I don’t think the police will be called for this one, although somewhere there may well be a small person distraught over the loss of their soulmate and demanding major investigations. To those who want to know, then, this morning it was in the Hebden Water, just upstream from the weir by the White Lion. If retrieved and given some tumble dryer attention there might even be a reunion.
Last day in Dubai. Taking a picture of attendees at the course I’ve been teaching on while here (undepicted…) there was a frisson of excitement as I pulled out my ‘vintage’ compact camera, as if usage of such things is simply anachronistic in 2026. I have tried taking photos on the phone, though, and it just doesn’t work as well when it comes to zoom and focus. I doubt this pic could possibly have been taken on a phone, not the combination of detail in the foreground and the soft-focus of the background, not from the distance at which I was standing, anyway. And it’s that combination that I like here. When this camera finally does die — and it won’t be long, I predict — I will try to get another one. And another, until we’re all so anachronistic that we’re not here any more.
Welcome back to Dubai, for my third trip here after 2019 and last year. Purely for work, well, except today when I had a day off thanks to teaching all of the weekend that is to come. Dubai Creek is why the city is here, being the inlet of the Persian Gulf around which the original settlement was founded. These days it’s just another part of the big shopping mall that the city has become, albeit with cuter buildings and some cats. Oh yes, and lots of seagulls.
The Hindu religion seems quite into its animalistic deities and idols, so I am sure that Ganesh and all his colleagues are quite happy that this superbly kitsch temple facade in Walthamstow has clearly become home to a number of pigeons.
The snowdrops always come first. Earlier than usual? Perhaps, but not excessively so, and they are sitting in a nice, sheltered spot. This is not some rural woodland though; in fact these are on the uni campus, just next to the Roscoe building.
A fourth appearance for Hugo, and this portrait sums up his general character as well as anything. Since we last saw him I believe he has lost a couple of crucial parts of his anatomy (y’know) but it doesn’t seem to have changed him much.
Along the stone retaining wall of Hebden Bridge railway station grow substantial patches of moss, and this little fellow was hopping along and burrowing into every little bit of it this morning, in search of food, unconcerned by my relatively nearby presence and far more bothered about staying warm on a cold winter’s day. Look how fluffed up its feathers are. I hope it sees out the winter.
2025 has been a very good year for the garden, probably the best ever in terms of the amount of food grown and gathered. We had so many plums that they couldn’t all get picked and used before the wasps or some other rot got them. I think these ones are well past their best though. Taken during today’s job — pruning the tree, so it can produce more fruit in 2026, we hope.
“Hi Bob. Good pickings today, don’t you think?”
“Definitely. Must be all those people driving back from their Christmasses in Scotland. Ahh… look, I see an abandoned Kit-kat over there.”
“Sure — see you later….”
This spider was not a big one, but its web was expansive enough, and as you can see, it’s still hard at work with the building. What marvellous creatures these are: there are many species which build some kind of dwelling, of course, but can’t manage it purely with goo extruded out from their bodies.
However, you can see that it’s working on the outside of a rather grubby window (the kitchen one, as it happens). By the evening, evidence (like, a bill on the doormat) then suggested our window cleaner had been round on one of his seasonal visits and all this was nowhere to be seen. I bet the spider was substantially pissed off, I know I would have been.
Being 42 