster has anything to do with either of these things, though.
It's all quite odd, especially since the original sticker predates the English Defense League march in Preston earlier this year.
One Hundred and thirteen: hmmm
This was taken at Data Journalism Camp in Manchester, an event I was involved in with Francois Nel and Tom Johnson. This is Francis Irving, from a company called ScraperWiki that creates tools for data scraping and does it for companies with money as well.
That's Jon Snow of Channel 4 news behind him - they worked on a big project with Channel 4 recently, and Francis was discussing it.
Thursday, May 19, 2011
One hundred and twelve: teeny tiny functional hotel room
In Manchester. And yes, I know, it's 40 minutes away on the train. Except, in true English travel fashion, it's not, it's good hour and a half, and not in rush hour, or after 8pm or before 8am. I need to be here early, and needed to be here late, and well, teeny tiny functional hotel rooms go for £33 a night, and I'm not paying.
It doesn't have a kettle, but it has everything else you could need, two beds, a shower, a toilet (in an enclosure so small you have to get undressed outside and back in to it), sink, TV set. Only one power outlet, though.
Oh well, you can't have everything.
Tuesday, May 17, 2011
One hundred and eleven: spikey!
At this rate, it's going to take two years to do 365 pictures, and you know what, I think I may be happy with that.
Some days, I forget completely, some days, I just don't have time to think of anything at all. I may start uploading two a day, if I have time and space to take multiple pics, but until then, this will have to do.
I like little flowers. I like unassuming flowers, and these are both, hanging on a bush on campus. As usual, I have no idea what they are.
Sunday, May 15, 2011
One hundred and ten: soup
Or, more specifically, organic veg box soup. We get a box of assorted organic veg every week, and every now and again we look at the overflowing veg crisper and think "it's time for soup". This is minestrone, with, I think, four kinds of brassicas in it, and very good it was too.
I've been very busy, writing and marking, and have barely left the house. It's not going to get much better any time soon, so expect lots of pics of food and knick knacks. Plus, the weather's turned foul again.
Friday, May 13, 2011
One hundred and nine: hungry
This is a sight and sound that greets me every few hours, whenever I am home. I suspect it carries on in the night, but I sleep through it. Oliver is hungry. So so very hungry. He's starving, he hasn't been fed since before the rinderpest and that time, the black cat ate all his food. And all the other times. He's never had any food. Ever.
And so on and so on and so on.
When we first got him, we figured he had been neglected or something, but FIVE years later, he's still doing it.
And believe me, we feed him. The guy who delivers groceries for us must think we're running a shelter - pretty much all we buy is a truckload of cat food and some coffee. And Oliver eats it, and stays skinny.
Cat has several hollow legs, he does.
One hundred and eight: sky
I was in Manchester all day and forgot my camera, so this was taken on my mobile phone while waiting for the bus home. This is looking up Friargate, the main road north from the city centre. There are several pairs of shoes dangling from the overhead phone lines, I have no idea why, but this was really about the sky, which was an appealing mackerel pattern.
Tuesday, May 10, 2011
One hundred and seven: wordle
This is kind of cheating, I know, since it's not a photograph, and really only a picture in that it is a graphic rendition of words, but it's what I've been doing.
This is based on about 15000 words of my research, the most recent 2000 of which were created today or yesterday. It's pretty slow going - at one point I had realised I had spent 35 minutes tweaking data in order to get enough information to write ONE sentence. One whole sentence, and not even a very long one, at that.
Oh well, at least the 'puter's co-operating.
Monday, May 9, 2011
One hundred and six: innards
This is the inside of my main computer, a Sony laptop. It's never a good thing when you can see the innards of pretty much anything, and that is as true of today as ever.
I caught some kind of blackmailware yesterday, one of those things that make you think you have a virus and then pay them to remove it. I've had it before, so this time I leapt into action and removed it, I thought. The problem is, though, that this particular make and model of computer has an overheating problem, and something along the way started to trigger that, so I opened it up to let some of the crap out from the fan and generally let it breathe and cool down.
It's still not quite right, but it seems to be getting better, I think. Wish me luck - much as I love my netbook I would rather not do all my marking and writing for the next month on this dinky little keyboard and screen.
