Lately, if it’s Monday morning and I’m in Halifax, I am probably walking down to town after having returned the hire car, a route that passes a range of housing, from bourgeois to more basic. This view can’t have changed much in decades. Yes, I know it’s a little blurred, but I’m going for some kind of archaic but otherwise indefinable quality.
Coming all the way to the north-east of England only to see 90 minutes of football would have been a bit of a waste, whatever the result. I stayed over and allowed myself the opportunity to be somewhere very beautiful by 9.45 the following morning. 400 million years ago all this area was apparently a volcano the size of modern-day Mount Etna: Housey Crags are the remnant of one of its old lava vents, massively eroded.
Of all the blog’s 4,500-plus pictures taken in England, this is the second-most northerly, behind only the one in Berwick (10/7/21). For more pictures from the day, see my County Tops blog.
Let there be joy and celebration, in the away end, anyway. After only being on the field five minutes, Hadjam has just scored the second and decisive goal for Brighton and the victory over Sunderland is complete. It was 1st December 2018 when I last saw the Albion win a Premier League game. Worth the wait? Just about.
A protest about being given a Friday afternoon lecture slot (don’t worry guys — it’s not every week)? The payoff from that Student Disintegrator Ray that I have been secretly developing? No, I just sent them out to take some photos of stuff. All part of the thinking process…
The 8:10 to Wigan Wallgate, via Manchester, decided not to bother this morning so there was plenty of time to appreciate the light pouring down the tracks and platforms: everything positioned just so at 8:25am. In fact the person depicted here had lifted their head a little, a moment before I pressed the shutter, so the full rimlight-and-red-hair experience was not forthcoming, but never mind, it has still mostly worked.
Had I posted this on the Wednesday or the morning after I would have had to question the notion that this extensive display of cirrus presaged a change in the weather, for the worse. But sure enough, Thursday night and Friday morning have just been pretty revolting, so there you have it. Autumn does seem to be here, in some form or other.
Nothing shall get through the Red Screen of Doom. Behind, a car park and some undefined ‘businesses’ may be ‘open as usual’ but we cannot know this for sure: these things may as well exist in another dimension.
I am led to believe that the amount of loose change kicking around under sofas, in forgotten jars and, as here, on window sills is an aspect of the money supply on which economists are obliged to keep at least half an eye. After all, here is around €3.70 in currency which has been exported from the economy of the Eurozone, specifically Luxembourg, and if I forget it’s there the next time I head across the Channel it may never be used again. Have tens of millions of people leaving their loose change around and you are draining capital that might have build a school or two. Though not, of course, as much as your average tax-avoiding billionaire.
One’s things for sure about the weather of 2026: our fruit have loved it. The apples are the last in the series but like everything else, there’s plenty of them and they taste very fine. The ladybird seems content enough, too.
This magnificent building has featured before, just over 10 years ago in August 2016, when I made my first visit to the town of Conwy and was rather taken with the place. Returning today with Clare for a day out gave me no reason to change my opinion.
The castle really is something, particularly as it’s been officially ruined and unoccupied for half its existence (completed in 1287, it was slighted after the Civil Wars, so has been unused since about 1650). This was no rustic little fortress, but a seat of kings: at the time, one of the most significant construction projects in Europe. Anyone who thinks history is irrelevant is an idiot, as how Edward I treated the conquered Welsh at that time still impacts on British politics today.
