They start serving early at the Old Gate pub/restaurant in town. The condiments are set and prepared even before 10am. Off they stretch into the distance, like little table-set skyscrapers.
My latest trip to Ewood Park, this time to see Morecambe FC (still buoyed up by their recent win at Wembley) play Blackburn Rovers in the League Cup. The stewards had plenty of visiting Morecambe fans to deal with but not, it has to be said, a great many Blackburnians. Perhaps this was because they knew the result was fated, as I was in attendance. This was my fifth visit to the ground as far as I can ascertain, and Blackburn Rovers have now lost every one of them: a 1-2 defeat to the mighty Shrimps this evening continuing the run. I won’t be back for a little while, guys, I promise.
Our latest chilli plant. It was Clare who christened it ‘Tuco’, after Tuco Salamanca, the ridiculously fiery Mexican in the first couple of seasons of Breaking Bad. Only we have already eaten one of the three fruits it has produced so far, and it turned out to be very mild, so perhaps it’s misnamed. We should call it Jesse Pinkman instead, perhaps.
The Striders are a local running group. Yesterday, they set out to run a 5km lap, on the hour, every hour, for 24 hours. This was taken at the end of the last one. Jilly, in the middle with the white top, did 20 of these laps — thus, she has run 100km (or over 60 miles) since Saturday, with a couple of hours of dozing at about 3am. I am in awe of this; if I walk more than about 10 miles these days I feel knackered and have to rest for a day or so.
Taking photos for its own sake means that almost anywhere becomes interesting on a first visit. When the destination is a landscape of industrial decline, on the scale of this one — the town of Goole, in East Yorkshire — there’s enough to keep me going for the whole day, and it’s a shame, in this case, that I just restrict myself to one photo per post. This is my choice — the first giraffe to appear on here? Well, it looks like that to me.
Most of Hebden Bridge, as it stands today, was built between about 1850 and 1900. This gives it a uniformity of appearance that is part of its appeal. But add to that the creative solutions that the architects and builders adopted in order to cope with the place’s steep topography, and sometimes, there is real beauty to it. I love Windsor Road, seen here — it’s just so regular in its steps up the hill. How precisely are these houses placed in relation to one another. Could you do this? I couldn’t even think about how to start on such a project.
I had a work meeting today, that included lunch, face-to-face with two other people. The rail service is having its annual summer ‘upgrading’ spasm and so my journey to and from this meeting was a complex — but not, it should be said, unpunctual — tangle of three different trains, two buses and a taxi.
All in all then, a sense of normality returns (perhaps leaving out the bit about punctuality).
Here’s 1960s town planning for you. Build a concrete monstrosity of a street in the centre of your city, with a car park on top of it, and name it after a female character from that city’s history who was alluring enough to appeal to its most dashing hero. Maid Marian’s appeal is at least hinted at by whomever decorated the wall, but that’s scant consolation.
An afternoon out, and another County Top bagged; it was a decidedly urban one, that of the city of Nottingham. I thought this shot had a notable 1970s feel to it, so toned down the saturation to fit the mood. The blue plastic bag adds to the desolation. I no longer just walk in the glamorous places…
You wait ages for a small insect and then two turn up in consecutive days. This fly hung around for a while; clearly it has an interest in Ted Nelson’s Literary Machines this afternoon. As did I.
Being 42 