Sunday, May 8, 2011
One hundred and five: bluebells
Bluebells are a mythical kind of flower to me. They seemed to feature heavily in the very old-fashioned children's stories and poems we read (or had read to us), and I always imagined them much larger, and more sky blue than they actually are. I like them better this way, delicate and subtle
Here in England they're a protected species, and bluebell woods are highly prized locations to visit. This isn't one of them, it's a neighbour's front garden (that's the lid of city of Preston recycling box you see there in the bottom left corner), but they're still lovely.
Saturday, May 7, 2011
One hundred and four: Frogged
This is the result of having to undo most of a sleeve for the cardigan I'm knitting because I stupidly thought I remembered the pattern. I didn't.
Full-scale ripping out of knitting is called frogging, because ripping out sounds like ribbet. Working backwards in a row to fix a recent mistake is called tinking, ie, knitting, backwards.
The things you learn from me.
Thursday, May 5, 2011
One hundred and three: earworm
Today I had to go to Blackburn, Lancashire, for a doctor's appointment and I have been plagued by an earworm the whole day.
You bet I went looking for holes to photograph but I couldn't find any, so you will have to settle for this rather strange building facade. I don't believe the text has anything to do with the bull's head, which is also above the doorway of the place next door, which seems to be a night club. All very odd.
Edited to add: apparently this building is Thwaites House, which may well be the original headquarters of Thwaites, a large northern brewery, although I still don't understand the bulls. Thwaites' logo is two horses' heads.
Wednesday, May 4, 2011
One hundred and two: sky
England doesn't really do the dramatic skies, at least not in the way Africa does, but this did catch my eye. The tree is a local one, just a block or so away, and although everything else is green, it is showing only the faintest of reddish buds, even now.
Tuesday, May 3, 2011
One hundred and one: flowers
This is a random bush on campus, and I'm afraid I have no idea what it is. Although this looks rather like a hydrangea, this bloom is much smaller, about eight cm across, and the bush is much bigger and bushier, with fewer blooms on it than a hydrangea would have.
I love white flowers, and loose and soft flowers, like these ones. I like things that look fairly natural and unforced, unmanipulated. Of course, having no idea what this is, it could well be some weird artificial hybrid never seen in nature, but I like it any way.
Monday, May 2, 2011
One hundred: object
This is a little pewter object that we found in a flea market in Glasgow. We don't know what it is, although the shape seems somewhat religious to me (although the shell is not, I suppose). It's beautifully made, and doesn't seem to have been used, but then, pewter never really looks used.
It's a lovely, odd, unintelligible thing.
Sunday, May 1, 2011
Ninety-nine: Mill
This is Tulketh Mill, just up the road from us, and clearly the most important building in the neighbourhood. It was a cotton mill, the largest and most modern in Preston when it opened in 1905, but it didn't last long as such. THe cotton industry went into decline after world war one, and by the 1960s the mill had shut down. It was converted into a distribution centre for Littlewoods, a clothing catalogue company, and then in 2005 was turned into a call centre for a mobile phone company, which is what it still is. They've been building a kind of strip mall along the Blackpool road frontage which will house a couple of restaurants and a Tesco's I believe.
The Tesco's is sneaky. When we first moved here there had just been a fight to prevent a Tesco's opening up across the road from the mill, which had been won by the anti-Tesco's campaigners, led chiefly by the Booth's supermarket a few blocks away. Since then, the Booths has become less a supermarket than a convenience store, doubling the amount of booze it stocks and severely limiting the amount of fresh and raw food. Personally, I'm hoping for the Tesco's to bring some competition back.
Saturday, April 30, 2011
Ninety-eight: shades
Prescription sunglasses are one of the things I really can't do without. I hate bright light, and even in England the sun is too much for me. I can't function very well without glasses of some kind, so prescription sunglasses it is.
These are new, I left my old ones in restaurant in Liverpool a few months back, and couldn't get them back. They were old, though, and the script gave me a headache, so new ones it is. These are pretty funky - they're purple on the inside of the frame, and unfortunately, have a bit of bling on the arms, but less than most frames these days. Why does everyone assume that all women want to wear rhinestones on their glasses, anyway?
