This was never going to be the busiest or most retail-friendly Friday market day of the year, but even so, it was particularly absent of life today. Anyone who wants to pick up a yellow and blue plastic crane, though — here it is. Or was.
More inaccurate replication of some animal or other — koalas are just not this big, or this colour, though nevertheless, that is what it is supposed to be. 4th prize in the Christmas raffle of the Hebden Bridge Picture House (£1/ticket, if you’re interested). This was very early in the evening: the place filled up by the start of the movie, which was Conclave: very good (another unsolicited advertisement).
I have several times tried to capture a version of this shot, but it’s never really worked before. I’m quite happy with this one, though. Most of the thirty or so people who were watching have already departed and yet still the credits roll, down to the stage where only the assistant catering key grip’s mother is still watching them. The movie? Trap — which, I suppose, was OK, at least for a while.
The title of this post can have multiple meanings today — for me, and, presumably, for him. Being on campus at all in August requires some kind of effort, but particularly at 8.40am: this is actually the earliest Manchester shot I have published in well over a year. But we were both there, and my day went well enough: I hope his did too.
Several public houses premises in and around Hebden Bridge have lain empty for years. This is the old Crown Inn in the town centre: at my back as I took this photo was Marshall’s Bar; neither of them made it through 2020 and have remained closed and empty since. Some pubs on the approach roads to town (like the Woodsman Inn) have been lying derelict for two decades now. Yet the contradictions of the property market are such that it seems now, by law, only new café-bars and restaurants are allowed to open in the town. It is clearly cheaper and more desirable to convert a former bank into a pub than convert a former pub into a reopened pub.
If the train from Toronto to the airport is counted, what you see here is the start of the third stage of the five that comprised my journey home: the Piccadilly Line at Heathrow Terminal 5. You don’t often see tube trains like this, and in fact all the way through to King’s Cross it seemed quiet. From there, to Leeds, then home by 11.20am; 12.5 hours from Toronto to Hebden Bridge, via London, is not bad at all.
Gosh, this year of my life starts with two consecutive nights out. But then again it is a holiday weekend. We are the last ones out behind the Railway, in fact. This picture appeals purely because of the lights.
A whole house has appeared upstairs — a desirable property, it seems, albeit one in need of restoration, and unfurnished. It looks like the wife is on a restoration project. Quite possibly this will be on the office floor until 2026, or thereabouts.
Another one of those shots that is basically an attempt to achieve some kind of perfect symmetry. Of course we are all imperfect beings so once again I cannot quite achieve it. I did wonder about asking the bloke at the back to move one seat to his left but perhaps he is the essential element that sets off everything else. Taken about fifteen minutes before our group presented at the conference — a few more people than him did turn up, honestly.
This was a busy scene earlier in the day but by dusk, things are packing up. A blob of drizzle that I did not spot in time would normally be grounds to reject the shot but here it provides a kind of ghostly highlight for the last remaining bits and pieces that are heading into the storage shed behind. I like the little ‘eyes’ peeking out over things on the left, too.
Being 42 