It’s not really accurate to say that we came up to Dundee to bring Joe “home” for Christmas. Home, for him, is up here now. You can’t see the windows of his place on this shot but it’s close by. But he was returned to Yorkshire, at least — by 4pm. I like the zones of red on this shot, spacing themselves across the bottom.
The Winter Solstice was spent getting the Christmas shopping done in Dundee, which among other things, is the home of D. C. Thomson, publisher of the famous (in the UK, anyway) comics the Beano and Dandy. The latter no longer comes out except as an annual, but for the 75 years that it was published, the character Desperate Dan was in every issue: and here is his statue in the city centre. The other shoppers don’t seem bothered, though.
This is a fine building — or, rather, a complex of buildings. Taken, with a long zoom, from the slopes of Allermuir Hill, the north-eastern terminus of the Pentland Hills. Behind, across the Firth of Forth, the shore of Fife. It’s somewhere other than home, anyway.
This shot is taken a few hundred yards down the canal from the one captured on Friday, and as is very clear, there’s been a considerable thaw in the meantime. But there remain remnants of ice on the water, sublimating these tendrils into the far warmer air.
Six shots in a row in Hebden Bridge, and eight of the last nine. There’ll be variety tomorrow though.
It is known that birds are relatively intelligent creatures for their size, so as I crawl through this null time before Christmas, trying not to think about work, questions come to mind, such as — do they deliberately crap on people’s heads, or is it all an accident? This old metalwork crosses over a street in Hebden as it links two buildings, and whatever it once was, it is now prime pigeon perch; and always worth a look upwards, before any attempt to pass beneath it.
Two years ago, roughtly, I walked into this establishment intending to buy gifts for others and came out having spent far too much money on myself (see this post). Today I ignored its warmth and welcoming lighting; except to capture this shot, anyway.
I got out of the house, though as you can see, it isn’t getting any warmer. Winter 21-22 was nothing to speak of in the UK, but the 22-23 version has some bite.
Previous outbreaks have been mere preparation for the present implosion of uneventfulness, but once work is finished tomorrow (and, ideally, early tomrrow) for the semester, I will get out and about more. See this one as an abstract, and a homage to the fact that there’s still some good light outside — still damn cold, though.
It’s the last class of the semester, and the done thing among students now is “get a photo of themselves with the lecturer” at this point. I acknowledge this but it did require leaving at least 20 minutes at the end of the session so the ceremony could take place: what you see here is the queue after at least half of them had already had their time. I was feeling like a cardboard cut-out of myself by this point, although not an unhappy one. Here I said, ‘right, I’m taking a photo of all you lot while you wait to take a photo of me’… and this is the result.
What small part of the world can be seen from our house, all looked like this today. With no reason to leave the house, I did not; picture opportunities were limited to using the long zoom to see what might be going on over the other side of the valley. They had their fires burning, anyway. This is also one of those shots that looks like I’ve taken it monochrome, but really have not; if anything I have beefed up the saturation a little.
Being 42 