Many Hebden Bridge shops that have been closed since the double floods of 22nd June and 9th July are just about getting ready to reopen. But, after three weeks of relatively dry weather, it’s been raining all day again and the rivers are very high. Christ, I hope it doesn’t flood again or some of these shops will probably never re-open. These don’t look the most adequate flood defences in the world.
Was determined to hide at home today, as it’s the day the students get back; and had, in fact, the perfect plan – to spend hours having the first session for my new tattoo. But that had to be cancelled because the tattooist was ill. So I had suddenly to get creative in various ways, including with the daily picture. This was my best effort – the entrance to the car park of the factory below our house (you’ve seen it before). I kinda like it because for once, the spurts of flare on the image can mostly be disguised.
Along similar lines to yesterday, in some ways, but still the only really decent photo I took today in an otherwise rather mundane day for pictures. It’s a classic view, and not hard to capture – just head up the A6033 from Hebden Bridge to Pecket Well, towards Haworth, and there it is. The church is in Heptonstall, a village above Hebden Bridge (Sylvia Plath is buried in the churchyard) and there has been a monument on Stoodley Pike for two hundred years. This is the second structure; the first collapsed in 1854. It was originally built to commemorate the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815.
Fourth and final day of the ALT-C conference, but the picture is not of Manchester today: this is Hebden Bridge station, as you probably recognise by now. An early morning after a late return the night before. Ow.
This is one of my town’s more pleasurable regular events and was thankfully blessed by good weather. I no longer have an interest in cars as a means of propulsion but any one built before about 1965 just has such a damn fine look to it. And when they come out to events like this they’re all looking their best, polished and chrome and curvy and well, dammit (Janet), rather sexy. But I only look. I don’t want a relationship with one of these things again. Too complicated.
(PS technically this is a self-portrait: look carefully.)
Hebden Bridge, and the British summer, and I have had a bit of a falling out over the last few weeks. It kind of started around June 21st and has gone on from there. Today, we all started toward a reconciliation of sorts. Let’s hope it continues.
On a pleasant summer’s day, here is the Nutclough stream, looking as if butter wouldn’t melt in its flow. (It probably wouldn’t.) This is the stream that turned into a torrent on 9th July and took out a couple of houses two hundred yards downstream. More before and after comparison pictures are on the Facebook album, as linked.
Here is not the place for the fine detail, but the ‘significant’ news that hit on my first day in Tuscaloosa, mentioned below, was that the giant ‘pubco’ (pub ownership company) that owns the Railway has decided that it is unwilling to stump up the cost of a refurbishment following the damage caused by the floods on 22nd/23rd June and 9th July. They want to sell the pub, but no one is particularly convinced that they have an interest in keeping the pub in the hands of someone who will, well, keep it as a pub and not convert it into something else. The last few years in the UK have, to say the least, not been kind to the pub trade.
Well, we – the customers – want to keep it as a pub, so today we had a meeting there to discuss what we were going to do. It was a lovely sunny day and there was also a social aspect to it – no one wanted their last drink here to be that horrible 22nd June. But it shouldn’t have to be the last today, either. We’ll try not to make it the last.
This is the worst thing I have had to post about on this blog.
Until 1.15pm today had been a very uneventful day. It then started raining: hard. Very, very hard.
By 2.15pm the road on which I live had become a river, and then we saw that the lane which goes into the woods was pouring out water (and stones). Whether it was just rainwater or whether, as some speculated, the old reservoir at the top of the woods had burst its banks, the normally placid mill stream turned into a torrent. Where it goes under the main Keighley Road and through a sluice pipe into the river, this backed up against the retaining wall to an astonishing degree, rising literally 15 feet in half an hour and eventually pouring through the gardens of the two houses nearest the bridge.
The owners of the house were not in. Myself and other neighbours tried to save vital items and – most importantly – the two dogs (which you have seen before on this blog). But most of the ground floors were taken out. Our house is uphill from the stream, so was fine (a couple of idiot drivers ploughing through the stream at 30mph being the main threat).
More photos and footage can be seen on YouTube and Facebook for those into their weather porn. For comparison, the lake you see in the woods at a couple of points is where we played mölkky the other day.
I’m supposed to be going to New Orleans tomorrow, by the way – but I ain’t promising anything. At the moment, Hebden Bridge is impassable to cars.
Sorry to go on about the bloody weather but today was the first day in two weeks which really deserved the adjectives ‘warm’ and ‘sunny’ – and even then it still rained quite severely in the evening, with two heavy thunderstorms. It may flood again tomorrow. Meanwhile, here are some flowers, proving that given enough water (ha ha) life can flourish everywhere, including in the centre of this thirty-feet-high retaining wall at the side of the Keighley Road.
Being 42 