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…
There’s not a great deal happening at the moment. On such occasions it’s time to appreciate the good colours and light to be seen out of our back windows, when they’re available. Today, they were. Whatever that particularly yellow tree is, it was shining like a beacon over the town at 4.10pm this afternoon. And I know the tower of the Nutclough Mill gets in the way a bit, but it has been there a long time.
Hopefully the ‘autumn colours’ theme isn’t stale yet. Hard to avoid at the moment, really. Clare indulged me today by coming along for the usual Saturday non-league football fetish, here at Todmorden Borough FC in the wild uppermost reaches of the Calder valley. There haven’t been many portraits of the family on here lately, but let’s change that today. Her blue top against the background is a good contrast. And I like the way the railing stops halfway along.
