The wife was doing her latest excessively long bout of exercise, as she trains up for her second marathon in April. 22 miles today I believe. 9 miles in, our paths crossed briefly, then, off she went eastwards.
Once again, I am off somewhere different, mainly because it sustains my interest in this blog, the world, life, etc. Leg one ended at Leeds railway station, where this is taken. It occurred to me while sitting waiting for my second train to depart that I had the chance to capture this incognito shot of the driver getting ready to leave on platform 9 next door. The ‘pastel’ scribblings to the left are then the latest reflected self-portrait. Possibly, then, this is a terrible photo, but I’ll move on.
I paid £24 to guarantee a window seat for my daylight flight and then found I was sat right over the wing — and as it was an Airbus A380, the most monstrous vehicle (with two decks, and hence stairs inside), this was such a bloody large wing I got to see nothing of the land below, and hence no photos. I was confined to seat 63A for much of the flight, too, thanks to my neighbour spending almost all of the 6.5 hour journey in this position. How anyone can sleep on a plane is beyond me, even at night; I have no idea exactly what time zone we were over when I took this, but the time stamp is what my camera said, and we were really very far from it being the hours of darkness.
Four days late, I finally leave St Helena. There were genuine concerns in the morning that the flight would be cancelled yet again — apparently at about 9.30am visibility on the runway was practically zero — but, hallelujah, the clouds cleared and the incoming plane duly landed, about half an hour late (and of course carrying passengers who had all been waiting since Saturday themselves). An hour after this picture was taken, we boarded, took off and I type this in a hotel at Cape Town airport, waiting for my flight back to Heathrow this evening.
This is the blog’s 76th photo to be taken on St Helena: the first one being 9th November 2021 at the same place, the airport, the day before I began my 10-day period of quarantine (spent in a rather nice house not far from where I have been staying this time, Alarm Forest). Will this be the last shot from here, though? At the moment I have no definite plans to return — and, perhaps more significantly, no more research grant money to do so. Data collection for the project is done and I really should now concentrate on writing it all up. But, you know, never say never.
You thought you were leaving Hebden Bridge today? Naaah. Ain’t gonna happen, not at 9.45am, not at any other point either (though there were unsubstantiated rumours that the 13:48 may have run, probably to get some people home — that was it, though). Just as well I gave myself three days to get to Heathrow, huh. Let’s try again tomorrow.
2024’s penultimate picture might be better focused, but what the hell, I think it gives it something of an enigmatic feel. And perhaps I wanted to take a picture of the scaffolding. What’s she doing? Who knows, but let’s hope that if it involved getting a train somewhere, she has patience.
Attempts to create a new tradition by running a bunch of tractors and trucks, decorated in lights, through the centre of Hebden Bridge on 24th December were greeted by this photographer as an opportunity to depict something different on the 14th Christmas Eve to grace these virtual pages. Did he (I) really see the point, though? Well, not really. But it did draw a reasonably sized crowd.
Christ Almighty you have no idea about the shite that is the local train service. Don’t think that the one you see here is pictired trundling happily onto the platform — instead it is hanging there, just for arbitrary reasons. Not only that, but it’s the first train out of Hebden into Manchester for some hours. The giuy’s face says it all. In the end I didn’t even bother.
This was one of two photos that I took today which I like despite their technical deficiencies. I was more or less trying for this effect. My third day in a row in Manchester (and blog-wise that’s the first time that’s happened in 2024), but I was not there to work, nor, like the great majority of the people in the city centre, to shop. Instead I was going to the football and just passing through on the tram, nicely insulated from the rush — and the rather poor weather — outside, at least for 45 minutes or so.
I, and most of the other people on this shot, have just disembarked a train that was due into Victoria at 09:01. As you can see from the time in the heading, it failed to make this commitment. Sadly we are in another one of those periodic troughs in the performance of the local rail network where such outcomes have become normalised. Demands for more Working From Home are as much to do with this as anything else; certainly round here, and certainly for me. And whomever put up the ‘No Entry’ sign can also sod off.
Being 42 