Thursday 16th March 2017, 5.55pm (day 2,030)
Long day for me today. In on the 7am train out of HB and back on the 17.45 from Manchester, on which this shot was taken. I felt like the woman in the middle.
Long day for me today. In on the 7am train out of HB and back on the 17.45 from Manchester, on which this shot was taken. I felt like the woman in the middle.

I don’t make a habit of getting the 06:59 service from Hebden Bridge to Manchester — a two-carriage cattle truck most days. But when I’ve a 9am meeting that can’t be missed, it’s the safest choice. At least it is getting light at that time now. Don’t normally frequent the waiting room either, but it was raining outside today. Welcome to Monday.

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.
After two blissful days working at home, welcome back to sodding Northern Rail’s dreadful recent performance on the Calderdale line. Just to put this in perspective, over the last two weeks I have lost a total of 7 hours of my life to delays — that’s a whole working day. This is how it feels.
The point of this blog is not just to find the day’s ‘artistic’ or ‘creative’ side but also to try to epitomise my day. This shot sure does that. Sometimes I’m this close to sodding off back to Fiji.
Which, of course, is something I do frequently: though not as often as some. Either the 0652, if I don’t have to take Joe to school, or the 0856, if I do. Today I did. It was a nice sunny morning, and though I got a couple of other decent pictures throughout the day, I’ll stick with this one: it’s nice to be on the way to work and still feel quite mellow about the day, and the shot captures that I think.
Well, here we all are on the early morning cattle truck, pulling into a freezing cold, damp station (voted one of the 10 worst in the country a couple of years ago), and probably all off, like I was, to do something that our employer has decided is terribly important but almost certainly isn’t.
No wonder everyone’s face was like this. Damn sure mine was.
6.52am train in this morning, arrives Manchester 7.40ish. 5.17pm train home, arrives Hebden Bridge – supposedly – about 6pm, except today it was 7 minutes late for no particular reason. Thank God I don’t have to do this every day. Some people do, but it would kill me. (Note the photographer reflected in the window above the head of the napping guy.)