Tuesday 4th November 2025, 10.00am (day 5,185)

This is definitely a stock shot, but what the hell. The Rochdale Canal is definitely worth a regular viewing, particularly at the peak of autumn.

As stated yesterday — a second shot from the same place: from yesterday’s shot, pan to the left, go up a ways and pull back out and this comes in view. Not always with the mist, though there’s usually a bird around somewhere.

It is far easier to buy this kind of stuff in Hebden Bridge than it is to purchase, say, socks, or useful modern technology. This is just one of at least three shops of this kind here, and it’s not even that big a town. There is something of an optical illusion going on here — things are not quite as big as they seem…

Thursday market manoeuvers. “I know it’s in here somewhere — I just have to move a few things around to find it…”

The portable fan had obvious application today, as it was very warm. The candle shaped like the bust of an Egyptian pharaoh, possibly Khufu (commissioner of the Great Pyramid in Cairo)? Less obvious. But there they both were.

Yesterday’s journey home was done with Joe in attendance. Up on the allotment, the hedge needed trimming. A conjunction of child, hedge and the necessary hardware was facilitated. All parties seemed reasonably satisfied with the outcome.

Chose exactly the wrong time this afternoon to pop down to town for a bit of food shopping, particularly as I did so without umbrella or jacket. I may, or may not, have taken this one from inside the White Swan pub…. OK, I did. But it was certainly a preferable option at this point in time.

I know nothing of Marvel iconography. OK, I suppose that’s possibly Captain America centre left but that’s as far as I am taking it. So quite who the guy on the right might be, I don’t know, but he looks pissed off enough: if I was the too-relaxed figure in white in front I would be worried.

15th July is the feast day of St Swithin, and according to the legend, if it rains on St Swithin’s Bridge in Winchester on this day it will rain for another 40 days. Apparently there is a certain basis for this: this is about the time of year when the jet-stream kind of settles in and decides where it is going to sit for the rest of the summer: over Britain (we get wet) or to the north of it (we stay dry)? I don’t know what the weather was like in Winchester today but in Hebden it was chucking it down, the wettest day for months, let alone weeks. If the legend is true let me be the first to come out with that old chestnut, “That’s the summer over.”

Taken while sheltering under the tree on our allotment. Showers like this came in every half an hour or so for most of the day. Nothing else happened, but that’s the way it was planned.