Friday, April 29, 2011
Ninety-seven: Moomin
We grew up reading Tove Jansson, who my mother absolutely loved. It was years and years before I ever met anyone who had ever heard of the Moomins, but recently, they seem to have undergone something of a retro-revival. This is a coaster from a funky scandinavian shop in Bath (I also bought a moose for my key chain), and one of my favourite drawings from the books.
Ninety-six: Roman
This is a sculpture of some Roman emperor on the rebuilt walls of the old baths in Bath. It was sculpted by an Englishman in the late nineteenth century, almost certainly using a local model, because that is an English profile if ever I saw one.
Ninety-four: perspective
The royal crescent. With seagull. The Georgians loved symmetry, and everything had to be symmetrical. I feel rather subversive taking this sweep of the crescent from one side, with the grass looking a bit lopsided, as though the seagull might slide down to the right.
Ninety-three: Shelter
Bath is obsessed with Romans. It was once a Roman town, and when the fashionistas of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries rediscovered it, they brought with them their obsession with classical culture and architecture. So Bath is a classical Roman town, rebuilt by English people out of local limestone. There's a lot of angular pediments and sculpture, like this one, slowly crumbling away, because limestone is not marble.
Sunday, April 24, 2011
Ninety-two: garden
We have a handkerchief-sized garden, and it doesn't get a lot of sun. It's also very windy.
So, Martin uses the kitchen windowsill as a kind of greenhouse, and then moves everything outside to sit in the sun when we get it. So this is a patch of garden with all the currently-growing juvenile plants, and the ancient watering can that Martin collects rainwater in.
Among the seedlings here is catnip. I have my doubts about its long-term survival, personally, but Martin doesn't seem worried that he'll look outisde one day to discover Oliver has torn up everything to get at the 'nip.
Saturday, April 23, 2011
Ninety-one: pirates ahoy!
Also along the canal there appear to be pirates.
On one side of the canal is the path, on the other side the properties go down to the water along a fairly steep incline. Each property has a long strip of garden which opens on to the water. They look like nice properties, with bigger gardens than most in the neighbourhood, and because of the canal, the gardens get more sunlight than the pocket-handkerchief gardens surrounded by two-story houses that most of us have.
Looking into people's gardens is one of the joys of walking along the canal, and I have always wondered about these guys - they don't seem very rapacious, or maybe they're actually hackers, who knows?
Friday, April 22, 2011
Ninety: one of these things...
is not like the other ones.
There have been ducklings for some time now, and I knew I had to go and photograph them. Of the four or so duck families on the canal, this is the only yellow duckling. THere is a pair of white ducks further dow, whose babies I haven't seen yet - could this one be a changeling from them, I wonder?
While I was watching there was something of a squabble between him and some siblings, but he rushed over to the mama duck and she protected him, so at least he's well loved by someone.
Thursday, April 21, 2011
Eighty-nine: patterns
For as long as I can remember I have been fascinated by geometric patterns. I drew them constantly when I was a kid, and still doodle them all the time. My notebooks (which are square-ruled), are covered in doodles of geometric patterns.
I am fascinated by quilts and other evidence of patterns, such as this carpet, which lives in the living room. This is just the central motif - the carpet itself is about four times this size.
I also love the tiny amount of sky blue - it just lifts the whole thing up.
Wednesday, April 20, 2011
Eighty-eight
It's been a while, a busy busy, sick and more busy while. Sorry.
Martin and I really like old bottles and containers. This one, he picked up from a fleamarket vendor in Rosebank and I suspect it still contains what it says on he tin, although we've never tested it.
Rosebank used to have a proper flea market, second-hand stuff, homemade cakes, old books, all sorts of enjoyable miscellania. Over the years, however, it has gotten posher and posher, and the last time I was there, last winter, it was all designer honey and artisan bread and handmade jewellery, still lovely in its own way, but not quite the same. Because of this, a kind of alternative flea market sprung up in the neighbourhood, next to Johnnic (now Avusa)'s offices. This is the real deal, second-hand clothing, old kitchen kit, and this old guy with the most interesting collection of stuff, including this, which has now traveled through three countries with us, breaking all sorts of laws along the way, we assume.
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