It’s not that cold here, in fact local contacts are talking about it being ‘very nice’: which is their interpretation of rather grey, still weather and a temperature of about 2-3ºC. Fair enough I suppose — a fornight ago it was apparently below -20º with wind-chill. This ice track is artificially maintained; it just goes round and round in a circle, it would seem more fun to me if they ran it through the city streets like an alternative bus lane.
I wouldn’t want to come here in the wind and rain but on a glorious, sunny Sunday morning — which today was — I could not think of much better to do in London than revisit Hackney Marshes. It’s an evocative sight as you come over the bridge at the north end and see this view. The place is so big it’s still about 20 minutes’ walking from here to the other end.
There are worse things to do on a fairly pleasant Sunday morning, whether for the players or the people watching. Or the people taking photographs, not just of the action but also the backdrop: wind turbines and all.
The match is over, they are happy their team won (these are Blackburn Rovers fans) but it’s a cold night — time to go home. Which I also tried to do from this point, but another two hours were to pass before I enjoyed its comforts. That’s another story however.
It’s been a while since the ‘pure football’ post went up, but what the hell, Old Earth — the ground of Huddersfield Amateur FC — has good landscape potential; in fact, the ground’s featured on here twice before, and constitutes the entirety of appearances for the town of Elland (because of course Huddersfield Amateur don’t play in Huddersfield). Sunday afternoon and the women take centre stage: visitors Golcar United, on the ball here in green and black, won this encounter 3-2. The focus seems to have worked out nicely on this shot.
It’s Saturday, it’s in the region of 3pm, there’ll be a few football matches going on around the place I’m sure. The Marley Stadium in Keighley isn’t the most comfortable of venues but the backdrop’s pretty reasonable.
“He stands like a statue, becomes part of the machine, feeling all the bumpers, always playing clean… Plays by intuition, the digit counters fall, that deaf dumb and blind kid, sure plays a mean pinball….”
OK, this guy’s probably not deaf, dumb or blind, but hey. The Tilt bar in Birmingham has 20 fine altars at which to worship. Dammit though, that’s a pub two days in a row. But I am on a long weekend.
Many places describe themselves as the Home of Football or something similar, but Hackney Marshes in London has as good a claim as any. 88 football pitches make this probably the largest single centre for football in the whole world. About 30 of them were being used today by a diverse range of teams including UK Moldova FC, FC Karpaty, Flamengo, Limehouse Tigres. The sun was shining. You have your Mecca I’m sure, perhaps this is mine.
22 men kicking a pig’s bladder (well, originally) around a muddy field, in the rain, up on a Yorkshire moor. But you know I like this kind of thing. Today, courtesy of Denholme United — the ones in yellow.
Football matches are finishing later and later, now this whole ‘add on every second that players spend rolling around on the floor’ thing has kicked in. Rochdale v Chesterfield is still going on behind me at this point, even at 10pm, but I had to leave before the end to catch the train. Anyway, all of this is irrelevant to what I think is quite a pleasing shot of the moon riding on its little cloud.
Being 42 