Joe was eight and a half years old the first time he appeared on this blog, on its tenth day in early September 2011. Nine years have passed, and his frequency of appearance is diminishing. I guess that as time goes by this will continue, as he constructs his own life. For now it is still pleasing that he likes to hang out with the crumblies now and again, and today was a beautiful Sunday afternoon.
The beauty of Cumbria is not entirely found in its lakes and mountains. The coast is also very fine. After a terrible morning’s weather put the high country out of bounds, we got out anyway and Sandscale Haws, near Barrow, gave us something to enjoy as the weather cleared. Joe practices his ballet moves, it seems.
What are we losing at the moment? There is no sport that is meaningful (meaning, played in front of spectators). I’m assuming that very little music is being performed or created; if it is, it’s not happening round me. Maybe some great novels are being born in all this crap but we won’t be seeing them for a while. There is only this endless banality, and if my blog is itself banal under lockdown, that’s the way of it. But the hedge on the allotment still needed strimming, and that’s Joe’s job.
A beautiful late May day. A public holiday in the UK. A need to stop having a head like Munch’s The Scream, a need to say no to fear and paranoia. And all these things for Joe, too. The first shot taken outside Yorkshire since 21st March.
Evening shots have virtually disappeared from the blog since lockdown: this is only the second post-7pm shot since February. But every evening now begins and ends in the same place, doesn’t it?
It’s Joe, and his peers, for whom I feel sorry the most. He’s 17, he shouldn’t be inside day after day, under house arrest in all but name. What will this do to the psychology of his generation, not to mention their prospects? It could be worse for us of course — he’s not a belligerent kid, there have been no tantrums nor lapses into week-long bouts of near-catatonia. Not yet anyway. But like the rest of the country, and the planet — how much longer can he go on like this?
When in prison, the arrival of the mail is always a big event. Joe gets his major input of the day with the delivery of the latest in a series of information processing devices. Well, there’s not much else to spend money on at the moment.
The Greatest Media Panic of All Time does not change the turn of the seasons, at least, not yet. it was time for the little potato people to get into the ground today, where (if past experience is any guide) they will stay in a kind of stasis until this time next year, when we will hopefully dig up about the same number and volume of potatoes to eat. If we get to the other side of this rupture, anyway. Here, Clare and Joe do the work, while I laze in the sun and document it.
In recent months Joe’s average rate of appearance on the blog has dropped, this being the first since 10th November, and that was just his back — 6th October as a proper portrait. The blog reflects life however, and maybe we just aren’t hanging out together as much as we used to. But this Sunday we did, getting a football fix after a blank day yesterday: mind you, it was cold. Anyway, one can use this as a check on his growth since he turned up the very first time in September 2011, more than half his life, and 3,088 days, ago.
Following my lament about the day’s football match on Saturday’s blog post, I shall not depict it — but here is Joe on his way to it, on a very pleasant November morning.
Golly, look what tomorrow is — day 3,000 of the blog. It would be nice to mark this with some momentous journey of some kind, but it ain’t gonna happen, as I will be spending the day working here in Hebden Bridge. But as with every other day on here, I will do my best — let us see what the light brings.
It’s not quite the finale of Enter the Dragon but I still like this one. However, how come Joe gets on three times, one neatly in each third — and I’m only on once? Perhaps I am only part vampire. It would explain certain things.
