After yesterday’s observation about the recent paucity of evening shots, here’s another evening shot. It’s been a while since the skies have been interesting enough to warrant a reappearance of the ‘back of the house’ view: they’ve been blue and sunny, but bland. Perhaps tonight’s display is one sign of an imminent change in the weather.
Except for the guys on the screen last Sunday, people have been absent from the blog for many days now, so let’s rectify that today to make us remember that humanity has not yet quite given up the ghost. Would this have been better, or worse, had the weather been poor? I suspect worse. At least this guy’s approach to boosting his vitamin D levels — the chair, the can of Carlsberg — is still available to us.
Now there really is a sense of desperation about this one: I could claim I like the abstract arrangement of shapes and colours, and that strange white covering (is it snow? No, salt, I think). But really I just wanted to get a shot from outside of Hebden Bridge today, thanks to a necessary trip to Mytholmroyd just down the road. We do what we can under the current circumstances…
That ominous crumbling, shattering sound you hear from behind closed doors is your local economy. This square, on a Saturday morning, should not be inhabited only by ducks. And even they’re missing their usual benefits. These two were responding to a rumour that bread was being handed out by the old bridge.
For obvious reasons none of the present run of photos are being taken very far away from one another. This one looks across the valley of the Nutclough Woods, above our house, towards the two churches of Heptonstall, one extant and one ruined: they share a churchyard, and look further apart on this shot than they are in reality. The yellow stuff? Not sure of the exact species, but the buds confirm that spring is on its way, out there in the world where we used to play.
This day last year I was in Singapore. Horizons are rather more limited in late March 2020, for all of us I imagine. I acknowledge, however, that I am one of the lucky ones in that this landscape resides a few minutes’ walk from my house and at least here, one can be immersed in the countryside for a time each day: like this father and son, taking the air. Cooler today, though: it is inevitable that the run of good weather we have been having will end, but confinement will be harder to take once the sunshine ends.
So, the longest number of consecutive Hebden Bridge shots on this blog — as faithfully recorded on the stats page — is 10, and that was way back around the end of 2011 and start of 2012. (Blimey, have I been doing this that long…?). The trip to Manchester last Saturday gave the present run a later start than it might have had, but as things stand the eleventh day will be 1st April, and assuming we’re all still here on 6th April, it will then take Brisbane’s record of 15 days in a row in the same place.
Ah, I’ll get used to it. It’s pleasant enough at the moment, in the ongoing very fine weather.
Most of Hebden Bridge was built over a fairly short span of years in the later 19th century. Of the houses from that time, these ones on Birchcliffe Road are the grandest. And when the sun goes down and you see they are the last homes in town to catch the light — you can see why the nobs of 1880 coveted this particular hillside.
Bloody hell. How quickly did all that happen. How quickly did we let it all happen.
I spent my whole morning working out then posting my professional and academic opinion about the last few days. By the time I’d done that, I was, frankly, freaked out, so had to get out into the town just to see that it was still there, that it had not been consumed by the zombie apocalypse. And I was reassured. But bearing in mind that this poster has been up since a couple of days after the floods of February — then how much more can my home town take. How much more can we all take?
The media are not reality though. Talk to each other, folks.
Another photo of Manchester buildings looking dramatic; but from a new angle, taken from a meeting room in a building never before visited. The framing isn’t quite what it could be, but much different and the flourescent strips inside would have been reflected in the clouds. As it is, there’s one there — but I’m sure you will let that pass. The dominant building is the Town Hall, the direction of the view basically westwards.
