The Campaign for Real Christmas long ago lost its fight to restrict this festival to December, and so Hebden Bridge, like most other places, can’t wait for November to end before switching on its decorations and accompanying this with the sale of vast amounts of plastic that within two weeks will be in landfill somewhere. But the photo opportunities this affords were better than those at work today, so here we go, it’s Advent — here, anyway.
Yesterday’s sunset presaged a bright, sunny day, but I was inside for most of it. A brief foray out this morning did at least offer the opportunity to get my tribute in for the 100th anniversary of the armistice that ended World War 1. Four days late, but the poppies are still in formation.
For about fifteen minutes this evening the sunset turned the sky into a blazing inferno. It came and went away again very quickly and several people I spoke to later, who had been inside at the time, had no idea what they had missed. They can be excused — but not the people on the train, who seemed far more interested in their screens than the real-life show outside. I wanted to be sat on their side of the train for the best show. But I guess this shot illustrates it well enough.
The immediate vicinity… being that region around my house (not quite visible on this shot)… which I did not leave today, at least not in any meaningful photographic way. The red lighting is explainable by being under the traffic lights at this point: one could get a green-tinted version of the same shot if one so desired.
I do try not to repeat myself on here, but after 2,636 days it’s gonna happen, sorry — so here is another version of the shot offered on day 1,134, 2nd October 2014. Same hands, same dentist, and same person — Joe — being inspected. But also a better version of the shot, I feel. We come here every few months, roughly, so the next time you might see this is some time in late April next year. Or perhaps not.
Joe is the person who has appeared on this blog the most often, but the last time was three months ago, in Guernsey, so let’s have him return with an action shot from one of his rehearsals for his upcoming Food Technology exam (or whatever it is they call it these days). The egg whites are whipped up successfully to the soft peak stage, and the chocolate (72% cocoa solid…) is about to go into be melted. And it all turned out very well.
I know how he feels… even if it is the weekend. Mind you, he could also benefit from having less luggage.
Fridays are my teaching days at the moment, not every week (hence my ability to bugger off to the Lakes last Friday) but most of them. And it’s an all day thing. So visual variety is not a characteristic of my average Friday, my apologies. Things kick of at 10: the pre-lecture cup of tea from the cafe in the Bridgeford Street building is an essential preliminary.
The town of Burnley has nearly 75,000 people in it and lies less than a dozen miles from my house, so one might have expected it to have appeared on the blog more than three times in the last seven years — and all three of them (6/4/12, 1/19/12 and 22/11/15) were taken at Turf Moor, the home of Burnley FC. Is there much other reason to go to Burnley? Not if the evidence of my life is anything to go by, but I did find cause to visit today for non-footballing reasons. The garage was nothing to do with it, but I do like the scene, even if there’s not quite the desired symmetry to the shot.
Not actually a third monochrome shot in a row, although it might as well be on a dull, grey November day. Nearly three years after Mytholmroyd (along with much of the rest of the Calder Valley) was sunk beneath more than two metres of water on 26th December 2015, the stable door is finally being bolted — so we have been told — thanks to massive flood defence works. These pile drivers and giant screwdrivers currently occupy half the carriageway of the main road in the village, and at the moment their main effect is to have created a year-long traffic jam along the A646.
Being 42 