Even the recent run of storms has not blown off this little clump of last year’s leaves. Today, on the other hand, was a first real inkling of spring sunshine and relative warmth. I already know it doesn’t last, though. But there’ll be more, eventually.
Halifax Minster is a great, soot-coated monolith of a church, and its gate provides a suitably Gothic (and autumnal) vista for this year’s Halloween shot, with Clare playing the part of the spectral apparition. Maybe. Anyway, with this shot, the town of Halifax hauls itself up to 9th place in the ‘all-time list’ (see the stats), with its 34th appearance on this blog.
Can’t say I had the greatest day at work today but at least it was sunny outside. A walk in the woods helped, a little. I guess because these trees are more sheltered than most, they’ve barely begun to turn yet — just the merest splash of autumn has hit them, thus far.
The family that texts together, survives house arrest together. One of the few signs of human life in Hebden Bridge this afternoon.
Who doesn’t love the colours in autumn, a last hurrah before the greyness of winter. I like the remaining green on this shot and the sinuous branch, with its two duck-heads.
Not pictured on this shot: vast numbers of people. The woods of Hardcastle Crags were heaving today. Because, if you take away other normal weekend entertainments, people will do what they must in order to stay physically and mentally healthy, which is to get out of the house to wherever is available. Thus, congregating closer together than they would otherwise have done, and defeating the object of this latest stupid, mindless, arbitrary attempt at social control.
The fact that I am still going to campus, and intend to go two or three days a week through November, suggests that ‘lockdown’ as a concept is an even bigger con this time round than it was in March. The students in this hall have paid great sums of money and — in many cases — travelled thousands of miles to be in Manchester, but we can’t even see them from across a twenty-foot room. What do we do about it? I dunno, disobey somehow. At least the leaves are still just about hanging on.
Nothing about the politics today, no grouching, I promise. Let us just celebrate the peak of autumn. I have pictured this wood before (by now, I’ve pictured most places near my house before), and have always called it the Entwood because here more than anywhere else round here the trees feel like they have feet, that their residence in the ground is temporary.
The Rochdale Canal has featured many times on this blog, most recently eleven days ago, near Todmorden. This shot is taken in the centre of Manchester, on Canal Street, as urban (and metrosexual) as you get, but you wouldn’t know that from this shot. When I returned past this point in the afternoon, all the leaves had gone, suggesting the lock had been opened at some point during the day — a small sign of life in what remains a mostly comatose city, just waiting for the Tory Party to take it down and stomp it underfoot for a few more weeks.
First to be explicitly depicted on the blog, anyway — seen by sticking my head (and lens) upwards on a day trip to the in-laws’. The world turns…
The blossom is out — very early this year, but with that run of warm weather I guess it was to be expected. But it looks odd against the brown of a hedge that seemed to decide it wasn’t actually going to shed its leaves over the winter.
Anyway I’ve decided this is my homage to Jackson Pollock. It looks a bit like one of his drip paintings. Foliage like this doesn’t half eat up the megabytes, though. Of the 2,750 photos used on this blog — three-quarters of the way through my third millennium — this is the second largest in size, at 3.4Mb, that I’ve ever uploaded (most of them come in at about 1 – 1.5Mb). The largest? This one — also with lots of foliage, proving the point…
Being 42 