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Paramount Books

Paramount Books

Paramount Books is the shop I wish I bought more stuff from. If I had more money, and a lot more bookshelf space, I could happily go wild in this shop. As it is, I’ll pop in every so often to pick up a few old copies of Starblazer or similar sized cowboy adventures or romances.

It’s only open Friday, Saturday and Sunday, so you can’t always pop in on a whim. There was a worrying time, last year, I think, when it looked like it might be closing down. As it’s still there, I shall continue topping up my Starblazer collection.


What Is The City But The People

What Is The City But the People

This year’s Manchester International Festival opened with What Is The City But The People? Created by the same guy who did the original Manchester Day, it was a wonderful slice of city life, weaving narratives around shared and separate experiences.

I had the camera in the phone on burst shots- five of everything- and I hope I’ve picked the best of them for the album.


Photo-scanning old negatives

Photographing old negatives

I found these old negatives in a neat album, some of them labelled so I know what they are. They’re larger than 35mm, so my slide scanner can’t take them. I’m experimenting with photographing them, backlit by my light box, to see what I can find. My Canon G11, in macro mode, was used, then they had minimal editing in Photoshop. You can see the parallax, but, less obviously, there is also some reflection from the windows and me leaning over them.

I’ll try boxing the negatives off for future shots, to cut the errant light down, and maybe build a simple frame to keep the camera a set distance from, and parallel to, them.


Chinese New Year

Chinese New Year 2016

Against the trend of the month, yesterday morning was sunny, if windy. Which was good for the Chinese New Year parade. Here are a few pictures of dragons and other paraders.

After the parade, I needed a couple of coffees to warm up again. By the time I’d finished them, the weather had changed again, and there was hail coming down.


Manchester Pride 2015

Pride 2015

I took a lot of photos of the parade yesterday. I’ve tried to narrow the selection in the gallery down to just a few.

After the parade, I headed up to the Northern Quarter again, did some writing and found yet more graffiti.

More Northern Quarter graffiti

Then I went to see Jeremy Corbyn give a speech. I hid my Green Party badge, of course.


Just your average Saturday in the city

Another Saturday in the city
The National Front were in town on Saturday, all ten of them. I went along to get some pictures. Mostly, I needed shots of Police doing crowd control, as reference for a planned book cover, but getting some images of the white shame parade was also a plan.

I ended up wandering around for a while, before the yobs finally came out of the pub. I saw a, completely unrelated, gathering of- I think- Palestinians; a wedding party on a vintage bus; some graffiti; and (though I didn’t get any pictures) a junior athletics event.

Finally, the knuckle draggers made their way toward Piccadilly. Here, they met a much, much larger group of anti-fascists, and had their speeches drowned out by a sound system. After an hour or so of posturing, they were ushered onto a double decker (they didn’t fill it) and taken away.

These ‘White Pride’ marches seem to be happening more often, but the turnout is dropping incredibly each time. Those of us who go along to take photos or chant are really giving them more attention than they deserve. But, hey, I had an interesting afternoon out around town.