This scooter is currently lying a dozen yards offshore in the muddy wastes of the banks of the River Lune. I fear it is lost, soon to become an archaeological relic, a fossil perhaps [yes, I’m aware this cannot happen with inorganic material]. You do wonder about the story behind these things, but as with the car crash in Wales two weeks ago, perhaps it is better not to enquire too deeply.
This is the blog’s ninth Christmas Day, golly. It’s nice to get out and take the air on these days if the weather allows, and, counting back, four of these 25th Decembers have been marked with shots of the outside world and not just some poultry remnants. This shot is taken pretty close to that on 25/12/12, looking west from Sandy Lane, above the Nutclough Woods and towards one of my home town’s unusual architectural sites. Happy Christmas to you all, whether you celebrated it, however you spent it.
These geese entered my viewfinder then began all lining up at the side of the canal for no reason I could establish for a minute or two. Then I realised they were getting to the side because a narrowboat was coming down. So these guys/geese are probably just looking irritated because they had to shuffle out of the way. Still, it could be worse — many of their relatives will be on dinner plates tomorrow.
More Christmas decoration, this time our annual harvesting of one of the house’s copious collection of sheep skulls for the usual Gothic effect. I spent all day at home working, but now I’m done. Christmas, whatever that means or represents — here we are.
‘Tis the Sunday before Christmas, and by now it is obligatory for every commercial establishment to have decorated somehow. But so be it — our decorations are up at home as well.
I have been to, and photographed, 75 football matches so far in 2019 (with probably one more to come), but I have begun sparing you the actual action shots on here for fear of monotony. But you can have this one, as I like the way the stand roof splits off the landscape above. This is Cougar Park, usually full of rugby league fans (a strange bunch…), but, for the remainder of this season anyway, the football tenants are Steeton FC, here in green: visitors Prestwich Heys were the winners today, 3-1.
A veritable battalion of pigeons, in tidy military formation (well, most of them), line up on the roof of the White Swan for the next instalment in the ongoing pigeon/duck war. Recent infiltrations must have provided promising intelligence. The person in the hat walks over the bridge all indifferent, but I have been observing.
I don’t mind campus as such. But the process of getting to and from it is becoming a real trial, thanks entirely to the ineptitudes of Northern Rail over the last two years (if you haven’t had the pleasure, lucky you). So I am glad that today marked my last day there in 2019. And yes, my journey home was a screw-up.
This is New Mills, Derbyshire, a place with some impressive verticals, perched as it is above a deep gorge formed by the River Goyt. I spent the afternoon and evening here and it’s a shame I didn’t manage to arrive until 3.15pm, by which time it was already getting rather gloomy. A place to revisit with some better light.
Thanks to the stats that are faithfully kept for this blog (and which, for me and my compulsive chronicling, are a significant element of keeping this going), I know also that New Mills is the 300th different, identifiable location to be depicted on here. Obviously the count depends how I slice certain places (particularly the Lake District) but this is how it’s come out. This is one new place every 10.1 days or thereabouts, a supply which shows no signs of running out, so let’s just keep exploring. I might not be able to save the world but I would like to see more of it, before I go.
“You’re not pointing that camera at me, are you?” asks Gus. Well yeah, actually you could see that I was… No offence meant my friend.
Being 42 