The world — well, Hebden Bridge anyway — is getting back to it, and in these developments I can see nothing but good. We should be able to give our money to a few more retailers that have been unlucky (or unpolitically active) enough to be classed as ‘inessential’, but more important is that people are just coming out anyway.
I put up this photo because I love the backdrop of the houses on Calder Holmes Park. A proper football landscape if ever there was one. I put this up also because of how it wound up certain people when I posted it on a Facebook group earlier. One of the most iniquitous things about the year that we have lived through is how it has wiped out the idea that any ‘ordinary people’ might be able to make their own judgments about what is healthy and safe, and what is not. Well, lockdown lovers everywhere — yes, there are certain people who are back out there, living their lives.
Why head west? Why not south? Well, the valley runs east-west here so I guess they were trying to work out the best route. Anyway I think Canada geese (which these are — Branta canadensis) live in the UK year-round these days, so maybe they were just commuting up-valley to Todmorden.
For once, a football match captured in passing, rather than one I specifically attended. Calder Holmes Park, in town, is a picturesque spot to get competitive on a Sunday morning. One for the traditionalists…
Maybe it’s all down to the same combination of conditions that have produced the fecundity of fruit and fungi, but the autumn colours this year are very fine. This is not another football shot, honestly.
Perhaps this shot would have been better with either one group or the other, but I like the split-screen nature of it with both. A nice evening in Hebden Bridge, much more amenable weather than in Manchester for most of the day, which is where I was.
I was working in Manchester all day, but there it was chilly and grey. Things were much more attractive on my return home to Hebden Bridge, so let’s depict that instead.
Well… there’s blossom. You can see it. But that’s the bloody British weather for you. The snow was all gone by lunchtime.
Still, I am not complaining about this photographically. This is the first picture I’ve taken in ages that I really like: one where I knew as soon as I pressed the shutter that it would be today’s pick.
Walked to the station this morning past the skate park, which in the pleasant sunshine looked clean, and colourful, and I liked the shapes and lines and variety of the decorations. Of course, I have also captured it empty, and devoid of life, because it’s there to be used, not least by skateboarders. Maybe paying homage to the other people’s art — a valid way of using the park if you ask me — is what I’m doing here.
Spent the working day in Manchester, where the weather was lousy, but by the time I came home it had brightened up enough to make this scene worth capturing on the way back from the railway station.
