I quite like the heron mural that occupied this spot until fairly recently; now it has become this. Possibly this blog is now the only record of how it used to look. I do quite like its successor too, but this photo is more of all the various quadrilaterals on the side of what used to be the Hole in the Wall pub and has been ‘under refurbishment’ for what seems like years now.
One of those days which was absolutely gorgeous until I arrived at work, and then after I left, it was dreadful, grey and raining. So let’s document the morning; featuring the second red-clad cyclist in three days. I like this spot on my walk to work, huddled beneath the Mancunian Way but very pleasant, particularly on an autumn morning.
An adequate metaphor for how things stand. Sunshine for now, but about to be swamped by dark clouds once more.
To distract me from going off on one, let’s note that this is day 3,333 of my blog, so one third of the way to 10,000 days. Multiplying up I note that is, roughly, 27.4 years, and so if I’m still posting in early January 2039, when I will be a few months off my 70th birthday, I will have reached day 10,000. I’m sure an actuary could give me the odds for my still being alive (and being 42) on that day. Whether such odds mean a damn in the current situation is another matter.
Before the war…. or, I mean, before mid-March, I had installed a moratorium on any further pictures of building sites in Manchester. But as going to Manchester looks as if it will become an avenue of escape from further house arrest, I am inclined to lift the ban. This is all happening at least a hundred feet up in the air, as the crane helps with the completion of yet another huge office block in the centre of the city, one that probably looks increasingly like an elephant of the white persuasion.
Pubs now have to shut at 10pm, and so with no nightclubs or alternative venues available for anyone wanting to carry on with their evening, everyone now mills around and gets into taxis and buses at the same time, thus compressing all those infective agents together instead of spacing them out more. And if you think this idiocy will be repealed soon, recall that the licensing restrictions brought in during World War One remained in place for eighty years.
Meanwhile, your friendly local high street is becoming a ghost town; if your place looked much different from Hebden Bridge at 10.50pm this evening (or on any given evening), then I would say that’s unusual.
A foul, miserable day of weather that matched the general mood. September sun has just about sustained the local pubs, but once it stops being very agreeable to sit outside — as it definitely was today — then they will slowly rot away and die, like most other things that bring fun into our lives, presently.
This is a factual statement. The road past our house has been closed for weeks while some vague ‘improvements’ take place on the moors. But perhaps this shot is also metaphorical.
Either way I really hope the phallically-challenged moron who roared past this sign later at 60mph in his Porsche was actually heading for Keighley. To have seen his face.
After yesterday’s leafiness, a bleaker vision of modern-day Yorkshire. I happened to pass this on a bus today: Amazon’s distribution centre for northern England, just outside Doncaster. A gigantic warehouse, but windowless, blank and impenetrable. Anyone unlucky enough to be working within will be robotised, denied rights and capable of being fired by SMS at any time (these practices have been documented in a recent report by the Open Markets Institute). Meanwhile, they charge 50% markup on the price of my recent book compared to what it costs to get it direct from the publisher. They pay little tax on these gigantic profits and our high streets decay ever more. Amazon are evil.
The working week ends as it started — with a bird photo-bombing the shot. But I like it.
The view from my house. The picture was of the mists, with the mobile phone mast on the other side of the valley just peeking through. The heron (for that is what it is) flying over was an added bonus.
Get used to pictures from home. The whole moronic farce is kicking off again. If you’re an easy target, expect to be put back under house arrest soon enough.
