Another day working at home, of such excitement that I feel moved to document only this event: possibly the first time our exterior back windows have been cleaned in recorded history. But then again they are a long way up in the air, and we didn’t have a 40 feet-long pole (that can squirt water) just lying around. But you never know what you will find if you look long enough.
I put up this photo because I love the backdrop of the houses on Calder Holmes Park. A proper football landscape if ever there was one. I put this up also because of how it wound up certain people when I posted it on a Facebook group earlier. One of the most iniquitous things about the year that we have lived through is how it has wiped out the idea that any ‘ordinary people’ might be able to make their own judgments about what is healthy and safe, and what is not. Well, lockdown lovers everywhere — yes, there are certain people who are back out there, living their lives.
Whomever made an effort to build this small square of concrete and stick a basketball hoop at one end of it obviously had lofty ambitions for the health of the youth of Dodd Naze estate. Now it stands forlorn and forgotten: no more than a third of a mile from my house as the crow flies yet until today I had no idea it was there. But that also means it hasn’t featured on here before, and as the second half of the blog’s tenth year opens with us still in (nominal) lockdown; new scenes are precious.
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.
Being 42 