Some pictures must be taken, some things must be blogged. Photography and pop culture.
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.
Mum and dad and a little gosling. On my walk in New Islington.
The baby gosling then got into the water and swam and made noise while it was at it, as if to shout: “look, mummy, look daddy, I can swim like you!”
The title is a bit of a cheat, because it’s really only the first photo that encompasses it. I’m bad, what can I say.
The bee is a symbol of 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!
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.
This weekend’s challenge on Weekly Prompts is Two.
My contribution is two (ahhh double fulfilment) shots of a pair of geese that I saw casually strolling in the Manchester city centre.
It’s the geese that were casually strolling, not me. I was on my way home from work (I work in the office one day a week.)
Geese are not an unusual sight in Manchester, they occupy the city’s canals (the other day, when out photographing, I witnessed what I’m pretty sure was a geese marital argument), but they don’t come to this location, Piccadilly Gardens.
I wonder what they were doing.
It’s actually only one canal–Rochdale Canal–but the plural sounds better as a title.
It runs between Sowerby Bridge in West Yorkshire and Manchester. I walked along part of it that flows through Manchester city centre and took some pictures.
Canal Street, aka Gay Village.
Lock in Canal Street.
Reflection of a typical Manchester architecture.
Tunnel.
Ducks, my old friends.
Goose posing for me.
I went back and forth about whether to post this or not. It made sense to do so, yet–as you can see, it’s not the best photograph:
That’s the problem with photographing displays in museum that are behind glass. The reflection. And not the kind of reflection I usually go for!
The label up close:
So this lab coat is displayed in the Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester. It’s right next to the Baby, the first computer ever constructed. Geoff Tootill worked on it, together with Alan Turing and others. Alan Turing is, of course, the best known one, the father of modern computing. I’ve previously posted pics of his statue in Sackville Gardens in Manchester. You might also know him from the film The Imitation Game, where he was played by Benedict Cumberbatch.
I’ve been to the Science and Industry Museum many times. But it was only on my last visit there, in June, that I paid any attention to the lab coat. I immediately thought: that looks like something from an old sci-fi, like Isaac Asimov! But I think it was a different short story I read recently that made me look at the lab coat. It is by an author who you would not think of when it comes to sci-fi–Daphne du Maurier! The story’s title is The Breakthrough. It’s included as a bonus in my Kindle version of The Birds and Other Stories. I was very surprised to read it, it has almost a dystopian feel, but fiction set in labs and science institutes evokes that feel in me. Basically, it’s like Frankenstein, except two centuries later. Proves that Daphne du Maurier had a range.
Anyway, that’s concludes my lab coat post.
Even in the world of geese, it’s not always peace and harmony.
Now you go and sulk!
It’s the neighbourhood of Manchester with independent shops and restaurants, right in the city centre. It’s about time I posted some pictures of it.
Oldham Street.
Establishments on Oldham Street.
Popular comic book shop, Forbidden Planet. Taking this picture was quite a mission–coming here on Saturday wasn’t exactly my brightest idea. I had to wait for ages to snap this and then I only had a second or two before a car got into my shot!
Graffiti next to a barber shop. I didn’t have the heart to crop out the dog.
Stevenson Square.
A side street off Stevenson Square with more graffiti.
Some Photoblog 