A boring Sunday spent mostly working. I did spot this on the way up the road to the garden; the ivy looks as if it is seeking to pull down the chimney and consume it. But perhaps ivy feels that about all human made constructions — it will probably get everything, in the end. And, as you can see, autumn is here.
Saturday afternoon at Widnes FC, who attracted just 77 fans, officially, to the large stadium that normally houses the rugby league team. Even for a rugby-favouring town, that’s a rather pathetic crowd. I was one of them, but this was one of those games I could have done without; maybe the choice of shot is intended to convey this feeling.
Down (or is it up) to London, just for the day. My hotel room had a fine view of the city, and I took several photos of it as the sun went down. This one was fairly early in the sequence but going monochrome seemed to please Clare, who chose this one as her favourite.
Work, at the moment, consists of me banging my head against various Kafkaesque brick walls (Covid has infected the bureaucratic mindset far more profoundly than it has our physiology, and to more danaging effect) until I can’t stand it any more on any given day and need a drink. Today that point was reached about 3.50pm. Ten minutes later I was admiring the woodiness, almost meatiness, of the table in Nightjar at which I drank my first pint of the day.
According to my diary today was the ‘first day of autumn’, but although it was rather windy, summer seems to still be with us for now. I liked this tree for its two-pronged appearance, like a couple of arms reaching out over the path, in the woods near Mytholmroyd.
In some years the return of the students to campus is not always exactly a welcome event — it marks the end of summer, it presages a lot of work for the weeks ahead, etc. But in 2021 it would be impossible not to celebrate it. And anyone who thinks that some kind of future lockdown is an inevitability, please leave the room now, I will have nothing to do with that viewpoint. The only way I will be incarcerated in the future is by being arrested.
This beauty — I have given up trying to identify specific species, I always get it wrong (I thought it was a Red Admiral, but apparently not) — was perched not two feet from the traffic on the Keighley Road this morning. Obviously it wanted its close-ups doing.
Also, a curiosity — this is, almost certainly, the first picture of all the thousands on this blog that I have rotated through 180º. Technically you are looking at this upside down.
Actually it became quite a nice day after this rain shower had done its thing. But at this point in time, those with brollies were grateful of them. Those without — like myself — well, we just had to make do.
A day out at the football, and it was Clare’s idea. She sits there looking rather amused at the boisterous but harmless fellow Morecambe FC fans who took over The Leopard pub near Doncaster station at lunchtime. The stencil of Pelé, to the right, also sets the tone. Sadly, no one was feeling as boisterous after watching a rather tame 1-0 defeat, but that was all still to come.
The gentleman with the somewhat alien purple hue and the ‘P’ branded on his forehead (this is what happens when you sit in front of the data projector) is Andy Burnham, the elected Mayor of Greater Manchester. For a politician, he spoke a reasonable amount of sense at the meeting I attended today. 40 people in a room, about the same number attending online — all expressing freedom of choice either way. Seems fair enough to me.
Being 42 