This is a pub close to campus. It’s the ‘nicest’ pub, and the only one I ever go to. I have lunch with an American colleague in the business school there fairly regularly. The food’s not great, but it’s reliable, and the company’s good.
We tend to bitch about the Brits quite often – there’s something about livin in a foreign country requires a regular session with a fellow-foreigner, just to get it all out of your system.
I’ve been trying to photograph the cobbles in the street outside through the wavy glass in the front door, but I just can’t get it to work. It’s frustrating, because it’s such an interesting effect and texture. This is the next best thing – a scene through the front door – street, houses, tree and sky, but you wouldn’t know that.
The other thing you wouldn’t know, reading this blog, is that I do actually leave the house. Pretty much every day. I even take my camera with me, most days. It’s just that I find the campus boring, and I don’t have time to hang out and take pictures there, much. Plus, I’m self-conscious while taking pictures. I will try harder, though, I promise.
This blog is turning as much into a record of the minutiae of my life as a work of photographic creativity. This picture is firmly in the former category. It’s a watch cap I knitted for Martin, which I finished today. It’s knitted in a merino/cashmere/silk mix, and should therefor not be itchy, unlike the previous woolly hat I knitted him, which suffered a tragic fate at the hands of the washing machine. It’s the colour of milky coffee, which is what he wanted. I initially bought the wool to mend some socks, but he liked the colour so much I knitted a hat out of it as well.
It’s photographed on the staircase finial because Martin hates having his picture taken.
I have only recently learned to give away books. These are headed for one of the charity shops, but I need to take a few in to the campus coffee shop as well – to swap for books I have taken from them.
This is all fiction, and as I said, I have only recently learned to get rid of books, and I am still pretty much sticking to fiction. The fact is, though, we have a lot of books, and not a lot of space, and honestly, I am never going to read any of these again. They are mostly discount paperbacks bought at airports – I always allow myself to read frivolous stuff on planes – so I won’t miss them. I don’t think I can even remember a single title in the stack right now.
I have always wanted to live on a boat. I’ve spent considerable time on boats, primarily sailboats, and have slept on them numerous times, but that’s not the same as living on one. In Vancouver, there are houseboats in False Creek, and they are lovely, although quite expensive: they’re sorts of places artists and actors live – trendy, close to town, artsy and off-beat as well. I briefly had a deal with someone to share a houseboat, but it fell through – when I showed up with my stuff, he wasn’t even there, so I had to crash with friends. There’s nothing like being a student and moving with all your possessions in milk crates and duffle bags in a friend’s car.
This boat is on the canal, and it’s for rent, but only for holidays – a floating camper van, or caravan. They’re called narrowboats, and they used to move all sorts of goods along the canals of England. Now they’re outfitted for slightly alternative holidaymakers – the kind who are slightly too environmental, or middle-class, for an actual caravan park. I’d love to have one, or rent one, but I can’t imagine Martin agreeing – he has no consciousness of the romance of boats.
I had minor surgery on the back of my right hand yesterday, which is why there was no picture, and why I am wearing this glove.
I’m not supposed to get the wound wet, so, in order to take a bath, I put on one of the delightfully purple nitrile gloves the NHS provided. They didn’t actually provide the gloves for this purpose, they provided them for when I was injecting myself with disease-modifying-anti-rheumatic drugs.
The NHS takes this VERY seriously. First of all, I had to persuade them to let me inject myself, as I had been doing for years before coming to the UK. Then, they started delivering the drugs, in preloaded syringes, each one encased in layers of plastic, sealed in a pouch, placed in a cardboard box with half a ream of warnings! and heldpful advice!, then six boxes were placed in another box, sealed with more plastic and delivered to me, along with a box of alcohol swabs (fair enough), a box of nitrile gloves, a sharps and cytotoxin disposal box (bright yellow with a purple lid), a set of safety goggles and so help me god, a full hazmat suit, just in case I suddenly became radioactive, I guess.
I confess I never actually used any of these things, except the syringes and the sharps box. Alcohol swabs are always useful, but I think this is the first time I have ever used one of the gloves. The hazmat suit was tossed and I gave the safety goggles to the Manchester Hackers group along with a whole bunch of old tech kit.
This is growing in our sad little scrap of garden. We don’t know what it is, but it has lovely little white flowers right now, which is worrying, since it’s mid-February.
Rental houses often have sad gardens, and this one is no exception. It’s very small, maybe eight feet by twelve, and partially paved over. There’s a flower bed, with two large bushy plants taking over, and this smaller one. There’s just enough space for Martin to grow some herbs, and small section elsewhere where he planted onions and potatoes a while ago. I would love a proper garden, but I suspect Martin rather likes rescuing sad plants and finding them little corners among the rest.
It’s Valentine’s day, and what I am photographing? Gargoyles. Oh well.
It’s not a great pic – the light was wrong, and I initially planned to try again on my way home with the light facing them, but then it was well past six by the time I left, and well, you know.
This gargoyle is on yet another church on my walk to work. I’m pretty sure it used to be Catholic – it’s got a big square steeple with a cross (and a gargoyle) on each corner, and then a celtic cross above that. It’s a very impressive building. Nowadays, though, it also has neon signage that says Emmanuel, and a neon cross on top the whole thing. It’s not a great fit, aesthetically, but at least it hasn’t gone the way of so many other churches in Preston.
This is a conch shell, and I have no idea where I got it from. It’s more than a conch, actually, it’s my darning shell, and I use it frequently. In fact, I darned socks this weekend.
The shell looks just like the one my mother had, but I know this isn’t my mother’s shell, unfortunately. I know I bought it, and I seem to recall Martin was with me at the time, but that’s all I know.
I’m amazed to learn that darning is a rare skill these days. I mend things quite often, so does Martin (different things – toasters vs holey jumpers), it just seems normal to me. I think it’s rather sad that people don’t know how to darn, and people don’t have these lovely shells to help them do so.
This is Oliver’s left eye. It’s a lovely greeny-gold colour, and he uses it to great effect when the food or skritchings are not entirely to his liking. I believe this is called the hairy stinkeye.
It’s actually pretty hard to photograph his eyes: he keeps them closed a lot, and closes them whenever I get the camera out, it seems.
