Digitalis purpurea, the common foxglove, always brightens things up at this time of year. Both its Latin and English names come from the way the flowers slip perfectly over one’s fingers; but as bees like to crawl up them too, don’t try this without checking first.
The cobbles that surface Sackville Street in Hebden Bridge are classic, but whether they are practical, ask the people that live there. I was just passing. Having reached the ‘bored stupid’ stage of lockdown myself, I wonder whether the painting in evidence here is recent, done by a local householder who has been on furlough for the last three months. But I guess the work looks older than that.
The heady feeling of freedom engendered by three days in a row out of Hebden was decisively brought to an end. I had to work — which means, these days, staying at home (it is now over three months since I was last on campus on March 8th). And it was cold, too: cold enough to put the heater on, anyway. In the background, Lego guy turns his back in disgust at this lack of moral fibre.
Haweswater supplies water for about 25% of the north-west of England, and when it was built in 1935 it raised the level of an existing lake by nearly a hundred feet and drowned two villages, including Mardale Green at the head of its valley. In times of drought, the old village centre has been known to re-emerge. It is not that dry yet, but the water is stil pretty low and as I passed today, there was evidence of several old buildings on the bed of the lake. Mute witnesses to the injustice of having their village eradicated to slake the thirst of others.
These kinds of things are universal, aren’t they. I probably had a similar look when seeing Joe off into town that first time.
This was taken on the Rochdale Canal in Mytholmroyd, making this the first time there have been two pictures in a row from outside of Hebden Bridge since March 10th and 11th.
A burst of freedom. As we are allowed to visit family at the present time — under conditions of whatever — we had a day trip to the great gash in the landscape that is Morecambe Bay. On the other side, Grange-over-Sands. The figures seen on the tidal flats are presumably a family: but even if they’re not, what business is it of mine.
On this day last year I was in Corfu. Today, I should have been in Tromsø at the “Creating Knowledge” conference. The stats of this blog show that over the last nine years or so I have subsisted on a diet of a lot of travel, mainly for work but with a healthy amount of personal exploration thrown in. Not this year, though. And what with the devastation that this will wreak to airlines and the welcoming nature of immigration counters around the world (that was irony), who knows? Perhaps this will be a permanent shift. We will have to see.
‘Paul’s Fresh Fish (from Fleetwood. Lancashire)’ has been present at Hebden Bridge’s Thursday market every week for years: the van appeared on the blog way back in December 2012 (a picture I always quite liked due to its sense of late December desolation and some decent lighting). He missed a couple of weeks in April, but clearly there is too much tuna in the Irish Sea off Fleetwood to sell on, so he’s back now.
A deeply dull day. By the evening I was reduced to casting my eye around the randomly organised piles of DVDs around the place and playing mash-up games, cross-fertilising. I’d pitch this one to Hollywood, but probably someone has already done a screenplay.
I credit Clare as ‘spotter’ on this one. While on the allotment this afternoon she drew my attention to this insect and said, “Try getting a photo of this one.” And so I did. And thank you my love — I rather like the result. This grasshopper has a sense of nobility I think.
Being 42 