A good view, but a precarious spot to be perched on this Friday morning. How do scaffolders have the confidence to get up there and be active when (to my mind) the whole edifice looks about to topple over to the right and crash him down from forty feet up in the air? The whole thing, put up this morning, had come down again just after lunch, so I hope it was worth it.
Tory cuts notwithstanding there remains a decent municipal waste tip a couple of miles away and even if you can’t drive to that the council will pick up this kind of thing from your house. So, sorry, but what’s the fucking point in dumping a broken chair by the side of the river, in a now-inaccessible but visible and central spot, where it will presumably sit for several months? Mucky bloody bastards. I hate this kind of neglect. I could say it’s a middle-aged thing but actually I’ve always hated it.
On this day last year I was on my way to Moscow (at 5.20am) whereas five years ago today I was in Nairobi having a rather good cup of coffee. No similar travels this January however. Got to look around the local neighbourhood for inspiration: lousy weather makes even hiking off the agenda. Consider the smudge on the lens artistic license.
I’m still not getting a great distance away from home… at least not this morning.
Why is this sign here? No idea. They never tell us anything. Perhaps it is purely metaphorical….
Mildly aggrieved at having to go back to work today, but I reflected on the fact that without this kind of infrastructure, I’d have had to yomp into Manchester and back today, as indeed I would every other weekday. It’s therefore as good a subject as anything else to epitomise the day. Was it Rimmer from Red Dwarf who had a photo collection of late 20th-century telegraph poles?
A dull, non-festive shot? My apologies, but yes. Nevertheless to find the Blue Pig open as we went past it towards the end of our Christmas morning exercise walk was a great Christmas bonus. This pub, run entirely by volunteers, is like Brigadoon, sometimes it’s there, more often, it’s not.
I managed to not document anything particularly ‘Christmassy’ about the day but then again seeing as it was mild enough to sit and drink a beer outside by the river, it didn’t particularly feel like it today and I get bored with all these cliches anyway. Either way… hope you enjoyed your version of the day, whatever you did with it.
Winter, as such, I don’t mind. I can take the cold and it tends to look nice (as here). It’s the darkness that pisses me off, and we haven’t even reached the Solstice yet. On winter days when I’m around home I can just about get it in me to go out when the sun finally struggles up, but otherwise, if it can’t be bothered, usually neither can I.
Second Monday morning in a row where I have to haul myself up before dawn and onto the 06:59 train. Not my favoured way to start the week. I certainly felt like the first person up in town this morning; though I guess this suggests that either the proprietor of ‘Brocante’ beat me to it, or they just left the lights on all night.
In 2017, particularly since early June, I have been quite mobile, with lots of photos taken elsewhere. Where there have been bouts of time spent mainly at home they haven’t lasted long. But for the rest of the year, at least, this will change; if I do go elsewhere it’ll be for a walk or a football match, and that’ll be all. We are on Hebden time for a while. I hope I seem happier about this than this dog did today.
Being 42 