Category: Uncategorized

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.

I don’t like this picture, but it is interesting, and sad – which is probably why I don’t like it.

It’s a stuffed toy, a dog, I think, about eight inches long, left on the ground by a bus stop, and covered in mud and cigarette butts.

It’s been there a while, I think, although I’ve never noticed it before. I really hope that the kid who lost it isn’t still missing it.

Martin’s studying biochemistry with the Open University. On Wednesday he sent me an excited message: guess what I got? A molecular model kit! It’s very cool, the OU sent it to him as part of his study materials, and he’s been playing with it all day, looking up molecules on wikipedia, making a model, and them coming to show me, pointing out the methyl groups and carbon rings.

This is vanillin, the aromatic in vanilla.

It’s green week on campus, and one of the activities/exhibits is an ice sculpture of a polar bear, with the slogan “think before we sink” on its pedestal. I saw them carving it yesterday, and took a picture, but I decided to come back today and photograph it when it had melted a bit. It’s almost 10 degrees today, so it should have melted. Unfortunately, someone apparently came and kicked it apart during the day, because when I got there this afternoon it was strewn in pieces across the lawn.

I wondered whether someone might have destroyed it to make a point, but it appears it was just wanton vandalism.

This is part of the sculpture, and its base, but you wouldn’t know it.

This is the main entrance to the one of the original university buildings, now just a generic university building, with offices and classrooms. I thought this was the original building of Institute for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, the wonderful original name of what is now the University of Central Lancashire, but n doing a bit of research, and thinking about it, I realised that this building dates from 1897 (as you can see from the date on the top right window), almost seventy years after the original institute was founded.

The building was commissioned by what had become by then the Harris Institute in part to commemorate the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Victoria in 1867, and it was officially known as the Victoria Jubilee Technical School. Now it’s just the plain old Harris building, and although it has a lovely doorway and an impressive staircase, and there are some stained glass transoms on the first-floor windows, it’s just a generic university building, with its main annoyance being that it’s a long hike from here to the nearest coffee shop.