Somehow it's a different experience viewing a place as a visitor rather than as a local. My partner is from Nottinghamshire so we visit on a regular basis but we rarely get to see the centre. However this time we stayed in a hotel not far from Nottingham and so got to explore the city. I suppose you notice what you don't have at home and Manchester is flat so it is a novelty to walk around a town with inclines and vistas. Manchester barely existed before the industrial revolution whereas Nottingham has architecture from the 12th Century onwards; quite a concept when you think about what those buildings must have seen play out in front of them.
I usually take photographs instinctively and then go through a sorting process when I get home. It is at this point that I often see a theme or something revealed about my preoccupations from that time. I liked these three pictures because they record the temporary, in-between nature of travelling and visiting that many of us go through over the Christmas and New Year holidays. Hotels are by their very nature functional spaces providing shelter, but necessarily devoid of too much character so as to appeal to everyone.
The title of this blog entry will be familiar to people of a certain age that grew up in Britain. It is a reference to an advert for Tunes that played on commercial television during the 1980's, and I remember any hint of a cold at school and you'd hear that line...
I wrote a blog entry after a previous visit to Nottingham and having read it again recently think it's one of the ones that I'm most proud of. I composed it quickly and from the heart and think the words and pictures work well together:
http://marcprovins.blogspot.co.uk/2013/05/mother-in-law.html
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