So schools and colleges had one day of life and now Bojo has said they’re unclean, like the rest of the country. So Joe gets to spend the next six weeks, maybe twelve, at home, while algorithms and their creators bicker to be given the right to determine his future. Conviviality and intimacy are things of the past, getting further away all the time.
Grim weather led to the cancellation of a planned day out and with Bojo the Clown having decreed all other options ‘unsafe’ (while he flaps around in his comedy trousers), we dug out the box set of The Singing Detective and sat and watched its seven hour span through the afternoon and evening. Classic TV, and as it was always a period piece, it hasn’t dated. Joe got through the lot though he seems less than attentive on this shot. It gave the day its main interest, but how I miss other people.
This monstrosity spent the day plonked outside the house, squatting on the pavement, a metal pile of unfriendliness. Want to walk up Keighley Road? Naaah… sod you. There should be a law against it…. Oh, there is: double yellow lines. But those are clearly of concern only to wimps and lefties.
A turntable has made a reapperance in our house for the first time in twenty years, so we’ve been digging out some of the old records that survived the Great Vinyl Cull of the 1990s (I was a student, I needed the money, I regret it now, sure). And it’s been an excuse to pick up some new material as well, including that of the very fine band seen to top — previous blog stars themselves. I wonder what music will, in the end, emerge from this time of paralysis, or what art of any kind.
Hebden Bridge’s hundred-year-old Picture House has not featured on the blog in 2020. Flooded (again) on Feb. 9th and then forced to close by the New Fascism — until tonight. Tonight, we could return to support this valuable local resource, see a good film (Saint Maud) and have a glass of wine at our seat. Next week, as we are pressured back into whatever the hell ‘Tier 3’ is being defined as by Our Glorious Leaders, we will still be able to see movies, but not have a glass of wine at our seat. This is the kind of difference that gives me a warm, cosy feeling of safety and respect for authority.
In all these 3,334 days I have yet to depict my local area’s tallest construction, Wainhouse Tower — so here it is. When conceived in the 1870s this was originally going to be a mill chimney but disagreements between land- and mill-owners meant that it was eventually just built as a folly, and according to its Wikipedia page, it is the tallest folly in the world — which I did not know until just this last minute. So one to add to the ‘superlatives’ list on the Stats page when I next get round to updating it.
After yesterday’s leafiness, a bleaker vision of modern-day Yorkshire. I happened to pass this on a bus today: Amazon’s distribution centre for northern England, just outside Doncaster. A gigantic warehouse, but windowless, blank and impenetrable. Anyone unlucky enough to be working within will be robotised, denied rights and capable of being fired by SMS at any time (these practices have been documented in a recent report by the Open Markets Institute). Meanwhile, they charge 50% markup on the price of my recent book compared to what it costs to get it direct from the publisher. They pay little tax on these gigantic profits and our high streets decay ever more. Amazon are evil.
Another weekend ends at Halifax bus station. After 11 different places in the last 12 days — only Hebden Bridge has been repeated as a location over this time — it’s time to stop wandering around for a while and spend some time at home.
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.
I did get into my workplace today, but this is a juxtaposition that seems to sum up several things about the experience.
Being 42 