Category: Uncategorized

Eight: chili plant, originally uploaded by meganknight.

Martin likes to rescue plants. Whenever we buy groceries and they are selling live growing herbs in pots, Martin wants to rescue them. This poor thing was a chili plant in an English supermarket, and you can imagine how that felt. We brought it home several months ago, and it’s now thriving, living on the kitchen windowsill where it gets some sun, at least. It’s produced several new pods in the last little while.

It’s too cold to grow herbs well here – everything seems to die over the winter. We added a shelf to the kitchen window, and now have a little colony of rescued herbs, but aside from this chili plant and a venus fly trap which was being sold as a novelty and is doing surprisingly well, not much else lives for long. Basil, particularly, doesn’t seem to cope at all. Poor things, grown in hothouses and sent to supermarkets to be used, abused and thrown away. It’s no life for a plant, really.

Teddy Bear, originally uploaded by meganknight.

This is my teddy bear, and I have had him since I was born. He is very well-loved, as you can see, and he and the little knitted rabbit my mother made me were my constant companions throughout my childhood. We never had dolls: my mother hated them, and we inherited her dislike of their creepy plastic semi-humanness. Aside from a brief rebellious desire for a barbie-type doll when I was around 11, I don’t recall ever wanting a doll, but I loved my teddy bear. I probably held on to him longer than other kids my age: I remember being teased about taking him along on a car trip by my sister and brother, well after I had started school.

When I was eight I had appendicitis that turned into peritonitis and spent weeks in hospital. I doubt my teddy came to the hospital with me at first (both occasions were late-night emergencies as I recall), but he soon joined me there. The nurses made much of him, giving him an IV drip and a surgical bandage to match mine.

The jumper he’s wearing was rather inexpertly crocheted by me, probably when I was around fourteen or so. Every now and then I look at him and think I should make him a proper one, that fits, but this one has its own sentimental value, lumpen and misshapen as it is.

The office, originally uploaded by meganknight.

This is the building my office, and much of the journalism department is in, taken from the ground floor atrium. It’s one of the newer buildings on the campus, whose architecture covers the last 120-odd years (as does the institution’s history). It’s a fine building, as university buildings go, although it does seem to leak a lot. There’s a glass roof at the top of this atrium, which does make the place light and airy, but also makes it wet and cold. The first floor coffee shop also has leaking skylights. I seem to be doomed to leaking universities – I did my undergraduate degree at the famously damp and mouldy Simon Fraser University in Vancouver.

The coffee shop is probably the best feature of this building – it’s university-run, but Starbucks-branded, so the coffee is actually pretty good, much better than the automated dispenser coffee on offer elsewhere on campus. The coffee shop is also very busy because the powers that be decided for some reason that we can’t have common rooms, so the only place to talk to colleagues is in someone’s [shared] office, in an empty classroom, or in the coffee shop, so there’s a constant community of assorted academics hanging out holding meetings and such. There’s also a large television, controlled by the coffee ladies, and usually showing Jeremy Kyle. I’ve learnt a lot about the world from that television set.

Winter trees, originally uploaded by meganknight.

I’m still getting used to European winters. In Vancouver, it’s cold and wet and snowy and rainy and all, but the trees are almost entirely evergreens, so at the least there is greenery (of a sort – dark green branches, sopping wet against a grey sky is not as cheerful as you would think). Johannesburg has deciduous trees, but winter is so short (although it can be nasty in its own way), that you don’t often see bare branches like this: in fact you may well see autumn leaves and green fresh leaves all at once.

Preston is cold, wet, rainy, snowy and horrible in winter, and the trees all lose their leaves, so this, the naked branches, is a common sight. Today, at least, there was a tiny amount of blue sky to leaven the gloom, but it’s still all pretty bleak.

Caroline, originally uploaded by meganknight.

This is my colleague Caroline. She suggested I photograph her, and since the light in her office was so interesting (she hates the overhead flourescents and uses a desk lamp, by late in the day, the office is dark and the side light is wonderfully warm and glowing), I thought it would make a great picture. I took this picture without flash, by mistake, but looking at the other picture, I much prefer this one: both Caroline’s expression and the light on her face with the rest of the office in darkness, so I’m uploading this, shakes and all.

