Took the wife out for dinner. Out of this kitchen came — or going on the time, had already come — a couple of reasonably decent fish dishes. I don’t believe I have yet to meet a chef who looks like the roly-poly stereotype depicted in the cartoon (and that picture is really why I took the shot): I don’t believe most of them have the time to eat enough to get fat, to be honest.
These fences along Old Gate are, doubtless, the prelude to the building of new flood defences in the town. Now one might consider this a good thing, particularly if one’s property has ended up under water on one of the four occasions (count ’em) that the town centre has been inundated even just in the lifetime of this blog (June 2012, July ’12, Dec ’15, Feb ’20).
But in the first place, one can question the necessity of these works — or at least, wonder why they have been prioritised over known strategies of flood prevention that could take place on the moors above the town. But that land is all owned by the Walshaw estate, who want to continue burning heather and ensuring the peat bogs don’t hold the rain that falls, because it’s uneconomic for them to do that; so they push the problem down-valley, and now Heben will push it further down, and unless we build walls all the way down to the North Sea, some poor bastard will get that water in the end.
Second, all this will most likely turn the pleasant, leafy environs of the Hebden Water into a stripped-bare drainage channel — as similar ones have in Mytholmroyd. If the foliage in the background of this shot is still there in a few months’ time, I will take this back. But I doubt it. So the attractiveness of the town centre (and it does matter — many of the shops here would not exist without tourism) will be ruined, and we’ll still be blind to the real causes of the problem; bad land management and climate change.
They start serving early at the Old Gate pub/restaurant in town. The condiments are set and prepared even before 10am. Off they stretch into the distance, like little table-set skyscrapers.
This picture is out of focus, yes — but it is as good a portrait as I can offer of this particular friend, on this day. I have had a run of portraits recently, but the weather is so crappy outside that it seems best to concentrate on things close to hand.
The title of this post is meant in a practical sense. To see a Hebden pub this empty at 5pm is very rare. It’s the end of January, no one has any money. I certainly don’t.
But there’s an existential meaning to it too. It’s been an extremely uneventful period, last week included (I might have gone to Moscow, but I didn’t do much). It’ll change. Slowly. But it will.
Since the Boxing Day floods took out 95% of the town centre four months ago, five of Hebden Bridge’s pubs have reopened: the White Lion (which never shut), the Old Gate, the Crown, the Trades Club and the Fox and Goose. However, this leaves seven that remain closed: the White Swan, the Shoulder of Mutton, Nelson’s, the Sports & Social, Stubbing Wharf, the Albert and the one that I and many friends feel most keenly, the Railway. Martin and Shelley, pictured here, are members of the Railway diaspora, drinkers in exile (in this case in the Old Gate). Perhaps we will all return home some time soon but to be honest at the moment there is little sign of it.
I know a few dog/owner couples — connoting not just the usual doggy relations but where the two actively look alike. For an example of what I mean, well, see here….
Here is where we have just spent New Year’s Eve. and this picture is worth posting if only because it depicts a Hebden Bridge pub that has managed to open despite the floods. Up yours to the last, depressing week of 2015 and here is hoping for better weather in 2016, at least. But let’s not be negative – a happy New Year, whatever you have done, whatever you might wish.
Mike is one of the old Leeds university posse — as indeed is Clare, whom I met while we were both studying there in 1996. He and others (not pictured: Sarah, Iain, Angela…) met up for a pint or three in Hebden Bridge this evening, the sort of thing that you always say you should do more often, but somehow don’t.
This man’s cooked on TV you know — I am envious!
I know this is rather over-exposed and otherwise suspect technically and in terms of composition (you can’t see the bridge properly) — but I still think it’s OK. Taken on Old Gate, Hebden Bridge, this afternoon.
Being 42 