The flood came, and it went away again, and what it left behind are these piles of debris that were not carried there by the water directly, but removed from properties and left by the sides of roads and streets, just as in 2015. It’ll happen again, at some point, because the government does not care about the chronic water management problems of this place and the known reasons behind them.
The storm last Sunday took our allotment shed and flipped it neatly upside-down, while nestling it comfortably beside our neighbour’s greenhouse (which only partly survived the experience). We could move it, but I believe Ciara’s sibling Dennis is on the way in this coming weekend to entertain us further, so let’s leave it there for now, it’s probably safer where it is.
I know this is a lousy picture. I’m sorry. It’s a lousy picture to have been in a position to take, too. All previous eulogies to the good weather of 2020 were decisively blown away overnight and this morning by Storm Ciara, a vicious little wannabe hurricane that blasted in, savagely dumped its load on Hebden Bridge and left the town, for the fourth time in the last eight years, under a layer of water [*]. I could have gone outside and taken pictures of the flooding but if you’ll forgive me, the prospect was too depressing. If I abrogate my duty as some kind of social commentator by doing so, my apologies — the vultures in their TV vans will doubtless be supplying the world with pictures of it all soon enough; while evading the real issues and reasons behind flooding, which are (around here anyway) to do with inequalities of power and status. And yet people vote Conservative, over and over again.
[*] The three previous occasions in the lifetime of this blog were 22/6/12 — 9/7/12 — and 26/12/15.
The world turns, the sun shifts a little in the sky each day, and so slowly, light comes back into the mornings. It is only at this time of year that it starts to rise enough above the hill to the east that we start to see it again at the front of the house. Though for now, only the doorstep, and then only for five minutes in the morning; it’ll be a couple more weeks before it deigns to start shining inside.
A brief interlude at home in Hebden, between trips. It still refuses to get particularly wintry. I have always liked this garden, passed on the way to the shops from our house: it is past due an appearance here. Today it can have its moment.
One of those days that was spent sat at home, marking. On such days, photographically, I’m glad my house has a view. It’s been a mild winter thus far, which doubtless some will attribute to climate change but frankly I think Britain always does have these, every few years: the last really mild one was 2013-14. But then again maybe some east wind will cover us in snow in March, as happened in 2018….
This duck looks contented enough to me. I swear that is a smile at the corner of its bill. Mind you, one thing to not complain about in 2020 thus far is the weather, and today was another very pleasant day. I like this picture because of the very limited pallette — it’s strictly brown, maybe a bit of grey — but still interesting.
Not the greatest photograph I know, but the year isn’t ending very excitingly. Nor can I raise a great deal of enthusiasm for the prospect of 2020, a year whose number bounces pleasantly off the tongue and once seemed fabulous and futuristic in the anticipation, but now promises stagnancy and a sort of darkness. I will do my best to keep documenting it (or my little part of it anyway) but there wasn’t much to see today.
This is the blog’s ninth Christmas Day, golly. It’s nice to get out and take the air on these days if the weather allows, and, counting back, four of these 25th Decembers have been marked with shots of the outside world and not just some poultry remnants. This shot is taken pretty close to that on 25/12/12, looking west from Sandy Lane, above the Nutclough Woods and towards one of my home town’s unusual architectural sites. Happy Christmas to you all, whether you celebrated it, however you spent it.
‘Tis the Sunday before Christmas, and by now it is obligatory for every commercial establishment to have decorated somehow. But so be it — our decorations are up at home as well.
Being 42 