Was determined to get a picture for today that wasn’t one I could have taken at home, or indeed just about anywhere else in the world. And, for sure, we don’t get critters like this in England. I woke up yesterday having been covered in bites from some man-eating insect or other while I slept: it won’t have been this one, but looking at those mandibles, I’m thankful for small mercies, at least.
This squirrel and I were both out for a lunch break on campus today. He (or she) was busy gathering materials for the winter — I was trying to avoid work as much as possible. (But only for that 20 minutes.)
“I’m not talking to you.”
“Why aren’t you talking to me?”
“Because I’m not.”
“But why?”
“You have to ask?”
etc.
When we arranged to go to Haworth this lunchtime to celebrate Clare’s birthday (a day late) I did not expect that this would also lead to coming face to face with this very handsome creature. Not to mention several other of his fellow raptors — owls, mainly — in a marquee in the pub beer garden. A photographic opportunity too good to miss. This peregrine falcon is called Geoff, apparently. I wonder how he feels about that.
Hard to caption this photo as anything much other than ‘APPLE!’. For appley (apply? Apple-y?) it most certainly is. Not that it’s sitting comfortably on this tree any more; it was definitely picked today.
First, there was the one Muscovy duck that took up residence at Hebden Bridge canal marina — this one. Then several more turned up (and had a few fights). But for a while now I have only seen one again, not the original one but this all-white one, which has made a couple of earlier blog appearances itself. The others have either died or moved on, leaving this one behind. Maybe it just likes it here. Or, maybe it is terribly lonely.
Dead flower masquerding as frail, semi-transparent moths? Or are the moths getting together for purposes of their own, and disguising their negotiations by masquerading as a flower? Either way, winter comes.
Tensions are clearly running high in the ongoing pigeon-duck war. With negotiations having broken down, the pigeon high command has sent out a brave scout to keep an eye on the mallards. But what it hasn’t spotted is the counter-espionage agent sneaking in from the left.
On the 10th October 1991 I turned up in Yorkshire for what was originally planned to be a stay of a few weeks while I ‘got myself sorted out’. Twenty-eight years later, I am still living here: the last eighteen of those in Hebden Bridge. So let’s make today’s pic a home town shot. This is commercialism again, but of a far less predatory sort than yesterday’s. In the matter of boots, defer to the boot man (Bakunin — paraphrased). I hear the olives on the next stall along are pretty good too.
Always a good culinary moment. The first ones just seem to taste so much better. The act of peeling allows the anticipation to build pleasantly, before that opening bite allows the sweetness to cover the tongue. Well, it was the best bit of an otherwise very mundane working day.
Being 42 