Took the scenic route over to the in-laws’ in Morecambe today. Between home and there lies the Forest of Bowland — most of which isn’t covered in trees at all, this photograph is actually atypical. Nice drive to do in pleasant weather though. The year coasts towards its end placidly enough.
Oh dear, pubs two days in a row. Well, it is Christmas. I need a break. An apposite way of recalling that this place, along with the rest of Hebden Bridge town centre, was under six feet of water two years ago today: this year’s was a rather less eventful Boxing Day, fortunately.
A dull, non-festive shot? My apologies, but yes. Nevertheless to find the Blue Pig open as we went past it towards the end of our Christmas morning exercise walk was a great Christmas bonus. This pub, run entirely by volunteers, is like Brigadoon, sometimes it’s there, more often, it’s not.
I managed to not document anything particularly ‘Christmassy’ about the day but then again seeing as it was mild enough to sit and drink a beer outside by the river, it didn’t particularly feel like it today and I get bored with all these cliches anyway. Either way… hope you enjoyed your version of the day, whatever you did with it.
Christmas Eve games at the parents’. Brother-in-law Pete makes what may or may not have been a crucial move. Look at the lean…
Latest stop on my 2017-18 tour of the football competitions of the UK, to the Northern Premier League Division 1 North, at Seel Park, Mossley: a game with two distinctions by the end. Number one, it was the foggiest game I have ever seen, in danger of being abandoned throughout most of the second half as it was becoming difficult to see from one side of the pitch to the other.
But I’m glad it wasn’t abandoned, as were the 217 other fans in the ground with me, because the second distinction was that this game had more goals in it than any other I have seen in my life, nine to be precise: result was Mossley 5, Kendal Town 4. An absolute cracker of a game from start to finish. I really am starting to wonder why it’s necessary to pay the Premier League premium to be entertained (which I was not, particularly, last Saturday). Thank you to everyone involved with this game in fact, for giving me a quite excellent pre-Christmas day out.
The last working week of the year comes to an end. Every year, semester 1 is like a marathon. Sometimes I reach the end delirious and hyper. 2017 is not one of those years. Right now I feel utterly fatigued, just grateful to have reached this point without any significant loss of faculties. It would be good to slumber through the next eleven days to tell the truth — but I can’t, there are festive duties to perform of course. But that doesn’t mean I have to think much about them; that’s the good news.
Commercial forestry is not inherently a bad thing: there are many beautiful and well-managed plantations in England. But there are prices to pay, and when you see a ravaged landscape like this one — well, it does make you realise that this is not nurtured land. More like arboreal strip-mining, take the products and leave a wasteland behind. In this mist it looks almost apocalyptic, like the zombies are just over the horizon. Maybe one day Treebeard will stomp out of the remaining woods, like he does in The Two Towers, and swear vengeance against the human despoilers.
This was the first photo I took today, and while I did in the end go on to take more, I didn’t really need to. As soon as I saw this, I thought – this is me, today. This is how I feel.
Winter, as such, I don’t mind. I can take the cold and it tends to look nice (as here). It’s the darkness that pisses me off, and we haven’t even reached the Solstice yet. On winter days when I’m around home I can just about get it in me to go out when the sun finally struggles up, but otherwise, if it can’t be bothered, usually neither can I.
Being 42 