The bee is the symbol of the city of Manchester (something to do with ‘industry’), so it seems appropriate that this guy and his colleagues were busying themselves on campus this afternoon — certainly they are showing more industry than the human inhabitants are at the moment.
The Hebden pigeon population is well trained, and anyone who simply sits on a park bench for a few moments of contemplation (as I did this afternoon around 3pm) will soon find themselves the object of curious, food-related enquiries from the local birdlife. Feeling in need of a new approach, I tried putting my camera down amongst them at ground level and (not wishing to join everyone down there myself) firing off the shutter at random a few times. This was the best of the shots that resulted. But it may also be a sign that I need to get out of Hebden a bit more.
The plum tree is bearing a heavy load this year, and needed help. Banyan trees have worked out how to do this kind of thing for themselves, but not yet this species. The working week started with a trip to the builders’ merchants in order to acquire some long, stout bits of wood to prop up the most creaking branches.
A planned walk up in the hills got little further than this bridge under the railway a couple of miles from home, which we were fortunate to reach just as the first really major thunderstorm of the summer passed through. Along with these two cyclists who arrived there simultaneously, we ended up spending around three-quarters of an hour there. The stream down the middle of the lane is not normally present.
Back in late October the Hebden Bridge Picture House reopened, and this happy event was depicted on here. Then, it shut again: like all places of entertainment this was deemed surplus to requirements in the Time of the Great Fear. How could we possibly be trusted to sit inside and watch movies. Now, it’s trying again, before all places like this erode away and the only distributor remaining is Netflix. Support your local cinema, folks.
On show this evening — Fargo; a great movie, well worth seeing on the big screen. (Real film buffs will know from the surname rolling up the credits here that we were in the presence of the Coen Brothers.)
9am on a Thursday morning is probably not the best time to catch any building at its best, but one certainly feels that this place has seen better days. Even the Bingo has died, if the boarded-up doors are any indication. Is it another place that has died ‘for the good of our health’? Who knows, any more?
One year ago today, 30th June 2020, I was ‘allowed’ back on to campus for the first time since all the shit started, and took the picture linked here, of a student sat among the lush June foliage, alone, wondering where his future had gone.
One year on, this photo is taken from more-or-less the same point, and little has changed, has it? The huge Manchester campus still just sits there, mostly unused. Maybe my managers, our ‘leaders’, would like to ask, what am I complaining about? These people are still going to get their degrees are they not? They’ve got what they paid for? Yeah, well, if you reduce the experience of getting an education to a pure cash transaction then yes, they have indeed. But what a wasted year it has been, and I mean that also in the sense of wasting away, eroding, no longer vital and healthy. This is not because of some virus, but because of fear and paranoia, a desperate urge not to do anything that could see fingers pointed.
But I say this again, sorry to be repetitive but it deserves repeating. There were more than 40,000 people in Wembley stadium yesterday afternoon. This proves that if the will is there, this ridiculous fear can end. Is it so impossible to accept that once you are vaccinated, and the guy next to you is vaccinated, and the people who can’t get vaccinated (like those under 18) brush off this thing as if it were water in the vast majority of cases — then there is no longer any need to live life in this state? The most worrying thing for me is that such views now seem to be considered subversive. There are groups out there who are quite happy for most people to be frightened of shadows, and they’ve won.
More an abstract than anything else, today. Although the swallow (if that is what it was — it was certainly flying like one) gives it focus. I felt like putting up an evening shot, anyway: there have been very few of these in the last eighteen months. Nights out are a thing of the past. Mind you, 40,000 people could be accommodated in Wembley yesterday afternoon — but apparently, going out to the Trades Club is still considered ‘unhealthy’. Enough of this bullshit.
Today, just a portrait of a mate in his natural habitat. Where we’ve all spent too much time lately, let’s face it.
As far as I can tell — and I might have it wrong ± a couple — this is the 3,000th English picture to feature on here. Almost half of these (and 41% of the whole total) have been taken in Hebden Bridge, but this one is just down the road in Mytholmroyd.
Being 42 