Wednesday 16th October 2019, 10.10am (day 2,974)
A couple of weeks at home loom, and today was spent entirely there. At least, for blog purposes, I do have things to look at out of the window — mist, and mast.
Being 42
Life, one day at a time
Tag Archives: 50
Autumn comes to campus
Tuesday 15th October 2019, 3.00pm (day 2,973)
Six days away from campus and in that time, everything seems to have turned gold. Is that a jacket in the branches at the top? Or the ubiquitous and planet-killing plastic bag? Guess we can find out for sure when the rest of the leaves are gone.
Bike rack, London
Monday 14th October 2019, 10.10am (day 2,972)
I have to admit to being unable to ride a bike. I am sure family will mention that there was a brief period, aged about 7, where I gave it a go but we never got on. Can’t say I really see the point of them: walking has always seemed more pleasant, and safer, over shorter distances and any longer, let’s get a bus or train shall we? But I’m not anti-bike. I like ‘bike for hire’ schemes (cf. Brisbane, 2013). I know cyclists suffer prejudice due to their chosen form of transport. It’s just not for me.
[No endorsement of commercial product implied. Other personal banking providers are available.]
Tennyson’s Lane
Sunday 13th October 2019, 10.50am (day 2,971)
When I was growing up in Sussex there were many of these ‘sunken lanes’ around the place and I guess I never really gave them much thought. But seeing a track like this, embedded between two earthen banks, is a sign that the way is of great antiquity. Their sunken nature is not natural, it is the result of erosion, taking place as people and livestock use the track over hundreds and, probably, thousands of years, over and over.
While on a walk in the South Downs today (bagging a County Top), I turned a corner and was suddenly confronted by this most magnificent example. Actually I’m surprised the shot ended up with so much light in it, because to my eyes this was a dark, enclosed tunnel through the landscape, exactly the kind of place where you can picture Frodo and his mates hiding from the Black Rider early on in Lord of the Rings. It’s called Tennyson’s Lane in tribute to the poet who had a house nearby, and in 1905 Arthur Paterson wrote the following about it, words that are still true today:
Trees meet overhead, copsewood surrounds it, and later, it is hedged by high sandy banks thickly overgrown with plant and scrub; squirrels and rabbits, and all other small woodland creatures, disport themselves over it. It twists and turns, and to the stranger appears to lead nowhere in particular.
The South Bank
Saturday 12th October 2019, 11.25am (day 2,970)
A weekend away, which started (as my weekends away often do) with a Friday night out in London. This morning, Saturday, I walked part of the way to the station, crossing Westminster Bridge which seems to have become one of Britain’s most fortified spots — a place to point the camera away from, and turn instead to this view of the first inklings of autumn colour on the south bank of the Thames. I like the two figures just captured in the bottom corner.
Under surveillance
Friday 11th October 2019, 9.35am (day 2,969)
Tensions are clearly running high in the ongoing pigeon-duck war. With negotiations having broken down, the pigeon high command has sent out a brave scout to keep an eye on the mallards. But what it hasn’t spotted is the counter-espionage agent sneaking in from the left.
Boot man, Hebden Bridge market
Thursday 10th October 2019, 9.40am (day 2,968)
On the 10th October 1991 I turned up in Yorkshire for what was originally planned to be a stay of a few weeks while I ‘got myself sorted out’. Twenty-eight years later, I am still living here: the last eighteen of those in Hebden Bridge. So let’s make today’s pic a home town shot. This is commercialism again, but of a far less predatory sort than yesterday’s. In the matter of boots, defer to the boot man (Bakunin — paraphrased). I hear the olives on the next stall along are pretty good too.
October commercialism (and an inaccurate clock)
Wednesday 9th October 2019, 10.50am (really) (day 2,967)
I did not notice the inaccuracy of the clock at the point of taking the photo. But I can assure you that I could not have been here at 10.15am. If you ask me, the ‘pumpkins’ are also too early. What influence do I have over the ongoing encroachment of The Festival of Utterly Disposable Tat, however.
The first satsuma of the season
Tuesday 8th October 2019, 4.50pm (day 2,966)
Always a good culinary moment. The first ones just seem to taste so much better. The act of peeling allows the anticipation to build pleasantly, before that opening bite allows the sweetness to cover the tongue. Well, it was the best bit of an otherwise very mundane working day.
Two sides of the track
Monday 7th October 2019, 10.15am (day 2,965)
Remarkably, this was my fifth railway station of the morning, by 10.15am, and I was to do another one before getting home — and I don’t just mean passing through, I mean getting out, and standing on a platform to get on some service or other. This wasn’t a Northern Fail moment, I was heading off early for a meeting but that got cancelled, I came home a different way, so be it.
This looks not unlike a photo I took nearly 10 months ago now of Simbach am Inn station in Germany, albeit without the trains and the cool Century Gothic font, but still, I like the way it separates the background into two disparate parts, but otherwise I think I have the symmetry and rule-of-thirds right.
Being 42 