The River Witham flows very sedately through the centre of Lincoln, feeling more like a canal than a river. It is joined at Brayford Pool (seen in the first picture below) by the Foss Dyke, a man made canal the joins the Witham with the River Trent at Torksey to the west.
After Lincoln, the Witham flows through the flat Lincolnshire countryside, passing Bardney and Woodhall Spa, before eventually entering the North Sea at Boston on the east coast.
Over the coming days I’ll share a bunch of pictures I shot in Lincoln a couple of months ago. I was very fortunate to have really good light all the time I was there, but it was particularly good during the morning when the sun was casting some nice side-light. I really like how the buildings and the chimneys are illuminated in this one.
This weekend marked my third annual trip to Arcade Club in Bury. I go along with a bunch of similarly middle-aged videogame fans I know from an online community and a great time is had.
Arcade Club has three UK locations, but the one in Bury is largest, with hundreds of arcade game spread over four floors, from the late 70s Space Invaders era through to modern cabinets and rhythm action titles. There are home videogames available too, plus a good range of pinball tables, air-hockey, pool, and other more physical basketball and bowing machines.
There was a strange arm-wrestling game called Arm Champs II that was a proper physical challenge!
We enjoyed curry and beer on the Friday evening, followed by a full day at Arcade Club on Saturday – right up until the place closed at 11pm – then back home today after a group breakfast at a nice local cafe.
Originally opened in 1920, the Abbeydale Picture House served as a cinema for fifty-five years until it closed in 1975. The building, which achieved listed status in 1989, has performed a number of functions in the intervening years, including a furniture store, a ballroom, a snooker hall, a bar, and a performing arts centre. Recently the building was acquired by a brewery and hospitality company who intend to re-open the building as a premier entertainment venue.
Back in the 1990s, Rossi’s Italian restaurant, which occupied a former bank building just off London Road near the end of Sharrow Lane, felt like a regular destination for a night out with the people I worked with at the time. In reality it was probably only a handful of visits, but the memories persist and make it feel like more. I remember that Ann, one of the women I worked with, would always order the same dish: pollo a la crema. Except she always called it chicken pollo a la crema, which we would jokingly call her out about for adding the unnecessary English word. The food in the restaurant was good, the the tables were fancy marble affairs, and there was a statue of Michaelangelo’s David in the centre of the restaurant, if I remember correctly.
Rossi’s closed recently due to family circumstances (according to an article in a local newspaper) and has been up for sale. I’m not sure if a new owner has been found, or indeed what the new business will be (I would expect another restaurant though).
I’ve not visited for over twenty years, since the members of that team drifted apart and the night’s out fell away, and I don’t think I’ve seen any of those people I worked with back then for just as long (it’s quite possible that some of the older members of the team are no longer with us!), but the memories persist. And I still always think of pollo a la crema as chicken pollo a la crema.
Sheffield is a hilly city. It’s said to be built on seven hills, like Rome, although I’ve never quite worked out which hills count in that number, or where the statement originates.
While other parts of the world have infrastructure and housing built on much more precipitous slopes, Sheffield has its fair share of steep streets and homes built on hillsides.
In many places streets of differing altitude are connected by footpaths such as one shown below. There might be a germ of an idea for a photo project lurking in that thought…
Steel City Snapper photography 