Her desk and office is pretty typical of academics – binders and files and books and stationery – although the foreground is actually another colleague’s desk. I spend a lot of time in Caroline’s office: she has a nice bum-warming heater in there, and she and George are great company and conversation, although I suspect we would all get more work done if I didn’t.

Church, originally uploaded by meganknight.

I really need a ladder to take this picture properly. This is on my walk to work, and I have been watching this church decay and fall apart for more than two years now.

England has too many churches, unfortunately. It has only a tiny regular church-going population (6% at the last census), but has all the churches of a devout and observant community. Some are listed buildings, and cost a fortune in upkeep, constantly raising funds and worrying about how to pay for repairs, some are not, and are taken over by nightclubs, universities, mosques and other community groups. Some, like this unfortunate building, just get left to rot. It’s not in the best neighbourhood, and clearly the local population are not keen churchgoers (there are plenty of pubs around, though). It’s all boarded up and fenced in, and there is a sign advertising a storage facility, but I don’t know whether that’s opportune advertising or serious plans. In the meantime, more and more sky shows through the roof.

Lancaster Canal, originally uploaded by meganknight.

This is a picture of the Lancaster Canal, which runs only a block or so away from the house. It’s a rather sad canal, it was built in the late eighteenth century, and ran from Preston docks to to Kendal, in the lake district. Unfortunately, as with the docks, there had been so much wrangling and arguing over the plans that by the time it was built the railways had taken over, and it never really came into its own. This is apparently a common state of affairs with Preston development projects.

Some time in the seventies the end of the canal was cut off, and it now ends abruptly about half a mile south of where this picture was taken. The canal does still run most of the way to Kendal, although it is impassable at various points, having been crossed by motorways and the like.

I often walk to work along the canal, although it is rather rubbish-strewn, and has more than its fair share of dog shit along the path, it does have ducks and coots, and even some swans. In the spring it is very pretty, but right now it’s still frozen, and there is rubbish strewn across the ice, so I cut that out of the picture.

1/365 The dregs of Christmas, originally uploaded by meganknight.

We’re not that into Christmas, really. We’re not Christians, and having spent considerable time being Christians, quite seriously I’m uncomfortable with the idea of celebrating Christmas now that I’m not. We do like Christmas food, but then, to be honest, we like food. Since moving to the northern hemisphere, and to a place where winter actually means something more than the name of the ‘special’ sales on at the local mall, we’ve discovered the true meaning of holiday spirits: candles and green things and warm lights and rich, special food are essential for preventing suicidal depression and psychotic cabin fever among the population. So, this year we actually bought Christmas lights, and I acquired some ivy from the garden, along with some spruce boughs and bright red berries, and set up a display with candles on the mantelpiece.
It was very festive, and went well with the roast beast and all the trimmings, and the mountains of Christmas cake we went through. Now, of course, it’s the new year, and the display is looking a bit sad. I’ll take it down later today, and maybe replace it with something else, or maybe not. The mantelpiece does tend to get cluttered with stuff, though, and I do prefer a display of some kind, rather than assorted random things.

So, I’ve been dithering about doing the 365 project this year, and after a day of indecision yesterday, have decided to do it, but with a slight twist. You see, I should write more on the blog, but I battle to write short simple things – each post is like a newspaper column. So, I’ve decided that I will do the pictures, but the challenge is to write at least 200 words on each picture, so the point becomes writing, not photography. I’m not a great photographer, although would like to be, and way limits the pressure on me to produce great pictures (which I would rapidly find frustrating), and it also means I can probably get away with using the occasional picture from my mobile phone, since in my mind, the point is the writing.

And yes, I am starting on January 2nd. I could claim I’m being quirky and original, or that I’m refusing to participate in the collective delusion that some random point in time, some arbitrarily determined date is meaningful, but not really: I just didn’t get it together yesterday. In fact I didn’t leave the house yesterday (although I did get dressed, and make supper from scratch, so there is that).

The photostream is here.