“Some job this is. Waiting around in line for the ice rink to open so we can be pushed around by irritating little brats.”
“Oh, cheer up, Bob. It’s a living.”
“Is it? Shouldn’t we be in Antarctica or something?”
There was certainly a decent amount of smoke coming out of one of these stacks; but it seems he was satisfied that nothing was particularly amiss. I pray that I never have to get up on our roof, or the roof of any of these overdwellings, for any reason, professional or otherwise. It’s a long way down from five stories up.
A day on which I came very close to having nothing to photograph, but I did decide, around noon, that it was interesting that the coal shed of one of the houses across the road actually does have coal in it at the moment. The photo is one of textures, making a kind of collage. That’s my justification, at least.
My Monday afternoons as a student continue, though the next one isn’t going to be until February. It crossed my mind today that we are being taught in much the same way as we would have been a thousand years ago, had we been doing much the same in an abbey somewhere. Look at examples of other people’s writing, be told about some idiosyncracies and abbreviations, and then do our best to reproduce it all. We don’t get handed a quill pen and some parchment, which is a shame, but then again these were valuable items in medieval times and perhaps not to be wasted on students just starting out. It does work if one merely wants to learn to write, or rather to copy: but although I admit my Latin is getting a bit better, there is no interpretation here. What does any of this text actually mean, not just in translation, but really mean for anyone’s life? Beats me. But for that, I guess we would have taken different classes.
Well, yes. I’d be inclined to pay attention to this one.
Doves have been a religious symbol for thousands of years: Christianity just adopted a tradition that had begun in Mesopotamia (according to Wikipedia, which of course is right about everything). If you ask me, though, this one has the evil eye; zoom in a bit and you’ll see what I mean.
Another day spent almost entirely in my office at home, working, and not emerging until after the sunlight was mostly gone. The Friday market in town was still open at this point, though only just, and I’m sure this guy is considering packing up his clocks and jewellry and calling it a day.
I go monochrome here simply because it feels right for the shot and it stops the bright green stripes at the top dominating it. It is not a ‘Black Friday’ reference. I hate that bollocks, in fact: especially because, as various recent conversations about this marketing wheeze have proven, virtually no one in the UK — consumers, retailers, the media, anyone — actually understands the derivation of the term. Be honest — do you know where it comes from? (American readers don’t get to answer this.)
12 of the last 16 shots have been taken in Hebden Bridge, and there are going to be more coming up — by recent standards, an unusually static state of affairs. But when it looks like this in the morning, I don’t really care.
Not only did I not leave the house today but I barely left this room. From 9am – 4pm at least my study, and (more specifically) the laptop within it, was the nerve centre of an international network of researchers, contributions from (at least) the UK, USA, South Africa, France, the Netherlands and — most importantly and relevantly — St Helena. Here, the Chief Minister of the latter territory, Julie Thomas, makes her introductions to the day. I have spent quite a bit of time and effort on getting this 2-day event organised and I am very satisfied that it all worked out. As far as we can ascertain this is/was the first online conference specifically devoted to the little island on which I have recently spent plenty of time.
I have met Julie by the way. If all Chief or Prime Ministers or Presidents were like her the world would probably be a better place.
I, and most of the other people on this shot, have just disembarked a train that was due into Victoria at 09:01. As you can see from the time in the heading, it failed to make this commitment. Sadly we are in another one of those periodic troughs in the performance of the local rail network where such outcomes have become normalised. Demands for more Working From Home are as much to do with this as anything else; certainly round here, and certainly for me. And whomever put up the ‘No Entry’ sign can also sod off.
Being 42 