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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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…
Being 42 