Although I quite like the image of this guy’s golden sunglasses, the significance is more carried by what is visible behind his head; that table sits, as did we, in the beer garden of the White Swan in Hebden Bridge. Yes folks, the pubs are open again — if you want to wrap up and go al fresco, anyway. Hurrah for that at least.
The world — well, Hebden Bridge anyway — is getting back to it, and in these developments I can see nothing but good. We should be able to give our money to a few more retailers that have been unlucky (or unpolitically active) enough to be classed as ‘inessential’, but more important is that people are just coming out anyway.
Hey, it’s day 3,500 of the blog. It doesn’t take a lot of mental arithmetic to see that I’m approaching the ten-year mark. At my own sweet pace. (As a multiple-of-50 day, the stats have had their latest update.)
Is the picture a representation of how I feel today? …..Yes, actually. It’s a government thing, a Covid thing, as so much has been lately.
A generally optimistic sheen to the day. Even the unused footbridge in the arse end of Victoria station has had a new coat of paint, and I suspect the pigeons know this somehow.
Every recent Sunday in the town centre has been busy and today was no exception. And the only commentary I would like to add to this observation is that I consider this a good thing.
Reyner Street is a back alley if ever there was one. But it looked good today. I doubt the establishment pictured has seen much business lately, and I managed to obscure its phone number, too. Apologies to them.
Joe and I were supposed to be going to see The Who tonight — live in Leeds no less — first postponed from just under a year ago, but now cancelled altogether. Another little pleasure denied us. So in the absence of anything actually happening, here’s some abandoned furniture, on a slope. UPDATE; Clare informs me that this is not a lost object; in fact a number of them have been set up in various places in the Calder Valley, as another place for book-swapping. Lift up the top of the seat, and the books are inside, it seems.
Going into Manchester gives my step count a boost and makes me feel like I’m doing something for the students, many of whom have travelled a very long way to be there and still been imprisoned for months on end in halls like the George Kenyon Building (a row of its windows forming the top of this image). But it’s depressing, all the same. In places, the rot has firmly set in. “How will you change the world?” this billboard asks. The question is an ever more pertinent one.
Another day working at home, of such excitement that I feel moved to document only this event: possibly the first time our exterior back windows have been cleaned in recorded history. But then again they are a long way up in the air, and we didn’t have a 40 feet-long pole (that can squirt water) just lying around. But you never know what you will find if you look long enough.
I put up this photo because I love the backdrop of the houses on Calder Holmes Park. A proper football landscape if ever there was one. I put this up also because of how it wound up certain people when I posted it on a Facebook group earlier. One of the most iniquitous things about the year that we have lived through is how it has wiped out the idea that any ‘ordinary people’ might be able to make their own judgments about what is healthy and safe, and what is not. Well, lockdown lovers everywhere — yes, there are certain people who are back out there, living their lives.
