Category Archives: Hebden Bridge

Cultural icon, late

Tuesday 14th July 2026, 10.35pm (day 5,437)

Phone box, late, 14/7/26

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.

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Friday DVD stall

Friday 10th July 2026, 3.10pm (day 5,433)

Friday DVD stall, 10/7/26

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.

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Home, for 25 years

Friday 3rd July 2026, 2.50pm (day 5,426)

HB from graveyard, 3/7/25

Having exchanged contracts the day before, it was on 3rd July 2001 that Clare and I moved into our house in Hebden Bridge: separately, I recall, as on the day I came in from our previous place in Leeds with the help of my Dad while her family brought her over from Morecambe with stuff from there. And we’ve been there ever since. I’m not sure we expected to stay for a quarter of a century — but it’s how things have panned out and right now we have no plans to move out.

It seemed appropriate to get a shot of the town and of the house within it for today, so here you are: as seen from the little, overgrown graveyard at the top of the Buttress. Our place is pretty much in the middle of the shot, part of the ‘castle walls’ that line the Keighley Road. Hopefully they’ll still be standing in another 25 years, or indeed another 125: maybe we’ll still be there after the first span of time, but not the latter.

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Working in the dry dock

Wednesday 1st July 2026, 4.40pm (day 5,424)

Dry dock artwork, 1/7/26

At first sight the dry dock on the canal in the centre of Hebden Bridge is another thing that gives it a sense of industrial-age authenticity. Except that up until about 30 years ago, the site was occupied by a petrol station. Not everything is as old as it seems. Still, I quite like having it there: even if the chance to take pictures of arc-welding sparks and so on has now been reduced thanks to the addition of the artwork, with obligatory domain name.

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Cookng manoeuvres

Sunday 28th June 2026, 2.10pm (day 5,421)

Market cook, 28/6/26

Whatever is cooking away under the lids, I have no idea, but as with every Sunday, the general miscellany of the market on St George’s Square proves attractive. Food, trinkets, old military uniforms — nothing as useful as a pair of shoelaces though. For such things, we are forced to leave town.

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Steamy lighting

Wednesday 10th June 2026, 7.15pm (day 5,403)

Lamp and steam, 10/6/26

One of those which may look as if I turned it monochrome, but I really didn’t. The light hits the… well, the lights, on the main road through town very well on evenings at this time of year. The steam is an added touch — though why we need this in mid-June, just ask the British climate gods, I guess.

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UFC (Unidentified For-sale Contraption)

Monday 1st June 2026, 9.35am (day 5,394)

Unidentified contraption, 1/6/26

I have been lookig at this object for a couple of days now and remain mystified as to its exact function, or just why the present owner feels that others may be thinking, “ah yes, that’s just the kind of big blue contraption, with a wheel, that I need in my front room” and thereby be willing to buy it, for an undisclosed price. While he declares his possible frustration at this, a shadowy figure looks on and may or may not have busted the photographer at this point. So goes the latest tableau.

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Power to the cats

Sunday 31st May 2026, 4.05pm (day 5,393)

Chinese power cats, 31/5/26

The automatic waving cats in the window of the local Asian food store all seemed to be raising the fist in unison this afternoon. At some point in the far future, archaeologists (if such a profession remains by then) may well dig some of these up and ponder on their use in idolatry or some other kind of religious context. But, no, they are just pointless tat, although endearing enough. Maybe the same is true of those similar cat statues dug up from Egypt or wherever. Only the original owners know…

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Further repetition

Wednesday 29th April 2026, 5.50pm (day 5,361)

The houses on Windsor Road in Hebden Bridge always make a good subject and I think this is the sixth time they have appeared on here by now — but it’s been fifteen years, so I ask for that to be taken into consideration when judging my claim to want to avoid repeition on here. Definitely an effective illustration of certain engineering principles though, and of variations on a theme . I make it that there are forty windows visible on this shot in whole or in part, all the same, but all just that little bit different too.

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Bus stop under blossom

Friday 24th April 2026, 3.15pm (day 5,356)

Bus stop and blossom, 24/4/26

The sun continues to shine and it was far too nice a day to extend the whole ‘working at home’ thing past about 3pm, particularly bearing in mind it is now the weekend (cf. yesterday’s comment). These people may well be on their way home too as they wait for the hourly bus to Haworth and Keighley.

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