Opening time at my local pub is 3pm on Tuesdays, and a nice thing about arriving early is that I get to light the well-laid fire. The lump of lava on the right is a firelighter doing its job: within a few minutes this whole construction will be alight. Sometimes the interest is in the details — such as the paper to the left, what series of numbers goes 3, 10, 50, 70, 100 I wonder?
I’m sure 2023 will involve plenty of football matches, just as its immediate predecessors have. It was in 2017 that I started going to at least one a week, and 2022 saw me attend 77 in total. I don’t put every one on here to avoid (too much) repetition but sometimes they deserve to appear, particularly when the light is good, as it was this afternoon at Eccleshill United, based in Bradford and playing at the 9th level of English football. Cold though, as you can see from the breath of the home player in blue, but it is January. End of my Christmas break — sadly, it’s time to go back to work.
2023 starts with a walk, not strenuous (I was somewhat tender in the morning) but picturesque — at least, if mudflats are your thing. The River Lune debouches into Morecambe Bay not far to the right of this shot. On the far side, Glasson Dock, still a working port and marina. Taken from Sunderland Point, which is unique as the only settlement on the mainland of Great Britain which is still cut off, twice a day, by the high tides: though these were not due until some time after this was taken, which is why I was able to be there.
It’s been a while since I bothered going out on New Year’s Eve, and the last one spent away from home was the one at the end of 2014, but this year I did try to reawaken my dormant social animal. Anyway the in-laws were having a party: on the far right is Rachael, my sister-in-law, I think this is her debut on here (even after 11 years, four months and five days). Joe pops up in the background, too. A good time was generally had. Happy New Year to you all.
Off it goes across the Irish Sea, from Heysham, the sea wall of which I was stood on as I took this shot. The Isle of Man has not yet featured on this blog although I am due a visit at some point, to bag its County Top. Maybe next year… there is still time in my life, I feel.
The first of the drives (mentioned yesterday) is completed. This was a somewhat gloomy day with occasional bursts of light, as the shot suggests. The tower sits on the edge of the moor, above Lancaster. One of those constructions built purely for the hell of it: it contains nothing, provides no service except the rooftop platform from which one can see the good view. So it counts as a folly, I suppose: I’m not even sure whose ‘jubilee’ it celebrates.
I didn’t go out today, and alongside the poor weather, here is a good reason why. I don’t normally do this kind of thing on here, but observations must be made, in photo form, of the ‘helpful’ information currently available on the Northern Rail web site. Nobody in ‘Authority’ really gives a toss one way or the other, so here we are. Twelve and a half years in power and this bunch of idiots can’t even provide a working railway. Or is it the unions’ fault, somehow? For what though, expecting that all that rubbish spoken in 2020 about how important ‘keyworkers’ are might actually translate into an ability, two years later, to at least sustain their rewards in the face of the rising cost of living? (See also nurses, postal workers, etc.)
So be it. The two trips I have to make before the (ostensible) resumption of ‘the usual service’ on 9th Jan. could have been done on the trains, instead I am obliged to use less environmentally sustainable means. Sadly I don’t expect 2023 to be much different, throughout.
Bella becomes the latest animal to make a definite second appearance on the blog, following her debut on Christmas Day 2015. Seven years on, little has changed about her, including this, her main tactic for persuading humans to give her food; if dogs know about the concept of a raison d’etre, the acquisition of food is Bella’s.
A day spent with family. My sister Vicki pulled out this scroll before lunch: her family tree as far back as it has so far been taken — so mine too, of course. With Joe also in the room we have here fifteen generations of male line Whitworths documented, ending (thus far…) with him, and starting, at the top left of this image, with Thomas W., born in 1585 in Ashton-under-Lyne, Lancashire. The two Abrahams you also see here didn’t get out of the same place, and I must add that my father Ian was also born in Ashton (in 1944). This says a lot about the Whitworths, I feel. And as Vicki pointed out — shouldn’t we be running the place by now?
The family’s annual concession of a bit of exercise, alongside the eating and drinking that is also to come. We were only about another fifteen minutes from the pub at this point. Happy Christmas to you all.
Being 42 