May 04 2020
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Daily Post, Landscape, Sport

Football landscape, awaiting inhabitants

Sunday 3rd May 2020, 1.20pm (day 3,174)

Heptonstall football pitch, 3/5/20

For most of the teams in England, this weekend should have marked the end of the football season. For me, this started back on June 21st in Anglesey, but seeing as the only anti-COVID strategy anyone could think of involved killing off most of what gave life meaning, it was ended, along with everything else, after March 14th. What remnants of grass-roots sport will be left when the paranoia finally lifts and we realise that in the long run, for our survival as a functioning society, we have to get outside again — that is still to be seen.

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May 02 2020
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Daily Post, Interior

Fresh bread

Saturday 2nd May 2020, 5.55pm (day 3,173)

Rye bread, 2/5/20

During the Great Hebden Bridge Flour Famine of early April 2020 I panic-bought some organic rye flour, at a ridiculous price, when it seemed to be the only bag of flour available in the town. Subsequently, I have tried making pizza with it, and then batter, and both were dismal failures. Then today, Clare suggested the entirely logical approach of making rye bread with it. At this it — and she — was a roaring success. There will be more of this.

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May 02 2020
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Daily Post, Interior

The last class of the year

Friday 1st May 2020, 9.25am (day 3,172)

Online teaching space, 1/5/20

It was my last scheduled teaching of the semester today. Normally we would have concluded this significant moment in the academic year by some kind of group photo, as on 4th May 2018, and said our goodbyes, at least amongst those I will not be supervising over the summer. There can be none of that this year. I sit in a room and talk to a laptop for an hour and twenty minutes and take questions here and there and that’s it. I do plenty of distance teaching anyway, so it’s not that I’m pissed off about this as such — but I miss people, and if you claim not to, then I worry for your sanity.

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May 01 2020
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Daily Post, Flora/Fauna

Birdwatching, again

Thursday 30th April 2020, 10.45am (day 3,171)

Jackdaw, 30/4/20

So, there went April 2020, spent entirely under a form of house arrest for reasons that I am finding increasingly hard to understand — ostensibly to protect me from a disease that I may well have already had, but really because having dug ourselves into this hole, we now have no idea how to get back out of it. And I’m not just pointing the finger at the British government here. Six weeks ago everyone panicked, and it’s now, ‘OK, now what?’. A question to which no one seems to have a very plausible answer.

Meanwhile, as we look forward with no joy at all to what is very likely to be an equally dismal May, I have to point my camera out of the window and capture the small part of the world that is permitted me. Hello jackdaw. Enjoy your freedom.

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Apr 30 2020
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Daily Post, Interior

The house’s senior object

Wednesday 29th April 2020, 11.45am (day 3,170)

Doll and vice, 29/4/20

Lockdown continues so some obscure corners of my house get their chance on the blog. When we moved in, the previous owner had left all his furniture (he emigrated to Thailand and then — this is, sadly, true — died six weeks later). Over the intervening 19 years all that he left us has gradually been replaced, with the sole exception of this huge old chest of drawers in the attic, crowned by the vice that you see on the right here: its rather battered appearance is testament to its ongoing use for a variety of creative projects.. Between them then, these things have been here longer anything else and, as the drawers are far too big to get back downstairs (they must have been assembled in situ), they won’t ever be leaving with us either.

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Apr 29 2020
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Daily Post, Flora/Fauna, Hebden Bridge, Urban scene

Sale deferred

Tuesday 28th April 2020, 11.35am (day 3,169)

Closed shop, 28/4/20

As predicted yesterday, the weather did change, into cold, damp greyeness. All very depressing, especially at the moment. It’d be nice to think this shop can open soon and restart its sale, but it ain’t gonna be next week or anything, is it. Meanwhile, the ducks get on with life and wonder what the jackdaw wants out of them: an alliance against the pigeons maybe?

I haven’t been producing many photos lately for understandable reasons but this is the first time since lockdown began (March 17th basically) that I have managed a photowhack — meaning, this was the only photo taken today.

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Apr 27 2020
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Daily Post, Hebden Bridge, Urban scene

April sunset

Monday 27th April 2020, 8.25pm (day 3,168)

April sunset, 27/4/20

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.

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Apr 27 2020
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Daily Post, Family Member, Portrait

Joe under lockdown

Sunday 26th April 2020, 7.30pm (day 3,167)

Joe watching Star Trek, 26/4/20

Evening shots have virtually disappeared from the blog since lockdown: this is only the second post-7pm shot since February. But every evening now begins and ends in the same place, doesn’t it?

It’s Joe, and his peers, for whom I feel sorry the most. He’s 17, he shouldn’t be inside day after day, under house arrest in all but name. What will this do to the psychology of his generation, not to mention their prospects? It could be worse for us of course — he’s not a belligerent kid, there have been no tantrums nor lapses into week-long bouts of near-catatonia. Not yet anyway. But like the rest of the country, and the planet — how much longer can he go on like this?

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Apr 25 2020
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Art and architecture, Daily Post

Not Wuthering Heights

Saturday 25th April 2020, 12.15pm (day 3,166)

Not Wuthering Heights, 25/4/20

Amongst the points of interest within walking distance of my house (honest, officer), there is this place, Top Withens, which sits way up on the moors overlooking Haworth, former home of the Brontë sisters. The plaque you can see on the wall here reads:

This farmhouse has been associated with ‘Wuthering Heights’, the Earnshaw home in Emily Brontë’s novel. The buildings, even when complete, bore no resemblance to the house she describes, but the setting may have been in her mind when she wrote of the moorland setting of the Heights. (This plaque has been placed here in response to many inquiries.)

In other words then, here we have a building that vaguely resembles a place in a novel. And that’s all.

But because popular opinion has it that Top Withens is Wuthering Heights, the structure, though abandoned for more than a hundred years, has been preserved as a ruin.  Left alone it would surely have collapsed by now but the walls are carefully cut and mortared together, as gone or complete, it would not be worth what it is to the Haworth tourist trade as it is in this half-life state.

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Apr 25 2020
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Daily Post, Hebden Bridge, Portrait, Stranger

A beer in the sunshine

Friday 24th April 2020, 2.30pm (day 3,165)

Taking the sun, 24/4/20

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.

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