downtime

(caption: what I discovered when we were up in the Lakes a fortnight ago…)







So it's time to retreat to M's homeland for a while and:
Put up the tent
Climb some Munros
Learn to sail
Eat, drink and make merry
Use our National Trust membership
Have our annual “state of the nation” conversation about life, the universe and us
And generally relax…

See you on the other side.

a nice pint

God love 8th Day for starting stocking milk in glass pint bottles!

Easy on the eye. Kind to the planet. Entirely reuseable. An icon of childhood.

writing on the wall...

Photo credit: Gawain Forster

Band on the Wall has a long and enviable history. Starting life as a pub called 'George and Dragon' in 1803, it was a pub, hotel, and entertainment venue for more than 150 years before being saved in the mid 1970s by jazzer, Steve Morris. Thousands of acts have played there over the years, including John Cooper Clarke, Joy Division, The Fall, and The Buzzcocks.

Having taken the decision to close in 2005, to do vital building work and reinvent the venue yet again, it now seems as if the funding is proving harder to find than anyone would have thought. And now there's an online petition to sign if you want to show solidarity. For a venue that's shown support to so many over the years - punters, bands, young people, the city and its cultural identity - it would seem a shame if a few of us can't find ways to support it now.

Good luck guys...

gareth asks... what is blogging for?

Something I often ask myself.

Somehow the pub-conversation-translated-into-a-post topics seem to get more comments than anything else I put up... Hmmm - a problem with my choice of subject matters/ writing or the readership, or both?

you whitewash the city if you whitewash me

We've got a local and prolific rapper-grafitti artist.

S/he likes to write in black marker pen on the Mancunian Way bridge pillars that come down on to the Oxford Road pavement.

Lately the council have started whitewashing the pillars to remove the stencils, grafitti, tags, etc.

Hence this latest verse...

if you're a U2 fan, you have to have a sense of humour...

...and this John Harris quote made me laugh out loud.

"Now, I have never much liked U2, neither in their Pained Artists in String Vests phase, nor the Ironic Media Studies Project on a Big Budget period that followed it, nor the post-All That You Can't Leave Behind incarnation that seems to lie somewhere between the two."

proof that our arty/ boho-chic run-down office was once a handsome town house

mountain weather information service

A really pracitcal site for checking to see whether the weather will do what you need when climbing the highest of peaks...

A brilliant service and a great help.

outed!

I've sort of outed myself as a solo-blogger to a few folk now (in addition to posting on a journal site for work, and at Sanctus1 and dekhomai).

Actually - now I see why I've been too busy to write one previously...

By George - how is this 'news' exactly?

the roof of oxford road station

spotted - misc#1

I saw the heron on the canal on my way to work again this morning, and took its picture.

Yep - it is that dark blob to the left of the pic, standing on the bank looking into the water...

And last night there was the most amazing, huge, round, orange harvest moon. Gorgeous.

1 Hillcourt Street

pigeons and seagulls

Two sides of the same pesky avian coin...

the result of this morning's walk to work