A blurred, inadequate shot. But one day will come the day when there is nothing to photograph, and lately I feel I’ve been getting close to that. December gloom, a day spent marking. Out there are people in their little bubbles, and sometimes, a car drives by. Welcome to party season.
With no disrespect to the people who are sharing this life with me (Clare, Joe), things have a drabness to them at the moment: all the diary contains are work events, there is nothing communal beyond some football matches (and even they are visited alone), no parties, no gigs. This is what the world has become now the Great Fear has been used as an excuse to kick us all into a digital semi-prison. If things are different where you are, then embrace that. At least from my house the view is quite good, particularly when the afternoon sunlight catches the hills in the distance.
Whether or not Authority spasms and throws out arbitrary diktats in the next few weeks will not change the fact that I have plenty of work to do, and opportunities to get out of Hebden Bridge are going to be limited. So, Johnson, Our Glorious Leader, do your worst, I don’t care any more. Expect more photos of the local area. I don’t know why I focused on this run of satellite dishes on the street of Royd Terrace this morning — possibilities range from a ‘staying in touch’ metaphor, up to and including the decline of civilisation itself. Perhaps.
Hebden Bridge does have its verticals, and we don’t normally see the sight depicted here as our house lies a (scale) inch or so off to the left of this shot. This was taken from the other side of the valley, on the Heptonstall road.
I too was having a day doing things around the house, but definitely do not share this guy’s head for heights.
Most of Hebden Bridge was built over a fairly short span of years in the later 19th century. Of the houses from that time, these ones on Birchcliffe Road are the grandest. And when the sun goes down and you see they are the last homes in town to catch the light — you can see why the nobs of 1880 coveted this particular hillside.
Windsor Road, with its distinctive steepness and stepped houses, has featured on here before — twice in fact — but not quite as pleasingly as today, thanks to another thin layer of snow in the morning. Third time can be the charm, then.
Getting the train from Hebden Bridge to points further north-west involves passing through — or rather (on a viaduct), over — the town of Accrington. I once got involved in a conversation on social media as to which was England’s most ‘Northern’ town, meaning, not geographically, but culturally, stereotypically. This place won, and each time I cross the viaduct and see its seemingly endless ranks of terraced, back-to-back housing, I remember why. This is just a small part of the whole. LS Lowry could paint Accrington as it looks today, and few would doubt the authenticity.
Excitement and/or variety are not really on the agenda this week, but so be it. I have a crappy cold, anyway. The distinctive topography of my home town is usually good for a picture of some kind, so saves the day here.
A cold and frosty morning but it turned into the latest in a run of very beautiful days. A train strike kept me working at home today and I cared not at all.
Being 42 