I started this blog on August 26th, which means today is the end of my third month. Thus, I am a quarter of the way through the planned whole year, 12 months, 366 days (it’s a leap year next year, remember). I guess I’ve done quite well so far, but today I really lacked inspiration. Only this little, 3-month-old pup in the pub this evening really stood out. It was him, or another picture of Hebden Bridge, anyway.
I like ducks: handsome creatures, in my opinion. Tasty, too 🙂 I wonder exactly what is going on to the left of this shot, it’s clearly something of interest in the duck world.
By the way, this is the third shot in a row taken at almost exactly the same time of day.
I grew up in the South of England but left 20 years ago and don’t tend to come back if I can help it. This place, however, is the one exception. Sometimes I wish they would swap it with Blackpool – the one carbuncle on the face of the North – then all the really good places would be up there and all the naff places down South, But it’s probably better this way round. However, a warning – there are plans to build some huge ‘observation tower’ in front of the ruined West Pier. Remember, if there is anything cool and beautiful, someone, somewhere, is planning to fuck it up.
Growing out of a tree trunk, in the woods over the road, spotted while walking off a big roast dinner. Well, OK, it’s probably not a real leprechaun village, but who knows for sure.
Mind you, come to think of it, I don’t live in Ireland.
Some pictures you just take by chance. This was supposed to be a picture of some workmen, and they’re still there in the invisible three-quarters of this significantly cropped image, but as I took it, this flock of pigeons flew across. It’s not a bad shot, though the birds are quite blurred and that branch that goes across the lower centre of the picture unbalances it a bit. But though I took some other nice pix on what was a pleasant morning here, with all the others, I could probably take them again. A shot like this may only happen once, so I’m nominating it for today.
Today was the first day of the new academic year in Manchester. I skulked at home and hid away so profoundly that I never even left the house, the first such day while doing this blog. So I had to find inspiration at home. My old Victorian house is helpful in that regard, if only because of its occasional decrepitude. This is by my front door step – the furthest I got out today. I’ll meet the new students tomorrow.
Why would anyone in Britain buy blackberries at this time of year? Why would anyone equipped with a freezer and a few hours on a September morning have to buy them at any time of year? Particularly ones shipped in from Mexico, which, unbelievably, I have seen on offer in our local stores in the middle of a British autumn. I cannot think of a more ridiculous illustration of how we have utterly f***ed up food production and its relationship to our long-term survival.
I also like blackberries. Particularly in a pie.
I nearly put up a picture of the Championship table, to show the mighty Brighton & Hove Albion FC top after yet another win. Who knows, perhaps that will be my last chance. But I suspect not. So we’ll have a picture of this impressive fungus instead, which might not be there next week either.
I left Wasdale Head in grey but dry and tolerable weather. As far as Dropping Crag the way was steep but unproblematic. Then everything changed. The cloud came down and the rain started, making the rocks slippery, and the climb just got steeper and harder. It was an unpleasant 90 minutes to say the least. But there was this one dramatic moment, as this huge crack opened up in the world ahead, mist rising up through it like something out of Tolkein. For a moment I did not have to worry about getting down again and could just wonder at the sublime nature of it all. Did it make the horizontal hail on the summit worthwhile? That’s an open question.
Halfway down the torrent of scree which drops a thousand feet from Dore Head to Wasdale, descending by a mixture of precarious clambering and simply sliding down on my butt, this frog hops across the ‘path’ and just sits there, waiting for me to do something. Whatever it was doing up there, only it knew for sure. Perhaps it spends its days hopping up a couple of hundred feet then climbing on a little flat piece of rock and schussing down to the bottom again when no one is watching.
I remember that on the very first day I moved into my house I walked up through the woods to the point at which they thinned out into fields and bramble patches. I looked at the scenery and thought, bloody hell, I live somewhere. This is a place. The environment round here can still do that.
Today I gave myself a break from work by going out and looking for blackberries. It’s been a cold, grey day and I didn’t find much fruit, but I did see these plants, and while I’m not botanist enough to identify them properly, this was the one point today at which the sun shone and it still felt like there was a vestige of summer in the air.
Being 42 