The whole city is your jewelry box
Jan. 30th, 2008 11:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cosmolinguistThe ferris wheel went around and around (and then stopped, I think; two revolutions was about all we got for the price of a movie ticket) and we looked over "capsule" (the official appellation was both bizarre and amusing, in an incredibly tedious way) 24 behind me and capsule 22 over Emma's shoulder at Manchester, which was gently rising and falling below us.
Wonders abounded.
Like any modern city, it glittered prettily in the deepening violet dusk. The "capsule" (makes me think of painkillers and Apollo missions) was nearly all transparent and gilded with LED lights; the big wheel itself was part of the nighttime spectacle. Unless I have to go to the bank I'm never in this part of the city centre, certainly not after dark even in the dead of winter when dark is about 3:30, and so I had not noticed this until this night, when it was there beckoning us with its dazzle as we stepped out of Next.
I had noticed the ferris wheel on various other occasions, but never before considered it as a diverting way to spend some time. And after all I was on holiday... nonwithstanding the fact that I hadn't left Manchester. Just as Emma and I have done on our day trips in Edinburgh and Preston and Penrith, we just wandered around and ate a lot and saw the sights.
Other wonders were specific to Manchester. Like the pub Emma kept pointing out, black-and-white Tudor amidst the glassy shine of posh stores and the worst "museum" in the world. Thanks to some IRA bombs, Manchester has had to put a lot of money into urban development in the past decade, helping it avoid the sad demise of other northern Engilsh cities in this age where no one makes anything any more.
And some wonders were specific to our capsule. "The people look like ants!" Emma said. "Well, more like cockroaches..." I smiled. It'd never occurred to me before, but it's silly to say faraway people look like ants. "They might be the size of ants..." she added after a moment's further contemplation. "But really, they just look like small people." I laughed at that, the simile now perfectly accurate and thus perfectly useless, but all the more delightful for it.
She was facing the interior workings of the ferris wheel, while I looked out at dim distant Salford or whatever was in the direction I was pointed at, so it was she who pointed out that you could see the inner workings. I whirled around to admire the cogs and gears, wondering why I hadn't realized this before either: there's really nowhere to hide them in something as gracile as a wheel. It is a joy, an increasingly rare pleasure, to see how things are put together and what makes them work. Steampunk has taught me to fetishize such mechanical things: it's almost a wonder to me now that there's anything that hasn't yet been replaced by CGI or a hermetically-sealed container with no visible buttons or switches.
Wonders abounded.
Like any modern city, it glittered prettily in the deepening violet dusk. The "capsule" (makes me think of painkillers and Apollo missions) was nearly all transparent and gilded with LED lights; the big wheel itself was part of the nighttime spectacle. Unless I have to go to the bank I'm never in this part of the city centre, certainly not after dark even in the dead of winter when dark is about 3:30, and so I had not noticed this until this night, when it was there beckoning us with its dazzle as we stepped out of Next.
I had noticed the ferris wheel on various other occasions, but never before considered it as a diverting way to spend some time. And after all I was on holiday... nonwithstanding the fact that I hadn't left Manchester. Just as Emma and I have done on our day trips in Edinburgh and Preston and Penrith, we just wandered around and ate a lot and saw the sights.
Other wonders were specific to Manchester. Like the pub Emma kept pointing out, black-and-white Tudor amidst the glassy shine of posh stores and the worst "museum" in the world. Thanks to some IRA bombs, Manchester has had to put a lot of money into urban development in the past decade, helping it avoid the sad demise of other northern Engilsh cities in this age where no one makes anything any more.
And some wonders were specific to our capsule. "The people look like ants!" Emma said. "Well, more like cockroaches..." I smiled. It'd never occurred to me before, but it's silly to say faraway people look like ants. "They might be the size of ants..." she added after a moment's further contemplation. "But really, they just look like small people." I laughed at that, the simile now perfectly accurate and thus perfectly useless, but all the more delightful for it.
She was facing the interior workings of the ferris wheel, while I looked out at dim distant Salford or whatever was in the direction I was pointed at, so it was she who pointed out that you could see the inner workings. I whirled around to admire the cogs and gears, wondering why I hadn't realized this before either: there's really nowhere to hide them in something as gracile as a wheel. It is a joy, an increasingly rare pleasure, to see how things are put together and what makes them work. Steampunk has taught me to fetishize such mechanical things: it's almost a wonder to me now that there's anything that hasn't yet been replaced by CGI or a hermetically-sealed container with no visible buttons or switches.