The sun comes out, and with it, various bits of English skin that have not had much opportunity for solar exposure in recent months. And it shows. Clare, who has never been one for tanning much, decides to display possibly the whitest legs in Europe as we enjoy an end-of-week beer or three. They’ve some catching up to do on the arms, for sure.
This sits on my usual walking route to campus so I know it hasn’t been up for long. I wonder how many other artists who have been dead for 30 years might still receive such tribute. Or perhaps it is a political message. Perhaps the reference is to hidden subliminal messages in Bobby Brown. Perhaps all those 12 key changes in every track will assist in unlocking the secrets of the tellurian currents. But I’m probably not going to start listening to Zappa — I did try, a couple of times, but it really didn’t work out.
Sometimes Clare gets the final choice of shot on a day and she says that this one has ‘nice colours and shapes’. It tasted pretty good, too. It wasn’t ever going to be an exciting shot today insofar as the most interesting thing that happened was a webinar on pensions: this says a lot about not only the day, but also where I am in my life at this point.
Another railway station, the third in nine days, and two of them have both been here, Leeds: the second-busiest station in the country outside London, apparently (after Birmingham New Street, which has also been on here a couple of times). It spits us out at the start of the day and sucks us back in at the end. Not that I use this for my work commute any more, though I did, up until 2005. But I seem to end up here often enough regardless.
Whatever species of plant this is, it has been sitting, quietly doing very little, in a pot on our window sill (in the lavatory, as it happens) for a good decade or more. This year, without any special prompting, it decided to stretch out this long tendril and flower. Perhaps its time had just come. I doubt it’s been coaxed out of stasis by glorious summer weather, ‘cos we haven’t had any.
I should have returned home after yesterday’s walk, and that I didn’t was evidence of quite how dreadful the buses were in the Lake District yesterday; also that I am lucky I could stay with the in-laws in Morecambe, otherwise I might have been sleeping in Lancaster station overnight. Like everywhere else at the moment, it is a building work-in-progress. I like the blues on this shot.
This blog has been going long enough (we approach 13 years next month), but my regular walks in the Lake District predate it: it was 19th July 2009 when the LD blog recorded ‘walk 1‘. Fifteen years have since passed, and with walk 215 today — I haven’t published the page just yet but will do so soon — I completed my bagging of every one of the 330 Wainwright fells therein: twice. Well, it’s certainly given me something to do (and to spend money on) in that time: but I am not upset it is finished, quite relieved, in fact. No broken legs, you know?
These guys stand at the top of Grains Gill, which runs into the heart of the District south from Borrowdale. I have just come off Great End, which would, toponymically, made a good finishing point but it turned out to be my penultimate fell — from here there is still Seathwaite Fell to come, just to the left of this shot.
This is, very much, a picture chosen because it is a person I know looking very much themselves, and in exactly the right context, too. All he needs is the bike in the background, and it really wasn’t far away.
Agricultural records (i.e. this blog) of the loganberry plants on our allotment date back to 2018. Lately they have started making regular appearances in July. They are welcome on the plot: they do produce edible, nice fruit and require almost no time and attention whatsoever in order to do this. The latter characteristic is a definite plus.
Only the tenth Hebden shot in three months, but as I have already noted, there will be more of these coming up. Whether they get more exciting than this one is as yet undetermined but up to me, I guess. This at least represents a pleasant lunch out with the wife. It’s nice to be home, for now.
Being 42 