The North

I took a brief trip to my corner of the world today: the North West. I italicize the first-person, possessive pronoun there to emphasize my Northern pride. I love returning: the people who share this pride are friendly, have a brilliant sense of humour and an attitude towards life that is stripped of pretention. Also I am a fan of its industrial history-- my history teachers at school specialized in this & my dad did a degree in economic history so keenly took me to museums about it!-- and of course, I am a fan of its cheap(er) prices! I needed to go to the University of Salford to chat about some secondary school teaching that I am undertaking in the summer. The teaching will take place in Nottingham, but the base of the people organizing the scheme in which I will be involved are based near Liverpool (no, not Salford, which has confused a few people, who questioned why I was going to Salford for one hour on a Friday afternoon!). The photograph maps the first leg of my journey towards Salford Crescent. Pictured is one of my favourite stations: Manchester Oxford Road. I love the clocks pictured here, showing the same time (well, station clock is a minute ahead, or the Palace clock is a minute behind). When I boarded a train to Salford, I really wanted to stay on it: not because I didn't want to 'do business' in Salford, but because that same train would take me directly to my home town :-) With various things to do in Nottingham this weekend (mainly marking & invigilating), that luxury will have to wait. Being in North West England was a perfect antidote, however. When I arrived at the university, the secretary made me a lovely cup of tea. Definitely Tetleys. Then when I returned to Manchester Ox Road at 2pm, I had half an hour to spend in one of my favourite bookshops based at the Cornerhouse: Art, Film, Books, Food, Drink. They have a raft of cultural magazines and journals so I purchased a January 2010 edition of Poetry and read a brilliant article by Carmine Starnino about aesthetics, artistic integrity, tradition and invention (all issues were tied together in the context of Canadian poetry & the significance of the Griffen Poetry Prize in relation to poetry's status in society). I am also now in possession of the Nov/ Dec issue of Philosophy Now, which is celebrating John Stuart Mill's 1859 work "On Liberty." Thesis-related and really interesting in terms of its relevance to the 21st-century West. Perfect.  

Back in Nottingham now, but enjoyed today's northernly escapade...