Tag Archives: gallery

Jan 02 2024
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Daily Post, Urban scene

View from Halifax station

Monday 1st January 2024, 1.30pm (day 4,512)

Halifax station view, 1/1/24

In real terms the 1st January is of course, no different from any other day but we give it this symbolism, don’t we. No one can predict exactly what the new year will bring but unless something untoward happens I will definitely be travelling more outside the UK than I have since 2019, with at least one trip back to Toronto already booked, plus a return to St Helena, and hopefully a couple of other places too. Let’s start the year with Halifax, though: not far from home, but all the same, worth a visit now and again. With this shot — the 49th time I have depicted the place on here — it overtakes Moscow to become the 7th most-pictured location.

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Jan 01 2024
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Daily Post, Landscape

Enjoying the local landscape

Sunday 31st December 2023, 12 noon (day 4,511)

NYE walk, 31/12/23

This picture was taken — at least, according to the time stamp allocated by my camera — at two seconds past noon, so here we are with exactly 12 hours, or 1/730th, of the year to go. As it was Sunday and we had a dinner date at a pub above Todmorden, there was no excuse not to get out, have some exercise and enjoy the scenery. (The sheep do this every day, of course.) This kind of thing is a significant contributor to the fact I’m still living here in Calderdale after 21.5 years.

And so ends 2023, not a bad year at a personal level I suppose but no particular changes were noted, for better or worse — what enthuses me and what vexes me today are all more or less the same as they were a year ago, or indeed two. The rest of the world, well, that seems able to screw itself up without my active intervention. This blog will continue — generative AI-free — as long as I still have something to document. My favourite picture of the year? Probably the gloriously camp duck captured on 20th September. Getting that salmon leaping the falls in Scotland on 11th July was quite a coup, and Clare, taken the following day (12th July) insists she get the award for ‘best human’. Happy New Year to you all.

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Dec 31 2023
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Daily Post, Urban scene

Unpromising directions

Saturday 30th December 2023, 3.30pm (day 4,510)

Gents entrance, 30/12/23

When you’ve gotta go, you’ve gotta go, but this sign, at the Belle Vue stadium in Wakefield, promises something like the ‘Worst Toilet in Scotland’ (from Trainspotting) waits around the corner. Perhaps fortunately, a gate just round there bars further progress. 

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Dec 30 2023
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Daily Post, Interior

Hair shop

Friday 29th December 2023, 11.45am (day 4,509)

Hair shop, 29/12/23

Believe me, I’m one of these middle-aged guys who has gone the other way when it comes to hair loss, and I don’t need any. Not on my head and certainly not on/in my eyebrows, ears and nose, thank you very much. But clearly there is a market for the stuff, at least among the women who shop in the Arndale Market, Manchester. And there was me thinking they did it naturally — like me (last haircut, 2/10/19 and still counting).

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Dec 29 2023
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Daily Post, Flora/Fauna

Feeding time

Thursday 28th December 2023, 9.05am (day 4,508)

Feeding birds, 28/12/23

Yesterday’s drive home went only as far as Morecambe, with the rest being done today. Staying at the in-laws’ always gives the chance to watch the local birdlife feed on the ample supplies Dave (Clare’s Dad) leaves out for them. Not that capturing them, in this case, on another dull day, through both a window and a network of branches proved very easy. Out of the many shots I tried none of them were all that sharp. But I quite like the somewhat disdainful look of the one on the right as it watches its buddy trough the bounty.

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Dec 27 2023
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Daily Post, Landscape

Driving through total crap for five hours

Wednesday 27th December 2023, 11.25am (day 4,507)

Crap drive home, 27/12/23

This is a totally crap picture, but it epitomises the day, entirely. The sunshine of Boxing Day was not sustained. We left Dundee at about 9am, I gritted my teeth and drove, and we staggered into Morecambe at about 2pm — an hour longer than it should have taken — battered by high winds, driving rain, surface water, low visibility, the lot. This is taken somewhere in the wilds of the Southern Uplands, in the indefinable watershed country between Tweeddale and Annandale, when I just had to pull over and stop for a few minutes. 

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Dec 27 2023
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Art and architecture, Daily Post, Flora/Fauna

The Kelpies

Tuesday 26th December 2023, 1.30pm (day 4,506)

Kelpies.26/12/23

The Kelpies are sculptures a hundred feet high that sit beside the M9 motorway in Falkirk, Scotland. They are certainly impressive although I don’t quite see the point. Yes, it would be nicer if the pylons weren’t there, but never mind, you are meant to be distracted by the penetrating stare of the one on the left, while the other does that whole head-tossing thing, all in tons of steel. 

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Dec 27 2023
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Daily Post, Transport, Urban scene

The Tay Bridge, from Dundee Law

Monday 25th December 2023, 11.55am (day 4,505)

Tay Bridge, from the Law, 25/12/23

Ummed and ahhed over this one for a while (two days, as you can see) but in the end I decided to go for something without a Christmas reference at all. Except, of course, in what I’ve just said. Anyway — a view from my morning exertion up Dundee Law, the walk I usually try to take on Christmas morning in advance of the food bloat that is to come. This is only the second Christmas of my life that I have spent in Scotland, after a not-so-fondly remembered time in a cabin on Loch Awe in 1992.

Anyway — if a bit belatedly, a I hope you all had a happy Christmas, however you spent it. 

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Dec 24 2023
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Daily Post, Urban scene

Balgay Hill cemetery

Sunday 24th December 2023, 1.55pm (day 4,504)

Balgay Hill, 24/12/23

A lush scene for Christmas Eve, particularly after yesterday. The cemetery on top of Balgay Hill in Dundee was a real discovery of the day. Just one of its memorial stones is pictured here but this is a huge necropolis, backed by the Firth of Tay, the hills on the far side of which are just visible here. A very un-Decemberish shot, but that’s why I’ve picked it. For tomorrow, Happy Christmas…

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Dec 24 2023
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Art and architecture, Daily Post

Coatbridge: a ‘most dismal’ town?

Saturday 23rd December 2023, 1.25pm (day 4,503)

Coatbridge tower block, 23/12/23

After a month where I felt I’d barely left the house, time to go a-travelling again, and this is Scotland’s first appearance on here since we came back from our holiday in July. Coatbridge, a few miles east of Glasgow, has had a bad rep down the years; notoriously polluted and run-down in the early 20th century, and arguably, in decline ever since, in 2007 it was apparently voted ‘Scotland’s Most Dismal Town’. But we passed through today and I thought it was OK. The Stalinist apartment-block architecture doesn’t give it glamour but it at least gives the photography some interest. Not to mention the stadium of Albion Rovers FC just down the road, but that’s another story, for a different social medium.

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