Thursday 23rd July 2026, 2.55pm (day 5,446)
Well, I can dig it. I felt much the same way at this point in the week.
Campus chill-out
Being 42
Life, one day at a time
Category Archives: Urban scene
Spill life
Tuesday 21st July 2026, 9.55am (day 5,444)
One of those shots chosen as much because I thought of a neat title for it as for its photographic qualities. But let us continue, at least for a day, the orange theme begun by David Byrne’s entourage on Saturday night. Other ‘hotel, restaurant & catering linen’ options are available, I am sure.
Cultural icon, late
Tuesday 14th July 2026, 10.35pm (day 5,437)
Sustaining this blog requires me to at least try to see familiar things in a new light now and again. There was no particular reason why the phone box in the centre of town caught my eye (on the way home from the cinema), but it did. Perhaps it was just looking very much like itself. These things, collectively, are a recognisable British icon — not quite technology, not quite architecture, a mixture of the two. This one is still functional as far as I know (that is, you can make telephone calls from it): it was being used as a library for a while but that is no longer the case.
Random contents of scavenger bag
Sunday 12th July 2026, 5.40pm (day 5,435)
Our acquaintance Toby is something of a scavenger, the sort of person who will go through the skip outside your house and in five minutes retrieve from it a range of interesting items that you had no idea could be found within. What he has in mind for these various 3-D puzzles, who knows — but I do not think it involves simply putting this one back together.
Friday DVD stall
Friday 10th July 2026, 3.10pm (day 5,433)
If you find yourself in Hebden Bridge on a Friday afternoon and in need of some cheap DVDs, this market stall is the place to come, believe me. I’d spend more money here except that most of the films stocked that I do want to see, we already own. “Nordic Noir” is a new genre on me — but I think it just means that in this box can be found a couple of copies of The Bridge.
The pipework
Sunday 5th July 2026, 3.40pm (day 5,428)
Some Sundays are eventful and interesting days. This was not one of them, although neither was it unpleasant. But photographically there wasn’t much to look at, so 5/7/26 will have to be marked by a study of drainage. Important stuff, though — you try living without it for a while.
Home, for 25 years
Friday 3rd July 2026, 2.50pm (day 5,426)
Having exchanged contracts the day before, it was on 3rd July 2001 that Clare and I moved into our house in Hebden Bridge: separately, I recall, as on the day I came in from our previous place in Leeds with the help of my Dad while her family brought her over from Morecambe with stuff from there. And we’ve been there ever since. I’m not sure we expected to stay for a quarter of a century — but it’s how things have panned out and right now we have no plans to move out.
It seemed appropriate to get a shot of the town and of the house within it for today, so here you are: as seen from the little, overgrown graveyard at the top of the Buttress. Our place is pretty much in the middle of the shot, part of the ‘castle walls’ that line the Keighley Road. Hopefully they’ll still be standing in another 25 years, or indeed another 125: maybe we’ll still be there after the first span of time, but not the latter.
Working in the dry dock
Wednesday 1st July 2026, 4.40pm (day 5,424)
At first sight the dry dock on the canal in the centre of Hebden Bridge is another thing that gives it a sense of industrial-age authenticity. Except that up until about 30 years ago, the site was occupied by a petrol station. Not everything is as old as it seems. Still, I quite like having it there: even if the chance to take pictures of arc-welding sparks and so on has now been reduced thanks to the addition of the artwork, with obligatory domain name.
Cookng manoeuvres
Sunday 28th June 2026, 2.10pm (day 5,421)
Whatever is cooking away under the lids, I have no idea, but as with every Sunday, the general miscellany of the market on St George’s Square proves attractive. Food, trinkets, old military uniforms — nothing as useful as a pair of shoelaces though. For such things, we are forced to leave town.
Rain on Cross Street
Friday 12th June 2026, 9.00am (day 5,405)
Even had I not mentioned the weather conditions in the title of the post, it wouldn’t have taken much effort to figure them out. Hauled myself into Manchester for the first time in a week to be encountered by this ongoing crap. All the umbrellas that are in evidence were just a reminder that I had forgotten to bring my own, so after the 2-mile walk to the office, I then smelt like a wet dog for most of the rest of the day.
Being 42 