OK, so, we have had a bit of snow. This is Old Town, above Hebden Bridge, but most of the place looks like this at the moment. Things were functional round here but I was glad I didn’t have to schlep into Manchester…. no, those pleasures await me tomorrow, unless I can find a reason to avoid it.
Back home again, my town strangely empty this afternoon. Perhaps everyone was hunkering down for the promised ‘winter apocalypse’ that is, at least according to the media, about to devour the entire Northern Hemisphere in a kind of Game of Thrones scenario. Well, it’s a little chilly that’s true, but I’m sure we’ll live.
If it wasn’t for the distinctive topography of my home town, Hebden Bridge, I doubt I would have felt inspired enough to keep this blog going for 2,370 days. I do spend quite a bit of time here — some 40% of the shots are from HB. And, well, it does look rather good in the right light. I try to do it justice.
The weather remains glorious (sarcasm warning), thus provoking a wilfully uneventful weekend. The Mediterranean food stall at the Sunday market does its best in very non-Mediterranean conditions.
A day spent entirely at or in the vicinity of home was never going to be easy photographically, so let’s pick up some more of HB’s amusing graffiti to epitomise the day. Plenty of post-processing was needed to bring out the blue of the spray paint. But if only I could add the missing apostrophe without feeling like a total pedant.
I will start moving around the planet again at some point but for now I’m where I’ve been most of the last two and a half months, namely at home in Hebden Bridge, which can be littered with interminably extended building projects just the same as Manchester can. The building that used to be the “Hole In The Wall” pub has been belching rubble over the street outside for what seems like about three years now. I actually saw someone working there today — but that is a rarity.
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.
Being 42 