In 24 hours I translocate from Cumbria and its sub-arctic conditions to the tropics of London, where it is about 30ºC. This sun-drenched scene is taken from outside McGlynn’s pub, which has featured on the blog two years ago (as linked). Then, there were people. Now, the place is only half-alive, which I guess I have not yet got used to and hope never to do so.
I too was having a day doing things around the house, but definitely do not share this guy’s head for heights.
In Yorkshire parlance a ‘ginnel’ is a narrow, pedestrian alley, and this is a definitive example of the genre. Not in Hebden Bridge, but Sowerby Bridge, where I went today largely for something to do to break the monotony.
The message on the one side is clear enough — but the bin? More proof that others are starting to lose it thanks to lockdown? Or perhaps they have always been the same.
The scarecrow itself is long gone. But its boots remain, like a sort of imprint, or memory. I doubt they’ll scare the birds off much. But then again, nor do scarecrows, particularly.
It has been 105 days (March 21st) since I was last in a pub, and 6 more since the last time one featured on here.
But they’re back open. So a pint was duly raised in the Bay Horse, Oxenhope, Yorkshire, to celebrate this fact. And celebration it was: anyone about to come back with messages of doom and gloom in response, please don’t.
Over the last 3,235 days of this attempt to document the rest of my life in pictures there have, of course, been plenty of days where I’ve just stayed at home and not really done much. But there hasn’t been such a concentrated run of such days, day after day after day where there is nothing happening outside. And on a day when it never stopped raining…. this swell of smoke, a bonfire presumably, really was about the most interesting thing seen all day (with apologies to the family).
By the end of this month we may have been able to visit a pub and go away for a few days. If you think either of these things is a bad thing… let’s just say I disagree with you.
We are all starting to lose it. Why is he photographing this puddle? More to the point, why am I photographing him photographing this puddle? Which one of us is losing it more?
The sign is the added touch that will roughly date this scene for ever more.
This being a British summer, the balmy heat of Wednesday and Thursday has gone, and it’s raining again. It will do this until it feels like being different.
Old Town sits on the hills to the north of Hebden Bridge. In Christopher Saxton’s atlas of 1579, the first atlas of England and Wales ever published, it’s called The Old towne…. so it’s been around for a while.
What’s been lacking over the last three months is not just variety of scene, but variety of event. There’s nothing happening, no parties, no shows, no sports, no conviviality. We just plod on.
At least there is still variety of light. The morning, indeed the whole day, was a beautiful one. This becomes the first pre-8am shot since I was still commuting to Manchester at the beginning of February. But this one is taken within yards of my house, and despite the glorious weather was one of only two photos I felt moved to take today.
Being 42 