No great adventures today: this is taken from my front doorstep. Three photos in a row from Hebden Bridge for the first time since July, in fact. Going ‘old-fashioned’ with the colour scheme does seem to work for the Victorian housing of the local neighbourhood. The number on the lamppost is the only anachronism.
Ho hum, it’s November. Pick from one of these two reactions: a) “I can’t believe it’s November already, where’s the year gone etc. etc.” or b) “what do you mean there’s still two months of 2026 to go?”. Either way, wherever the ice cream van zipping out of shot to the left has been, their being out today could be considered somewhat ambitious.
I admit there are times when my fantasies of both downsizing and drifting lead, perhaps even logically, to thoughts of spending the rest of my days on one of these. But I’d miss the bathroom too much. Oh yeah, and central heating. Nevertheless, these thoughts do come, particularly on pleasant Sunday mornings before it has got too cold.
It’s that time of year where it can’t decide whether it’s warm or cold. Hence, this mist, which sort of springs from the boundary between the two states. The question of whether or not we should turn on the central heating is more of an economic than a climatic question, however.
Had I posted this on the Wednesday or the morning after I would have had to question the notion that this extensive display of cirrus presaged a change in the weather, for the worse. But sure enough, Thursday night and Friday morning have just been pretty revolting, so there you have it. Autumn does seem to be here, in some form or other.
Back hone. And here was the weather: a dozen of these seemed to sweep through the valley today. What the hell, I had to go back to work.
The thing about whirligigs is that if they’re working, one can’t get a decent photo of them. Only when they stop moving can the capture be made: but then it’s not whirling, is it? You see, these are the kinds of things that I drift into thinking about while sitting in the pub at the end of a day’s writing (and most of my days are that at the moment). Everything I took today seemed to be some sort of abstract.
Why did the tipping of this chair bring to my mind a feeling of slight melancholy, as if the summer is over and all to come is the decline? I don’t know, but somehow, it does. Even if it is still July and (at least at 11:40am) the sun was still shining…
Sustaining this blog requires me to at least try to see familiar things in a new light now and again. There was no particular reason why the phone box in the centre of town caught my eye (on the way home from the cinema), but it did. Perhaps it was just looking very much like itself. These things, collectively, are a recognisable British icon — not quite technology, not quite architecture, a mixture of the two. This one is still functional as far as I know (that is, you can make telephone calls from it): it was being used as a library for a while but that is no longer the case.
If you find yourself in Hebden Bridge on a Friday afternoon and in need of some cheap DVDs, this market stall is the place to come, believe me. I’d spend more money here except that most of the films stocked that I do want to see, we already own. “Nordic Noir” is a new genre on me — but I think it just means that in this box can be found a couple of copies of The Bridge.
