Tag Archives: lockdown

Oct 25 2020
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Daily Post, Transport

Cui bono?

Saturday 24th October 2020, 10.50am (day 3,348)

Leeds station, empty, 24/10/20

This is Leeds railway station, at what should be peak time on a Saturday morning.

You may think this desperately depressing scene is justified and necessary. I do not. When a crime has been committed the good investigator first asks — cui bono? It means ‘who benefits’? And who does benefit from all this — if we are not travelling, not spending money in the same places we were spending it last October, seeing friends, partying in nightclubs, going to Elland Road or wherever? I name Rupert Murdoch, Jim Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Eric Schmidt and all their kin as people with the most profoud vested interest in keeping us locked up through the spreading of fear and this year’s sudden, digitally-driven enhancement of what Michel Foucault called the carceral state. If I’m wrong, sue me. If you don’t like it, defy it.

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Jul 04 2020
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Daily Post, Urban scene

Cheers

Saturday 4th July 2020, 2.30pm (day 3,236)

First pub after lockdown, 4/7/20

It has been 105 days (March 21st) since I was last in a pub, and 6 more since the last time one featured on here.

But they’re back open. So a pint was duly raised in the Bay Horse, Oxenhope, Yorkshire, to celebrate this fact. And celebration it was: anyone about to come back with messages of doom and gloom in response, please don’t.

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Jun 22 2020
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Daily Post, Family Member, Portrait

Unexpected stash

Sunday 21st June 2020, 2.55pm (day 3,223)

Whisky samples, 21/6/20

A long-awaited visit to my family, unseen since lockdown began. A welcome interruption that highlighted how pointless all this is becoming. Why my sister Vicki was dishing out the whisky samples in the middle of a Sunday afternoon, well, that’s a story hidden beneath the surface of this picture. Particularly as I don’t even like the stuff. (I know whisky is a noble drink with much character and history: I just can’t stand it.)

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Jun 06 2020
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Daily Post, Interior

Away (but not away)

Friday 5th June 2020, 8.35pm (day 3,207)

Not away, 5/6/20

On this day last year I was in Corfu. Today, I should have been in Tromsø at the “Creating Knowledge” conference. The stats of this blog show that over the last nine years or so I have subsisted on a diet of a lot of travel, mainly for work but with a healthy amount of personal exploration thrown in. Not this year, though. And what with the devastation that this will wreak to airlines and the welcoming nature of immigration counters around the world (that was irony), who knows? Perhaps this will be a permanent shift. We will have to see.

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May 24 2020
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Daily Post, Interior

Kalamata olives (and meeple)

Sunday 24th May 2020, 3.45pm (day 3,195)

Kalamata olive, 24/5/20

Lockdown notwithstanding, I live in a middle class enclave, so the olives are still flowing. I am middle class enough to say, ‘thankfully’.

In the background, a meeple from today’s Sunday afternoon distraction, Carcassonne; I like the two star-shapes complementing each other.

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May 12 2020
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Daily Post, Hebden Bridge, Urban scene

Closed to preserve public health

Tuesday 12th May 2020, 12.15pm (day 3,183)

Closed gym, 12/5/20

One could say it’s a paradox that we have chosen to help sustain the good health of the public by closing pretty much all the facilities which exist to help one stay healthy. But it’s not a paradox — it’s simply evidence of how bollixed up everything is at the moment.

Another photowhack — they are coming (relatively) thick and fast under lockdown. I like the random arrangement of rectangles, but perhaps I am reaching.

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May 07 2020
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Daily Post, Hebden Bridge, Urban scene

No play allowed

Thursday 7th May 2020, 11.10am (day 3,178)

Wrapped swings, 7/5/20

On Sunday our glorious leader Mr. Johnson will apparently announce, well, something: as eagerly awaited as the (absent) football results, this speech will define our fate for the next few weeks. My prediction — we will be let out to work, but not to play, a conclusion I somehow try to illustrate with these taped-up swings in the nearby playground. But who will admit that play creates work…. one of those ‘non-essential’ elements driving the economy and giving meaning to our lives? You can’t have one without the other.

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May 01 2020
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Daily Post, Flora/Fauna

Birdwatching, again

Thursday 30th April 2020, 10.45am (day 3,171)

Jackdaw, 30/4/20

So, there went April 2020, spent entirely under a form of house arrest for reasons that I am finding increasingly hard to understand — ostensibly to protect me from a disease that I may well have already had, but really because having dug ourselves into this hole, we now have no idea how to get back out of it. And I’m not just pointing the finger at the British government here. Six weeks ago everyone panicked, and it’s now, ‘OK, now what?’. A question to which no one seems to have a very plausible answer.

Meanwhile, as we look forward with no joy at all to what is very likely to be an equally dismal May, I have to point my camera out of the window and capture the small part of the world that is permitted me. Hello jackdaw. Enjoy your freedom.

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Apr 30 2020
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Daily Post, Interior

The house’s senior object

Wednesday 29th April 2020, 11.45am (day 3,170)

Doll and vice, 29/4/20

Lockdown continues so some obscure corners of my house get their chance on the blog. When we moved in, the previous owner had left all his furniture (he emigrated to Thailand and then — this is, sadly, true — died six weeks later). Over the intervening 19 years all that he left us has gradually been replaced, with the sole exception of this huge old chest of drawers in the attic, crowned by the vice that you see on the right here: its rather battered appearance is testament to its ongoing use for a variety of creative projects.. Between them then, these things have been here longer anything else and, as the drawers are far too big to get back downstairs (they must have been assembled in situ), they won’t ever be leaving with us either.

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Apr 29 2020
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Daily Post, Flora/Fauna, Hebden Bridge, Urban scene

Sale deferred

Tuesday 28th April 2020, 11.35am (day 3,169)

Closed shop, 28/4/20

As predicted yesterday, the weather did change, into cold, damp greyeness. All very depressing, especially at the moment. It’d be nice to think this shop can open soon and restart its sale, but it ain’t gonna be next week or anything, is it. Meanwhile, the ducks get on with life and wonder what the jackdaw wants out of them: an alliance against the pigeons maybe?

I haven’t been producing many photos lately for understandable reasons but this is the first time since lockdown began (March 17th basically) that I have managed a photowhack — meaning, this was the only photo taken today.

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