The WIP #26: Alphabeteer
The Week in Photos (22-28 June 2024)
For people who can no longer run fast, there are some unofficial Parkrun challenges to give them extrinsic motivation to get up in the morning.
This year I thought it might be fun to finish the Alphabeteer challenge. That is, to have done a parkrun beginning with each letter of the alphabet (except X).
It is a weird thing to do, I know, but it has led me to see places that I wouldn’t have thought of visiting before. It is a MacGuffin — something that is unimportant but creates momentum.
After York and The Hague (Zuiderpark), my final two letters were I and N. Hence, Ipswich and Norwich. It felt a bit bathetic to have completed the challenge, but what a joy to have visited all those places.
Nearby was the UEA campus, a brutalist classic of ziggurats set in parkland.
The Sainsbury Centre had a revelatory exhibition by The Incite Project on truth in photography.
On the way back we stopped off in Peterborough for a few hours to lunch with my friend Chris and visit the stunning cathedral.
After the placidity of East Anglia, the chaos of Glasgow felt thrilling from people entertaining themselves with pigeons, to the half-finished Subway, to colourful women I noticed in the Gorbals.
I wasn’t paying full attention at the New Glasgow Society Built Environment hustings because there was an issue in my flat block, but it was startling to hear David Stark, the Reform candidate, whose platform seemed to consist of climate change denial and extolling the Victorian work ethic.
It was like a mirror world to the other candidates.
