Tag: Canon DSLR

Look Up, The Skies Are Blue

We’ve had some nice blue skies in Manchester this spring. I have, as ever, been taking pictures. Here I want to offer you two contrasting photographs.

Picture of a blue sky and white clouds with modern architecture and street lights:

Picture of a blue sky and white clouds framed by trees:

And no, they don’t fight. As I always say, both is good.

New Islington, Manchester

I finally made my way there.

New Islington is a new development area near the city centre. (More info here.)

As I walked along the canal with my camera, I was asked by people to take their picture–all of three times. It does happen–but not three times during the same walk, in the span of about 10 minutes! I felt like I was living in a story.

The first time was two middle-aged men sitting on a bench; the second time two young men sitting on a bench–one of them actually stood up and approached me and even offered me money! (I said no, it’s just a hobby)–the third time was a group of young people from Liverpool. I did actually take their picture, but with one of their phones, not my camera.

What made me depressed, though, was that on two out of those three occasions I was asked “where are you from”, after speaking a bare one or two lines. I either ignore those type of questions or answer “Europe” or, like yesterday to those two older men (who were clearly Indian and spoke accented English themselves), “planet Earth”. Look, I hate my accent as much as you do and yeah, twenty years of living here I should not be speaking like that, but what can I do? Speaking is a skill I always lacked. Writing is my more of my thing. I don’t know what I should do, book some voice coaching lessons or what…

Well, this post escalated somewhere it shouldn’t have, so uh… hope you like the pictures. It’s been a nice sunny weekend here in Manchester!

Spring With Agatha Christie

Some time ago, I had a thought about my favourite author: there is an Agatha Christie story for every season. I thought about Death on the Nile and Evil under the Sun for summer, Sittaford Mystery and Murder on the Orient Express, as well as the play Mousetrap, for winter. Autumn being, of course, as the proper time for mysteries, a no brainer. (Plus the gothic/supernatural/horror stories she wrote that are not as well known as her mysteries–she was a versatile writer, make no mistake about that.) Then there are the seasonal novels Hercule Poirot’s Christmas and Halloween Party. But I struggled to think of a story for spring; nothing immediately came to mind.

In recent years, Agatha’s estate have been releasing collections of short stories based on a theme. We’ve had Midwinter Murder and Midsummer Mysteries. And now they published a new one, and guess what! Meet Sinister Spring.

I bought it and did some still life photos of it, as usual.

I hope you’re having a good spring and that if it’s sinister, it’s only in fiction.

Thank You, Manchester

For being my home for twenty years.

Portland Street.

Midland Hotel.

Spire of Manchester Cathedral.

Beetham Tower through the trees of St John’s Gardens.

Ducks and geese in the canals at Castlefield.

Canal Street aka Gay Village.

To (mis)quote Fatboy Slim, we’ve come a long way together and I have to praise you like I should. The city has changed a lot since 2003 when I arrived here to take up a placement as an au-pair. So have I, hopefully, more towards the improvement way.

Note, Manchester is not gloomy. I took these pictures earlier in the year, during winter time. Hence the greyness.

Note 2, the anniversary is not on the day of the publication of this post, but it is this week.

Note 3, the top picture was taken with my smartphone, the rest with my camera.