This little graveyard perches on the hillside, across the valley from my house. With a powerful enough pair of binoculars, it might even be possible to see this diorama from our bedroom window. But until today, it had gone unseen. There’s nothing else to do but explore these nearby hidden corners.
I had candidates for today that were better pictures, maybe, but I really wanted to see people’s faces today. And no, I don’t mean masked ones.
The establishment in question is located somewhere round here but that sign isn’t pointing to it. Instead it just presides over a mostly empty car park, where there should be signs of visitors, shoppers, people just hanging out in the town centre on a Saturday.
One of the lies we’ve been sold over the last year centres around the notion of ‘essentia’ and ‘non-essential’ retail. Amazon can compel their drones to go work in warehouses that are centres of virus transmission, but I am not allowed to patronise a local bookshop, nor to buy a pair of shoes. This has been an unparalleled opportunity to shaft small businesses, one the Tories (backed up by Labour, who are even worse) have taken with glee, while puttng on their concerned face, and telling us it’s all for our own good. Not if you are a business owner, I imagine. But that’s OK, we can just blame them for ‘not adapting’, like not inventing a way to get nails done online. Sorry to break out into this again, but there’ll be weeks more of this crap yet.
So exciting was yesterday that it slipped my mind that it was the day on which this record was confirmed — this is now the longest run of English-only pictures on this blog. As of today it is 144 days since day 3,312, when Scotland (in the form of Loch Skeen) featured for the day. That, and the one from about 100 yards into Wales on 24/6/20, are all that I have taken outside England in over a year. This is not the life I was leading up to that point; make your own judgments as to whether it’s a better or worse thing for all concerned, but it at least illustrates the impact of all the present crap. (And it is crap. This is not a political point.)
Also, in West Yorkshire anyway, it’s still snowing.
I did leave Hebden Bridge today, as Clare became the first person under 70 years of age that I know has been vaccinated (it wasn’t against mumps, if you take my meaning). But the pictures taken during my half hour wait in the car park at the hospital in Halifax were not very exciting. Nor is the one above, of course, but it at least continues the recent snowy theme. Vaccinations notwithstanding it seems like there will be weeks more of this yet. Some lights are still on, here and there.
It’s just some graffiti on the old pumping station up in the woods above my house. But wouldn’t it be nice if this really were some portal into another world. One where the pubs were open, would be a real good start.
Today was tough to get through whether photographically or otherwise. This shot means nothing, except maybe to show that it’s getting lighter in the evenings. But only astronomically.
The last time anyone other than myself or Joe was depicted on the blog was 4th January, the afternoon before Bojo the Clown put us all under house arrest again. Since then, portrait opportunities have been very rare. This can almost be considered a crowd by recent standards. Though even the dog now takes its lead from us and remains apart. Who’s going to actually start to rebuild the bridges? It won’t just happen.
Two days of more-or-less constant rain and the Hebden Water looked like this in mid-afternoon. The general approach to flood defence here still seems to be, essentially, just cross your fingers and hope.
… to pubs, or anywhere else, until Our Glorious Leader decides. The only person with whom I had a face-to-face conversation today, family members excepted, was some paranoid stoner who started hurling abuse at me as I walked to the shop. Other than that, deadness. Do we have a government — a society, even — so lacking in wit or intelligence that this is really the best we can do?
