Wednesday 8th July 2020, 9.40am (day 3,240)
The message on the one side is clear enough — but the bin? More proof that others are starting to lose it thanks to lockdown? Or perhaps they have always been the same.
Being 42
Life, one day at a time
Category Archives: Hebden Bridge
Ex-scarecrow
Monday 6th July 2020, 3.25pm (day 3,238)
The scarecrow itself is long gone. But its boots remain, like a sort of imprint, or memory. I doubt they’ll scare the birds off much. But then again, nor do scarecrows, particularly.
Smoke (something happening)
Friday 3rd July 2020, 11.50am (day 3,235)
Over the last 3,235 days of this attempt to document the rest of my life in pictures there have, of course, been plenty of days where I’ve just stayed at home and not really done much. But there hasn’t been such a concentrated run of such days, day after day after day where there is nothing happening outside. And on a day when it never stopped raining…. this swell of smoke, a bonfire presumably, really was about the most interesting thing seen all day (with apologies to the family).
By the end of this month we may have been able to visit a pub and go away for a few days. If you think either of these things is a bad thing… let’s just say I disagree with you.
Man photographing (man photographing) puddle
Wednesday 1st July 2020, 4.25pm (day 3,233)
We are all starting to lose it. Why is he photographing this puddle? More to the point, why am I photographing him photographing this puddle? Which one of us is losing it more?
The sign is the added touch that will roughly date this scene for ever more.
Stormy sky over Old Town
Saturday 27th June 2020, 2.45pm (day 3,229)
This being a British summer, the balmy heat of Wednesday and Thursday has gone, and it’s raining again. It will do this until it feels like being different.
Old Town sits on the hills to the north of Hebden Bridge. In Christopher Saxton’s atlas of 1579, the first atlas of England and Wales ever published, it’s called The Old towne…. so it’s been around for a while.
Gate to the woods
Thursday 25th June 2020, 7.55am (day 3,227)
What’s been lacking over the last three months is not just variety of scene, but variety of event. There’s nothing happening, no parties, no shows, no sports, no conviviality. We just plod on.
At least there is still variety of light. The morning, indeed the whole day, was a beautiful one. This becomes the first pre-8am shot since I was still commuting to Manchester at the beginning of February. But this one is taken within yards of my house, and despite the glorious weather was one of only two photos I felt moved to take today.
Calder valley view
Friday 19th June 2020, 8.40am (day 3,221)
I accept that we are not strictly trapped, whether at home or in the Calder valley itself: but with nothing open out there except a few shops (and by no means all), it’s still house arrest in all but name. I agree there are worse places to be stuck but this afternoon and evening I felt like my head was going to pop unless this ends soon. But there are too many people who like this situation — profit from it, even. These are the ones who will drag us all down.
Phone box book swap
Wednesday 17th June 2020, 11.05am (day 3,219)
This is very Hebden Bridge. Strictly a one-person only library, however — which I guess at the present time is seen as healthy.
The cobbles on Sackville Street
Wednesday 10th June 2020, 11.55am (day 3,212)
The cobbles that surface Sackville Street in Hebden Bridge are classic, but whether they are practical, ask the people that live there. I was just passing. Having reached the ‘bored stupid’ stage of lockdown myself, I wonder whether the painting in evidence here is recent, done by a local householder who has been on furlough for the last three months. But I guess the work looks older than that.
Thursday fish van
Thursday 4th June 2020, 1.35pm (day 3,206)
‘Paul’s Fresh Fish (from Fleetwood. Lancashire)’ has been present at Hebden Bridge’s Thursday market every week for years: the van appeared on the blog way back in December 2012 (a picture I always quite liked due to its sense of late December desolation and some decent lighting). He missed a couple of weeks in April, but clearly there is too much tuna in the Irish Sea off Fleetwood to sell on, so he’s back now.
