This staircase-cum-alleyway leads down the side of our allotment (which sits behind the hedge to the right). It’s a lot steeper than it looks on this photograph, and a tiring climb which is probably why this cat is doing the sensible thing and just chilling. After a very busy – and mentally confusing – week for me, I know how it feels; I did as little as possible today.
This whole line of ducks took it upon themselves to saunter up the main street of Hebden Bridge today: sort of like we used to do while at primary school, to dash through the secondary school campus now and again on the way home and feel dead hard about it. I was too slow with my camera to capture more than this one, but never mind.
Awww. These chicks hatched today, in an incubator located in Joe’s after-school club.
Incidentally, this is only the second photo of the whole blog taken on a camera other than my Fujifilm Finepix JZ which has taken all the other 234 or whatever-it-is pictures. The first one was when I borrowed the Nikon for my ‘professional development’ photo shoot in the woods with Joe. This one was on a very basic camera borrowed from the school, because I broke the cardinal rule – ALWAYS take the camera. Really. Always. You don’t think you’ll see something worth photographing when you pick the kid up from school? Wrong.
From England’s steepest and highest points yesterday to one of its flattest, lowest expanses: and all only a couple of dozen miles away. I like these little worm casts (though I am sure my parents will remind me of some long-buried beach holiday of my toddlerhood in which I was terrified of this kind of thing); a kind of natural sculpture. Or possibly just untidiness.
Tara is the dog of our friend Steve Grey who drinks in the local pub. Of all the people I have ever met Steve is the one who is closest to having a ‘daemon’ like the ones possessed by all the characters in Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials novels – a companion soul who takes the form of an animal. Tara is Steve’s. They are almost impossible to imagine without one another.
A husband-and-wife team, I guessed. Saw no sign of ducklings, but it looks to me like they’re on the case.
The weather remains beautiful and springlike. I’d say it has brought out the bumblebees but actually, for some reason this year there has been a real crop of big, fat dozy bumblebees doing the rounds for about two weeks now. This one I trapped in a glass to get it out of the pub, but then couldn’t resist using it as a model for about twenty photos during which it got increasingly pissed off and eventually started zooming up and down the glass so fast I couldn’t photograph it any more, so I let it go.
This shot I love, though, it looks like a little mouse with a single wing. You’re viewing it from behind: the two legs to the right are its rear two legs; its head is facing away from the camera, and its left wing is obscured because it lies along the line where the glass meets the paper. The magazine underneath it gives an interesting background. Yeah, I’m happy with this one. Nice photo to end a good week.
I know I did this theme a couple of days ago but there really wasn’t any other photo today which encapsulated what was an absolutely glorious spring day.
Incidentally, those who know the Manchester campus may be bemused as to where this is, because it really must be one of the least green campuses in Britain – there is hardly any green space, plus this bloody big road running right through the middle of it. Trust me however: this is just outside Blackwell’s, under the ramp to the shopping precinct and opposite the Kilburn building.
It’s nice to have a change of scale occasionally. I can quite see this as a luxuriant jungle, hard up against some crags. If a condor were to be flying past in the middle-distance, or there were a little human figure in the foreground, about to plunge into the darkness beneath the trees, it would not look too wrong.
Actually this is a patch of moss on the top of the stone retaining wall between the A6033 and the Hebden Water, a minute’s walk from my house: total area covered by this photo, less than a square foot. How much of the world do we so often miss seeing?
Had this one all lined up, as the bird perched on this fence pole, but then it moved just as I pressed the shutter. Ah well, it’s still interesting, though it might have done the decent thing and flown down to the ground in front of the pole instead of behind it.
Being 42 