Author Archives: Drew Whitworth

Nov 01 2020
Leave a comment
Daily Post, Sport

The last real Saturday for a while

Saturday 31st October 2020, 3.35pm (day 3,355)

Bingley Town, 31/10/20

Saturday is football day. Bingley Town, in red-and-black, won this match 2-1 over FC Sporting Keighley. But this will be the last one for a while — for me, for them — as, with all the resistance of a wet herring being gutted on a fishmonger’s slab, we are heading back into “lockdown” from Thursday. I use the quotes to suggest that it’s not really lockdown at all, seeing as many things will of course remain open, so actually it’s the selective targeting of a few sectors of the economy that are seen as expendable, and a general excuse to push house arrest as a desirable state of affairs. But we have been sold the long con in any case.

RIP Sean Connery too, who has made the blog in times past; and I stand by what I said about him on that page.

Tagged , , , , , ,
Oct 31 2020
1 Comment
Daily Post, Interior

Return to the Picture House

Friday 30th October 2020, 7.45pm (day 3,354)

Picture House foyer, 30/10/20

Hebden Bridge’s hundred-year-old Picture House has not featured on the blog in 2020. Flooded (again) on Feb. 9th and then forced to close by the New Fascism — until tonight. Tonight, we could return to support this valuable local resource, see a good film (Saint Maud) and have a glass of wine at our seat. Next week, as we are pressured back into whatever the hell ‘Tier 3’ is being defined as by Our Glorious Leaders, we will still be able to see movies, but not have a glass of wine at our seat. This is the kind of difference that gives me a warm, cosy feeling of safety and respect for authority.

Tagged , , , , , , , ,
Oct 30 2020
Leave a comment
Daily Post, Interior

Home invasion (benign)

Thursday 29th October 2020, 1.00pm (day 3,353)

Ellie & Marcus do the jigsaw, 29/10/20

We had visitors in the house today, and this will make no more difference to anyone’s life than if we were to do the same thing next week. Unless you ascribe to the views of the moronocracy, who’d rather blame us for their own failings, and screw up local economies just that little bit more. Meanwhile, Ellie & Marcus work on the jigsaw. It’s half-term.

Tagged , , , , , , ,
Oct 29 2020
Leave a comment
Daily Post, Hebden Bridge, Urban scene

Darkness falls

Wednesday 28th October 2020, 4.50pm (day 3,352)

Light at dusk, 28/10/20

I’ve given up wondering whether I’m being metaphorical or not. Fact is it’s that first week after the clocks go back, and dusk oppresses us an hour or more earlier than it did last week. Winter is coming. The Christmas lights are ready.

Tagged , , , , , ,
Oct 28 2020
1 Comment
Daily Post, Hebden Bridge, Urban scene

Crown Street, Tuesday morning

Tuesday 27th October 2020, 8.25am (day 3,351)

Crown Street, 27/10/20

The schools are shut for half-term, there are no trains to Manchester and it rained most of the day. Hebden Bridge is back in lockdown almost by default. It’s a depressing time, a silence hangs over the place that is unnatural and wrong.

Tagged , , , , , ,
Oct 26 2020
Leave a comment
Daily Post, Family Member, Portrait

Joe the filmmaker

Monday 26th October 2020, 1.55pm (day 3,350)

Joe filming me, 26/10/20

Time is on our hands. I can’t easily get into Manchester this week as the train line is having one of its bouts of ‘maintenance’. Joe is on his half-term break. I needed a film making for teaching purposes and it gave us both something to do, and him something to put on his portfolio for later life.

Tagged , , , , , , ,
Oct 26 2020
Leave a comment
Daily Post, Portrait, Sport

Turning their backs

Sunday 25th October 2020, 2.20pm (day 3,349)

Not watching, 25/10/20

I can see no reason at all for this rather odd sight of spectators at today’s football match turning their back on Newcastle United women’s no. 21, Maisie Cole. Except that there was a game on the other pitch below. Mind you, as the game between Newcastle and Brighouse was 0-0, they didn’t miss much.

Tagged , , , , , , , , ,
Oct 25 2020
Leave a comment
Daily Post, Transport

Cui bono?

Saturday 24th October 2020, 10.50am (day 3,348)

Leeds station, empty, 24/10/20

This is Leeds railway station, at what should be peak time on a Saturday morning.

You may think this desperately depressing scene is justified and necessary. I do not. When a crime has been committed the good investigator first asks — cui bono? It means ‘who benefits’? And who does benefit from all this — if we are not travelling, not spending money in the same places we were spending it last October, seeing friends, partying in nightclubs, going to Elland Road or wherever? I name Rupert Murdoch, Jim Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Eric Schmidt and all their kin as people with the most profoud vested interest in keeping us locked up through the spreading of fear and this year’s sudden, digitally-driven enhancement of what Michel Foucault called the carceral state. If I’m wrong, sue me. If you don’t like it, defy it.

Tagged , , , , , , ,
Oct 24 2020
Leave a comment
Daily Post, Hebden Bridge, Landscape

View to the hills

Friday 23rd October 2020, 3.45pm (day 3,347)

Rooves and hills, 23/10/20

With no disrespect to the people who are sharing this life with me (Clare, Joe), things have a drabness to them at the moment: all the diary contains are work events, there is nothing communal beyond some football matches (and even they are visited alone), no parties, no gigs. This is what the world has become now the Great Fear has been used as an excuse to kick us all into a digital semi-prison. If things are different where you are, then embrace that. At least from my house the view is quite good, particularly when the afternoon sunlight catches the hills in the distance.

Tagged , , , , , , ,
Oct 23 2020
Leave a comment
Daily Post, Transport

Canal Street lock(down), Manchester

Thursday 22nd October 2020, 9.25am (day 3,346)

Canal Street lock, 22/10/20

The Rochdale Canal has featured many times on this blog, most recently eleven days ago, near Todmorden. This shot is taken in the centre of Manchester, on Canal Street, as urban (and metrosexual) as you get, but you wouldn’t know that from this shot. When I returned past this point in the afternoon, all the leaves had gone, suggesting the lock had been opened at some point during the day — a small sign of life in what remains a mostly comatose city, just waiting for the Tory Party to take it down and stomp it underfoot for a few more weeks.

Tagged , , , , , , ,
← Older posts
Newer posts →