Tuesday 22nd April 2014, 10.00am (day 971)
First day in Manchester for three weeks; also the greyest, dampest day for some time. These things may or may not be connected. But it’s not yet term-time so things were much more subdued than normal.
Being 42
Life, one day at a time
Tag Archives: 44
Roof slates
Monday 21st April 2014, 6.50pm (day 970)
There is a month — this being April, 30 days — to go until I hit the 1,000-day mark on this blog, on 21st May. I have been mulling over whether or not to keep it going after then. The difficult days are not the ones where I travel and have plenty of source material but ones like today, when I’m inside, working, throughout and the light isn’t great. (Yes, I went back to work today after 10 days’ break.) Sometimes I feel like I am running out of ideas, at least to keep coming up with a new post every day. But I do promise to try to get to the 1,000 and that gives me time to consider my options.
Compelling myself to post each day at least forces me to try to see the world from an artistic perspective and within my technical abilities, capture something interesting about it, even if I am stuck at home. Like this evening’s shot, where the setting sun reflected off the residue of an earlier rain shower and produced this rocky, arid landscape on the slates of our roof.
In the dentist’s, Colditz Castle
Sunday 20th April 2014, 2.35pm (day 969)
Well, you know. Kind of. It passes the time on an Easter Sunday afternoon.
Stoodley Pike monument
Saturday 19th April 2014, 1.15pm (day 968)
Erected in 1856, this replaced an earlier version which was destroyed by lightning, and commemorated the defeat of Napoleon. It is 120 feet (37m) tall and one can climb up to the top of the pedestal for an extensive view over the surrounding area. Something of a standard landscape shot in this vicinity, but despite 24 years’ living here between them, neither Clare nor Joe had been up there before, so on this Easter Saturday we rectified that.
Before the match, in the Gas Club
Friday 18th April 2014, 2.30pm (day 967)
OK, so that’s two pictures in a row taken in a pub of people drinking beer. But the light was right. The Gas Club — on Gas Works Road — man, that’s unreconstructed North. Final score — Huddersfield 1, Brighton 1. The play-off dream is still on.
Clare and Mike in the ‘Old Gate’ pub
Thursday 17th April 2014, 6.20pm (day 966)
Mike is one of the old Leeds university posse — as indeed is Clare, whom I met while we were both studying there in 1996. He and others (not pictured: Sarah, Iain, Angela…) met up for a pint or three in Hebden Bridge this evening, the sort of thing that you always say you should do more often, but somehow don’t.
This man’s cooked on TV you know — I am envious!
Old locomotive cab, Oxenhope station
Wednesday 16th April 2014, 12.30pm (day 965)
Just an abstract, really. I like the cobweb hanging from the coal chute in this old cab. I don’t think the loco has been abandoned, it just hasn’t been used for a while.
John the Barber
Tuesday 15th April 2014, 1.25pm (day 964)
This guy is as familiar a face around Hebden Bridge as anyone. Here, on a gloriously sunny afternoon, he surveys the town square from the top of the stairs that lead to the unit within his shop in, alongside the other establishments indicated. If he does have a surname I’m not sure most people know it: everyone calls him John the Barber. I guess that’s how people get surnames in the first place, isn’t it?
Mosedale Cottage, revisited
Monday 14th April 2014, 12.35pm (day 963)
This is probably England’s most isolated front room, being located in the mountain bothy (hut) that is Mosedale Cottage in the Lake District. I have used it on this blog before, on 31/8/12 to be precise. I like the fact that in one of the remotest spots I know, one can come in and have lunch sat on a three-piece suite and (thanks to another hiker who was present at this point, but not pictured) read the daily paper, seen on the couch to the right.
Steve and Tara in the Railway
Sunday 13th April 2014, 4.15pm (day 962)
These two have appeared on the blog before, several times each — though not, I think, together; which is odd because together is how they always are. Of all the human/animal couplings I know Steve and Tara are the most symbiotic.
Being 42 