Rochdale Town v Irlam 2009-10

  
More photos from this game can be found here

A slideshow from this game can be found here 

Rochdale Town v Chadderton 2009-10

Another evening match so sorry about the quality - but a great game - really enjoyable. What footy should be about.

Further photos from this game can be found here

Manchester Youth Theatre in 1991

This is the youth theatre in 1991. More shots from this, and other years, to follow. The first one is the group photo from this year - taken on the steps of what was then Nicholls Ardwick High School. But the great thing about this shot is it shows Geoff Sykes (bottom of stone balustrade left) and Hazel Sykes (bottom of stone balustrade right).

Angel Meadow Excavation

Angel Meadow is an amazing part of Manchester where our forefathers lived cheek by jowl with the factories and industry of the city. Within a small area there were Ragged Schools, paupers burial ground, industry and the juvenile reformatory. Recently there have been excavations prior to the Co-op building their new headquarters, and today was the open day. So I trolled along and was really pleased with what I came across. 'twas great!

The photo below shows a general view of the housing - most of it was originally fine artizans houses that were latterly sub divided so increasing the density of population.

Below are the end of cloth rolls that were stored and/or worked in these yards

The division of the houses resulted in larger population numbers and significantly increased the profits for the landlords - shown clearly by the single brick course in the photo below. These single back to back houses led to explosions of vermin and awful living conditions.

Balearic Festival, Manchester 2009

Just wandered into town one day and this was happening - managed to catch the festival parade which these are from. What a fantastic day.

Manchester Youth Theatre again

So these are the second batch from 1992, and I'll look at doing some from another year next time. Hope you enjoy. The first is a general view of the whole cast/technical crew etc which was traditionally taken in the first week.  What is great about this is that you can see Geoff Sykes (half way up on left, stood in front of end of the stone rail), but I can't see Hazel anywhere.

The next photo is of the wonderful Benny Rothman, with Mike Harding and the cast of one of the plays from that year which was based on the mass trespass of Kinder Scout

And finally a couple of rehearsal photographs

Rochdale Town v Daisy Hill in Lancashire Cup 2009-10

This was a great game with Town playing composed and flowing football and very, very unlucky not to win. Unfortunately for me it was under floodlights, and this poses the usual problems of shutter speeds and grainy shots. Once again speed was in the region of 3200 asa and yet shutter speeds were as low as 1/30 in some spots with f stop wide open. This restricts you to certain spots you can stand in order to get enough light to shoot - and even then the speed of the ball means it usually record as a blur.

Further photos from this game can be found here

A slideshow from this game can be found here