Market Street on a Saturday

I spent some time here on the first warm Saturday of spring because I had some time to kill between a play rehearsal and the performance.  It was enough time to do something with, but not enough time to make it worth going home.  You know how that goes.

Market Street is just off of Picadilly Gardens, where all the buses and trams stop in downtown Manchester.  The whole thing is like a mall where the main thoroughfare is outdoors, instead of inside.  Except the food court, which is the only covered second story of the main street.  It's not like a strip mall - you can move from one store to the next inside, through the back of the store as well as walking in the front entrance, like most American malls.  Here's a shot:

You can see the food court spanning the street directly ahead.

As is typical of a mall, the shops try to get your attention with unique displays.  My favorite is this clothing tailor shop.

And a closer shot...

You gotta love a shop that decorates with walls of antique sewing machines.


The people watching possibilities are endless.  Wait long enough and someone with hair every color of the rainbow will walk by.  There are balloon vendors, cotton candy sellers, food and flowers sold out of little portable shops (usually done up in brown and gold, for some reason).  They even have street mimes.

This guy is my favorite.  He looks just like some of the bronze statuary that are all over Manchester.  Until you look at his eyes.  When I first saw him, he was in a seated position, holding absolutely still.  I love the way his tie and coat look like he is in a strong wind.

That particular Saturday there was also an artist working for coins.

Amazing!
Of course, there are also street musicians of every sort, from a single recorder to an accordion, a blind electric guitarist, and including a one man band working on the corner of Market Street and New Cathedral by the Marks and Spencer's. And just because it wasn't interesting enough, there was a rally of rappers for Jesus, an anti-religious group rallying against them ('corporate greed is the cause of all problems, not evil' was their point), and some Middle East demonstration of some sort:

If none of that interested you, you could always watch the kids playing in the fountain.

One toddler was bound and determined to join them, even though the water would have knocked him on his diaper.  Dad kept grabbing his little jacket and pulling him away, but as soon as he let go, the boy would run, giggling, back to where the big kids were playing, wanting to join in the fun.

All this for the cost of a fifteen minute bus ride!

Alrighty, then!

Ok, people!  You read the sign.  Let's see some Frisbee, kick the can, Red Rover, Hacky Sack, or something!  At least get a game of tag going...

This building is Manchester in a nutshell, to me

 Its a McDonald's on the corner of Oxford Road and Cheepstow (I think).  It is a snapshot of Manchester because there is nothing quite as worldwide as McDonald's: they are everywhere.  The shop is inside a repurposed building, which, according to the stonework on the left hand side of the shot, is "The Picture House."  Most of Manchester is made of this color brick or rock work.  And the whole thing is slightly tatty.  One of the windows in the upper story is broken, and pigeons roost there.  And if anything is everywhere in Manchester, it's pigeons.

I sometimes sit at the bus stop on the right hand side of the picture to waiting to catch the second bus to get to church.  The Pakistani (?) Embassy is across the street.

Impulsive day

Tuesday, I met with my adviser, Gale.  I always feel like I should have worked more or harder before I meet with her, then feel like maybe I did enough, but encouraged to work better or more for the next time we meet.


Afterward, I took a bus to Picadilly Gardens.  The fountains were on, which was lovely.  It was a beautiful day, blue skies, cold enough to wear a coat, but not cold enough to need it buttoned.  I walked up Market Street, which is the local version of a mall, to find Selfridges, a store that has American food.  I needed some Reeces for a meeting of ladies who had asked me to talk about America and bring some American food.  You can get hot dogs (canned in brine, but whatever), and hamburgers, so I thought I'd bring something not so conventional.

The main window of the store had a two story tall painting of Wonder Woman and what I assumed was Medusa, who was green with snake hair and bound with a blindfold.  Just outside the store was a large Ferris wheel, which I decided to get on before going to the store.  It had a recorded 'lecture' given by some local DJs explaining what could be seen from the wheel.  I had my camera with me, so I took pictures.

From the wheel, you could see the old Medieval section of Manchester, including a couple of pubs that survived WWII and IRA bombings.  People were having lunch outside because it was such a nice day.  More impressive is the Manchester Cathedral.  There has been a church on that site for over a thousand years.  The current building has been standing since the 1400's.  I'm going to have to see that soon.

After getting the Reeces (and deciding NOT to get Krispy Kreme, at almost 10 pounds per dozen!), I walked around the mall a bit.  Some ladies tried to get me to take a survey about my clothing purchases, of which I have made none since arriving.  They were kind enough to suggest some places to shop for a gal my size.  Then I found a Sony store and asked about some form of connector for my camera so I could upload pictures.  They found me one!  Now I just have to work out how to use it.  My usual approach of looking up and saying "Um...Huz?" is just not going to be effective this time.  It does mean new pictures soon though.

