Wednesday 19th November 2025, 2.40pm (day 5,200)
Definitely just a dusting — but, nevertheless, today was easily the coldest day of the winter so far. And I guess we must say winter has now arrived, at least, in West Yorkshire.
Bit o’ snow
Being 42
Life, one day at a time
Tag Archives: farm
Angry tractor
Wednesday 6th August 2025, 1.40pm (day 5,095)
Tell me you don’t see it. It even has a tongue.
Stoicism
Sunday 26th January 2025, 2.20pm (day 4,903)
There are worse places to be stuck, that is true. And I’ve not been turfed out of my accommodation, I’m not running out of money, and so on. But this has now become my life’s longest-ever flight delay, or indeed travel delay of any kind, and I may not even be halfway through it yet. I am trying to develop a stoic outlook on life — as this guy appears to have done.
The calm under the flightpath
Saturday 11th February 2023, 2.00pm (day 4,188)
These have to be among the world’s most stoic horses. The poles in this field are one end of the series of guidance beacons for one of the runways at Heathrow. Gigantic flying machines like the one seen here are coming into land every few minutes, and the noise is incredible. But they don’t seem all that bothered.
In the Woody Ridge flax mill
Thursday 2nd February 2023, 2.00pm (day 4,179)
Curiosity, and the need to stretch my legs during a day sat working on a report, took me down the road to investigate the old flax mill that stands there, a relic of just one of many attempts to institute some kind of working cash crop economy on St Helena — doomed from the point in the 1960s when the Royal Mail decided it no longer wanted to use string to tie up its parcels and would instead rely henceforth on nylon. Now the place seems to be used as a cow byre: but the dairy industry here didn’t survive regulations on hygiene, or was it something else? Laws and practices developed for quite different contexts have never really gone down very well in this remote and distinctive place.
“Take me with you”
Saturday 26th February 2022, 12.10pm (day 3,838)
“Please. You’ve gotta get me out of here. I didn’t ask to make my life here, a day’s journey from the nearest grooming salon.”
I might think the same if, like this critter, I was living at Scalderskew in the Lake District — I do not know of a more isolated dwelling in the country. If you’re interested, the most prominent peak in the background is Seatallan.
Debutant pig
Sunday 21st February 2021, 11.45am (day 3,468)
“Whaddya mean, in nine and a half years you’ve never had a pig on this blog thing of yours?”
“Nope, never.”
“I wanna be FIRST. (Oink.)”
Restoration project
Friday 17th July 2020, 10.35am (day 3,249)
Bagged my second County Top in a week, a trip that took me through the urban delights of Wigan, which are more extensive than you might imagine. On the outskirts of town resides this ruin, still proudly marked as ‘Park House Farm’ on the map but now mouldering into decay. Urban explorers — catch it now before it is razed/incorporated into a new housing estate/featured on Grand Designs as a restoration project engaged in by those with too much money. It is presently a spooky, melancholy spot.
Ruminating
Saturday 20th June 2020, 1.30pm (day 3,222)
One of those days where I pointed my camera a lot at nice things, but didn’t manage to come up with many photos that I liked. But these cows will do — they look suitably ruminative and peaceful, a state of mind I am trying to occupy at the moment, even if mostly, I am failing.
Happy Moo Year
Friday 1st January 2016, 11.35am (day 1,590)
The first morning of 2016 was a rather chilly and grey one but it was still good to drag the family up a nearby hill and then buy them a pub lunch as compensation. Pic taken on the way round; the cow virtually demanding that I work on its close-ups.
Being 42 