Sunday 5th August 2018, 3.40pm (day 2,537)
First weekend of my summer break. I have no idea who this is, the picture is chosen for no other reason than I just think it makes him look good. Which is as much as we can ask from a portrait I think.
Being 42
Life, one day at a time
Category Archives: Stranger
Can I stop going to work yet?
Tuesday 31st July 2018, 9.55am (day 2,532)
My summer holiday has been a long time coming this year and there’s the rest of this week to get through yet. Despite the later start to the day, I still feel like this guy.
This will probably turn out to be the last shot taken by my Canon Power Shot SX710 camera which since its debut on 27th June 2015 has put in sterling service every day since, including getting up to the top of Kilimanjaro and back. But the lens cover has been requiring the intervention of fingers to retract successfully for some time now and it’s been randomly freezing up, to be recovered only by removing the battery. I took the plunge and invested in another model this morning. Farewell then to the old one, it still does work so I’ll keep it as a backup.
Cool under cardboard
Sunday 24th June 2018, 12.30pm (day 2,495)
Hebden Bridge’s annual ‘Handmade Parade’ has featured on here every year since the blog started, and will probably continue to do so. Although it is easy to be blasé about it when it’s seen every June, it remains an amazing outburst of creativity from hundreds of people, done purely for the sake of one performance along the main street of the town, which lasts 90 minutes or so — and for no direct commercial reasons whatsoever. Long may it continue. If someone can look this sophisticated and cool while wearing a large blue cardboard snake’s-head as a hat — then there must be benefits to it.
French fans in McGlynn’s
Thursday 21st June 2018, 3.50pm (day 2,492)
McGlynn’s pub in Bloomsbury declares this afternoon for the French, before their game against Peru in the World Cup: note the tricolour in the window. What gets me about this shot though is how much Roy Keane looks like a little orange animated version of himself, sort of like Max Headroom….
Monday morning cup of tea
Monday 4th June 2018, 9.55am (day 2,475)
Started the first day of my working week in London, travelled to Manchester, finished it at home in Hebden Bridge. This guy may not have left Argyle Square in that time, but I’m sure he was just as productive as me in the end. I like all the vaguely different colours of brick on this shot.
Ball girl, Raith Rovers FC
Saturday 5th May 2018, 4.35pm (day 2,445)
The football season comes to its many and diverse ends, each club finishing in different ways with different emotions. Raith Rovers of Scottish League One have managed to blow their hopes out in the last three games, promotion hopes have disappeared and at the final whistle today all was over. It was a very melancholy place all round — club, and town (Kirkcaldy in Fife). Maybe this picture captures something of that.
In Gardemoen airport
Sunday 22nd April 2018, 12.55pm (day 2,432)
Travelling north again, away from the warmth and sun of England in the springtime, and back to the Arctic. I may or may not have looked as happy about this as this fellow passenger did today. Or maybe he just busted the photographer and was expressing his feelings.
The man in the middle
Saturday 14th April 2018, 2.30pm (day 2,424)
Hate ’em or hate ’em, the game couldn’t run without them, at any level — particularly way down in the football capillaries, which is where I was today (West Riding County Amateur League, competition 30 of the season)…
World’s Oldest Football Club
Saturday 7th April 2018, 3.40pm (day 2,417)
More football, I’ve been packing in the games while being off work. Sheffield FC reign indisputably as the world’s oldest association football club, being founded in October 1857 which, to put it in perspective, was three and a half years before the American Civil War broke out. They have been going steadily along for the last 160 years without ever having made much of an impact in sporting terms, thanks largely to their having steadfastly refused to embrace professionalism back in the 1880s. But they’re still around, a mecca for football tourists the world over (like me let’s face it) if the graffiti in the toilets is anything to go by, and they still have their little community of fans, like this guy, who may well have been in this spot for many decades. Metaphorically at least. Not a great day on the pitch though — they lost 4-0 to Leek Town. Don’t worry — only a month now until the end of the season.
Train doze
Tuesday 20th March 2018, 3.55pm (day 2,399)
Yes, this was me today (well, apart from the hair)…. and it’s only Tuesday…