After all that, I took a bus home.  (Discovered yesterday that the Oxford/Wilmslow Road route I spend most of my time on is the busiest bus route in Europe.  Don't have to wait more that two minutes for a bus, which is nice)  I got home just as the local weather reasserted itself, bringing a cold wind and overcast.

Birds

I was standing at the rock wall that surrounds my building of flats this morning, waiting for a ride to play rehearsal.  As I stood in the grey light of an English morning, the birds were especially noticeable, as there were few people or cars around at 9:00.

I find British birds particularly interesting.  They are so small in comparison with their American counterparts.  The song birds, which have lovely songs that are easily heard, seem to be about the size of the hummingbirds I would watch in the Langthorn's back yard in Oklahoma.  Its incredible that these two or three inch birds can produce such loud calls.

This is an English Robin.  I think the colors aren't quite right.  To me the brown bits should be more of an olive tone, and the orange parts should be more rust colored.  Its a beautiful, tiny little bird that lives in and near the block where my flat is, because of all the trees.  Sparrows and (what look like) chickadees are also smaller in comparison to those I'm familiar with.

I've taken pictures of the pigeons that like the park near my place.  (I'll get those posted as soon as I can.)  The pigeons are like any pigeons anywhere else in the world, I would imagine.  Same size, same greys with a purple sheen to the neck feathers in good sunlight.  I took pictures of these guys - a flock of between 50 and 100, depending on the day - because of the stand out bird.  There is one brown member of the flock; the only brown pigeon I've seen here.  I discovered recently he is a male, though the lady pigeons seem unimpressed with his display.  But then, they always seem unimpressed, don't they?

You can always tell a pigeon from around Picadilly Gardens (a rather unlikely name for the place, as there is a smallish patch of very short grass as the only greenery).  Picadilly Gardens is where all the major bus routes end, as well as trams, metrolinks, and is only a short walk away from Picadilly Square where the trains have a station.  The pigeons there are more likely to be limping, lame or missing a foot.  I'm not sure if being there gave the poor birds the problem, or if they stay there because of easy pickings of the Gardens and nearby Market Street.  One day, I saw one bird with a twig about six inches long and an eighth of an inch diameter stuck in its ankle.  It allowed me to get close enough to think I might be able to help before it flew off with its twig.

I thought at one point I heard a woodpecker in the park by my flat, but it was a raven (maybe a blackbird - is there a difference?) knocking something against one of the trees to get it open.  Ravens are smaller than I would have thought, but then maybe they were that small when I saw them at the Tower of London in 2000, and they grew in my imagination.

Busy, busy, busy....

Is anyone surprised?

I finally got internet connection at my flat last Thursday.  I'm able to get work done!  (and video call my husband, which is more important)  It's amazing how interdependent we are on this technology.  When I first started college more than ten years ago, I distinctly remember Dr. Allen Rice telling the class not to go online for research, and not to trust the internet.  Now, you can't access a library catalog, access journal articles, or contact colleagues without the silly thing.  Journal articles that are not anthologized are digitized and only available through services like JSTOR.  Ask a librarian (less than 50 years old) about the card catalog and you get a blank stare.  Even inter-library loan for anything less than 50 pages is just digitized and sent to your email box.   All communication for business or education purposes is also conducted, almost exclusively, through email, which makes it difficult to know about meetings and the like if you don't have access.

The point to the whole ramble is that I can now get some serious work done, without resorting to lugging my laptop to the school library only to get online to do the work I could be doing at the house.  Less wasted time = (theoretically) more work done.

On a more personal front, I'm now involved in a few other things to fill my time.  I've been attending conferences, discussion groups (one organized by me at the 'request' of my thesis director), attending workshops, and other school/education related activities.  I've also been called as my ward's music director, joined a choir that will be performing for the 400th anniversary of the printing of the King James Bible on June 11 as a tenor, and have a part in the ward roadshow.  (For those not in the know, a road show is a short play, 12-15 minutes, put on by church members, with several church groups performing the same night)  I do all this so I have something to do with my copious spare time while doing a doctorate, because it is so easy, and not at all time consuming.  (Did you catch the sarcasm of that last sentence? I thought you might have.) 

But for all that, I should be able to post more often, now that I have access to the internet whenever I want it instead of whenever it becomes available.  I haven't forgotten about posting pictures, but have to wait for a connection cable for my camera, as my computer won't read the memory card, even with an adapter.  Chet said he would be sending one along, because they don't sell them here.