2025 is ending with a very Hebden-bound period of time, but I can’t say I mind. The weather is not conducive to any walking plans (then again, in December it rarely is) and I’m just getting on with the reading. Our ‘Eiffel Tower’ is called thus because it marks the end of the row of houses known as Eiffel Buildings; it might not be as imposing as the one in Paris but it’s still a cute building. The birds and mist add the necessary atmospherics.
As stated yesterday — a second shot from the same place: from yesterday’s shot, pan to the left, go up a ways and pull back out and this comes in view. Not always with the mist, though there’s usually a bird around somewhere.
Amongst other things that 2024 has lacked (like, my teaching, a ceasefire), I do not yet recall one of those ‘first day of spring’ moments: the kind of day, in England anyway, where it suddenly warms up, the sun starts shining and everything goes, ‘Hello….’. If it has already happened, I missed it. And 12/3/24 wasn’t it either.
Another low-contrast kind of day, spent at home working, little to see other than what the local landscape, weather and birdlife allow. In the end, this was the day’s best combination of those factors.
Today didn’t quite work out as planned, but nor am I complaining. A glorious morning. The sheep seem quite contented about it, too.
The roofers have been working on Nutclough Mill for weeks now. Months, even. But there are worse mornings to be up there.
Today is, as you may notice, day 4,444 — twelve years and two months, more or less. I did think about finding something 4-related to mark it, but this photo was always going to be today’s shot once it was taken. Nevertheless the number is worth noting, particularly as Stafford, last Thursday, was place number 444. Which if nothing else shows I am maintaining a steady diet of one new place every ten days.
This shot is taken a few hundred yards down the canal from the one captured on Friday, and as is very clear, there’s been a considerable thaw in the meantime. But there remain remnants of ice on the water, sublimating these tendrils into the far warmer air.
Six shots in a row in Hebden Bridge, and eight of the last nine. There’ll be variety tomorrow though.
A dull day in every sense. The glorious sunshine that we experienced on Saturday has been replaced by grey mist and drizzle. This explains a lot about the British psyche. Don’t get used to it being nice, because within a couple of days it’ll all turn to crud again.
It looks like I may have laid these captions over the photo with some editing software but that’s not the case. Instead these were hanging above Briggate, in Leeds, because someone had clearly decided that positive-sounding, but actually meaningless, exhortations to solidarity are just what the country needs to get us through this time of incompetency.
Two days in a row for Halifax, and two in a row clamped under an oppressive blanket of mist. In some parts of the town this morning visibility was down to ten yards. In the background of this shot, like some massive memorial, rises Wainhouse Tower, making its second appearance in less than two months and its third overall. (World’s tallest folly, etc. etc.)
Being 42 