It’s nice to travel, but it’s also nice to come home. So the family can feature on the blog for the first time for a while (as a duo, anyway). Not much is going to happen in the next few days, and it doesn’t look like we can expect the sun out, so I foresee more of this kind of thing.
Our window sill, and indeed our house generally, contain more pieces of deceased sheep than most people would consider normal. Souvenirs from a few Lakeland walks….
Restarted work today, albeit at home; and herein lies my photographic challenge for the next couple of weeks, as I’m really not doing a great deal else until about January 8th. This will be a very long run of Hebden Bridge pictures on the blog. This ex-guitar caught my eye today — apparently it is about to be customised (I believe the youth of today would say ‘pimped’) as part of Joe’s art homework. I like the shot because it is obviously a guitar, but could take a second glance to determine why it is a dead one.
We approach the anniversary of last year’s floods on December 26th, which took out most of Hebden Bridge’s town centre. Prior to that, this place, the Railway pub, had probably featured at least once a month for the four and a half years I’d been doing it, so say about 50 times…. But none since 22/12/15. I think this has been the last of all the businesses in the town to reopen after that day, but here you are…. One year to the day since last we drank there. Welcome back.
The Contact Theatre was built in 1999 and adjoins the Ellen Wilkinson Building where I work, helping close off my courtyard (you’ve seen that often enough), but it is a separate entity from the university. It focuses on youth theatre and involves young people in programming and hiring decisions, apparently. The picture also demonstrates that we have reached that time of year where I get to leave the office and it’s already dark. So be it… December it is.
Trafalgar Point sticks out into Morecambe Bay, as that is where I reside this weekend for the final hurrah of the wife’s 40th birthday celebrations — this time round, with her family. The good weather has definitely receded, at least for now, and this shot could have been discarded because of the rain on the lens but in the end I decided it was all atmosphere. With tonight being the last day of British Summer Time, this will be the last evening it is remotely light at this hour until March.
“U malého glena” apparently means “the little glen” and is the name of this bar in Prague. Well, this is one of the world’s great beer-drinking countries, so I was inevitably going to end up in a bar or two while here…
11 years of using the Calderdale line, and one learns which services have CTS (Cattle Truck Status) and which are safer. I will never aim to catch the 1726 from Manchester, for example. It just ain’t worth it. The 0742 from Hebden (depicted here just about on its arrival to Manchester) is usually not so bad but today, for some reason, it suffered from a massive case of CTS.
Why monochrome again? Because it hides a multitude of white balance sins.
I’m sure this picture will simultaneously warm the hearts of traditionalists and chill those who believe in progress in educational technology, but the speaker here was not using the blackboard, I can assure you. Or, indeed, Blackboard. A second monochrome shot in two days but the white balance of the original was blown and this made it look a whole lot better (as is often the case).
Abingdon Street is one of those little city centre back streets that I have found down the years and use because there is very little other traffic on it (wheeled or on foot). Hence why this guy can relax and have a kip, or indeed this guy, taken just on the other side of the road. Clearly it is a prime location in Manchester for morning constitutionals. Why the monochrome? It was the greyest day in weeks, and I felt like it.
Being 42 