Storm clouds gather…

As is traditional on strike days, the weather is going to be awful: cold, wet and gloomy. Tonight, however, the sunset is spectacular. Even The Hegemon looks good:

The Sun Sets On The Dark Place

I took these from my living room window the other night. I'm so tied to my work that the ugly buildings in the background are The Hegemon. It gives me an enormous sense of peace to gaze out on my place of work before I go to sleep.

I was playing with long exposures - a faster road where cars didn't stop would be better

More photographs of the miserable metropolis are here.

Autumn in the hood 2

The rest are here, or click on these for bigger versions.

Autumn in the hood

I had a wander round with my camera earlier, capturing the changing of the season and the ongoing demolition of the building across the road. More here, or click on these for embiggening.

What's wrong with this shadow?

Microcosmic coalition!

The Tory-Lib Dem coalition is repeated in miniature on The Dark Place's town council, where the 5 Lib Dem councillors give cover to a classic slash-and-burn Tory party of 25, opposed by 29 Labour councillors

Or it did until a few days ago, when one Lib Dem councillor announced she was now supporting the Labour Party, giving them a majority. Then the Lib Dems announced the coalitions was over. Then it announced that it wasn't over after all. Nobody knows what the hell is going on, except that some shadowy figure from London has been called in to knock liberal heads together - can't have the nobodies falling out and spoiling the national love-in!

I hope it's a lovely metaphor for what's going to happen in Westminster.

And a few more shots of The Dark Place

More here.

Welcome to a Dark Place

I moan about this place a lot, and I must admit that in ten years, I haven't become attached to this city in the way I have to other places. Here's why…

I went for a short walk before going home last night, to take pictures of a nearby building which is being demolished. As it's stripped, rather attractive features appeared, like the stunning concrete fire escape. Then I wandered round town in the rain, trying to capture the beauty and the ugliness of the town. City. It's been a city since 2000. Not very convincingly, but there you go.

I've added the rest of the pictures to this existing set of Dark Place shots. Click on these samples for larger versions.

A question for you

My friends from The Dark Place claim that there was a TV sitcom set in a Dark Place truckstop. The hilarious comedy stemmed from the two main characters - long distance lorry drivers - telling each other about the woman they were having affairs with, little realising that each was talking about the other one's wife!!!!!! ROFL LOL etc.

What was it called? Anyone seen it? It can't be as unfunny as Friends or Dharma and Greg anyway.

Update: I've found it. It was called Dogfood Dan and the Carmarthen Cowboy. It sounds utterly execrable. Did you watch it? I'd love to show you some, but apparently there are limits even to the rubbish Youtube hosts:

No videos found for “dogfood dan and the carmarthen cowboy”

Dogfood Dan and the Carmarthen Cowboy: Growing out of a single Yorkshire TV production in 1982 (screened in the series ITV Playhouse) and appearing as a one-series sitcom on the BBC six years later, Dogfood Dan And The Carmarthen Cowboy was a tale of two long-distance dogfood-carrying lorry drivers who, to the other's ignorance, are each having affairs with the other's wife. Although the men meet up on the road, exchange stories of their sexual escapades, and often talk to their wives about their travelling friend, the lies they spin and the false names they invent mean that neither the husbands nor the wives cotton on to the convoluted situation. Aubrey Owen likes to pass himself off as an MP, 'Aneurin', during his visits with Helen, while Dan claims he is carrying top secret 'abnormal' loads when pursuing the passionate Gwyneth. (Myfanwy in the 1982 version.) This was a complex, farcical idea from the ever-interesting David Nobbs, which employed sufficient detours and U-turns to make the extension from play to sitcom worthwhile.

So in its place, here's a highly appropriate clip from Porridge, the 1970s prison comedy.

Poor old cops

I felt genuinely sorry for the cops and criminals outside my flat last night. They were like a pair of tired old tap-dancers in an empty hall, going through the old routine one last time without interest or enthusiasm.

Two youths (ill-fitting baseball caps, branded t-shirts, tight tracksuits with the trousers tucked into socks to display their white trainers) decide to start hitting each other, right in front of the police car which has just come round the corner. They weren't very good pugilists: even I could have landed more telling blows. The police officers sit there for a second, clearly deciding whether or not it was worth even bothering to get out of the vehicle. Eventually they do. The 'fight' stops and the kids submit to the rozzers without any show of defiance or injustice.

For all concerned, it was like an ancient religious ritual whose significance has long been lost - as meaningless and regular as the weather. The teens bore each other and the police no ill-will, and the officers were kind to them in a weary kind of way, no doubt resigned to a pile of administration over a petty argument, leading to no further action.

It certainly wasn't like The Bill, which is going out on a high.