A lush scene for Christmas Eve, particularly after yesterday. The cemetery on top of Balgay Hill in Dundee was a real discovery of the day. Just one of its memorial stones is pictured here but this is a huge necropolis, backed by the Firth of Tay, the hills on the far side of which are just visible here. A very un-Decemberish shot, but that’s why I’ve picked it. For tomorrow, Happy Christmas…
Wind is the hardest weather condition of all to capture adequately on camera — but it was very windy today. We will rebuild, however.
It’s a valid political opinion. Whether anyone pays attention is a different matter.
This has hardly been the most eventful December — not a single photo in the month so far has been taken further than 30 miles from home — but this will change soon enough. Today is also day 4,500 of the blog, a nice round number: I have done one of my periodic updates of the stats, a page which if nothing else, proves quite how anal I am.
I’m still working, and didn’t leave the house today until after dark, so the choice of picture was, as much as anything else, governed by when and where my rather inadequate camera coped best with the murk and gloom. With some help given by the lights of the stadium ahead, this one won. That does make it two car parks in a row, but hey.
Castleford is a biggish place (45,000 residents) and I’ve lived not far from it for 30 years now, but today was the first time I had visited. (Yes, it was for football.) I was struck by how unreconstructed much of it was, rows of terraced houses and back alleys like this one. Most now filled with cars, spoiling the ambience a little, but this alley was clear, and with a bit of post-production I think this is not a bad facsimile of how it probably looked 60 years ago. There’s only one anachronism — the wheelie bins — but even those I will let pass.
Now here’s the polar opposite to Monty Python’s Cheese Shop. If you don’t get the reference, just be comforted by the enormous variety here. Time to buy some Xmas presents — and maybe squirrel a few away on my own account.
Watching them, watching me? Actually it’s very unlikely anyone is actually ‘watching’ at any given moment, but that’s Michel Foucault’s point about the surveillance society — people discipline themselves anyway. What I’d really like to know is why someone felt two cameras, pointing in the same direction, were really needed to monitor the ‘forgotten footbridge‘ at Manchester Victoria station. Why buy only one, when money can be wasted on two to do exactly the same pointless job?
Wire Man — his official name, according to the ‘information sheet’ he dutifully carries — sits in one corner of the Albert pub in Hebden and has done so for some years now. He is quite an interesting creation, but he doesn’t do much. Visitors like him at first. Then they get annoyed that he is basically occupying two seats in a prime spot, particularly on busy weekends (and they’re all busy at present).
Until last week this seemed to be a perfectly functional car park — and Hebden Bridge town centre certainly needs such amenities. Christ knows what it’s going to turn into from this point. And yes, it’s still cold.
Continuing a theme, but why not — this was definitely the nicest thing to be seen today, and it didn’t even require leaving the house.
