Daily photos 59: the chained library

I had the privilege of attending a day seminar on Print and Politics in late 2012, held at Manchester's Chetham's Library, one of the oldest public libraries in the world, tucked away in a music college in the city centre. We sat around the desk previously used by Marx and Engels, leafed through John Dee's books (completely with saucy and/or astrological marginalia) and I strolled around in the winter gloom taking pictures of the library and nearby Manchester Cathedral.

Daily photos no. 58: Aqualate

Just an autumnal walk in the dappled sun round a secluded lake on the Staffordshire/Shropshire border.

Daily photos no. 57: Four More Lads That Shook The Wirral

(yes, it's a Half Man Half Biscuit reference).

I'd never been to the Wirral until 2012. What a strange and lovely place it is, especially Hilbre - an island amidst panoramic skies that you can walk out to at low tide, formerly a monastic settlement and now populated only by birds and old cider cans.

When I release my shoegaze album on Sarah Records, this will be the cover

Daily Photos no. 56: Famous Last Words

'You'll never see a red squirrel here', said Ben. 'It's the wrong time of day'.

11 seconds later we turned a corner to see one of Formby's red squirrels scampering away from the bin it had been looting. It's the only one I've ever seen. Though my environmentalist friend John once ran one over. With a Nature Scotland land rover. On his first day in the job. That made for an awkward discussion at probation.

And then we saw other lovely things, and I spent the day singing my top 50 favourite George Formby songs and realising quite how many of them are about voyeurism (he's in favour). But at least the Formbys were proudly anti-racist. 'Why don't you piss off, you horrible little man?', Beryl Formby apparently shouted down the phone at Daniel Malan when he complained about George hugging a black girl during one of his deliberately unsegregated concerts.

Also looking for squirrels

Yes I took a monochrome photo of a famously colourful insect.

Formby's very nice by the way. And some George Formby:

Daily Photos no. 55: the Olympics!

Instead of going to my dear friend's wedding like I should, I was working at the Olympics, on the Fencing event. I'd originally signed up for general work but got plucked out of the queue and spent quite a few months going up and down to Canary Wharf to be patronised in second-hand management-speak by lanyarded blonde posh kids like a perpetual episode of Twenty Twelve (which got everything absolutely spot on except it never mentioned the rats infesting all those corporate skyscrapers).

The actual Olympics was odd - I mostly remember being exhausted from 20 hour days - at one point I was seeing double. Flashes of memory include seeing medallists being sick in the call room as they awaited their fights; paying no attention as people like Vladimir Putin strutted past; realising I was sitting in the middle of the Venezuelan team while their compatriot won a gold medal; catching a medal one of my team dropped; wincing as one of the British referees made yet another howling error; the hush and then groan as the crowd sees the VAR before the referee does; the smell of a sports hall after 5 days of non-stop tension; being absolutely sick of wearing polyester.

I think I got some decent photos. The venue was beautifully designed and looked fantastic. I had full access to everything, though I didn't take many backstage pictures. In the right spot, my 50mm lens gave me great results - my longer lenses aren't nearly as good so didn't quite live up to what I wanted. The sheer emotion raging meant that there were lots of opportunities to capture rage, despair and joy though. The sabre, not my favourite weapon, was the most intense. Every fight at all weapons was sudden death, but the sheer speed of sabre meant that some fencers' entire Olympics, that they'd spent 4 years preparing for, was over in 2 minutes. My favourite bit? The Italian women's foil team: the ultimate in athleticism and skill - and it was the last chance to see Valentina Vezzalli at an Olympics after decades at the top.

The final 700 pictures I kept are here: those below are a mere taste.