Well, it’s not a house in the sense that anyone lives here — at least, not yet (wait a couple of years and this might be the only thing round here that many people can afford). Spotted on one of my random walks around the local area that are the only meaningful activity available to us right at the moment.
There is nothing going on at the moment. AT ALL. Pointing the camera at flowers is about all that is available. The winter flowering cherry, as a species, makes at least its second appearance on the blog. If nothing else continues to not happen, it might be back soon enough.
I’m not an economic expert, but I’ve been observing. Just audible at the moment, over the general silence of our cities, is a quiet but ominous creaking. If the arbitrary closures go on any longer than December 2nd, and the busiest month of the year is taken away from businesses like shops and pubs, expect to lose most of the independently-owned ones by March. I think Boris Johnson knows this, but the question is whether he cares enough.
The family that texts together, survives house arrest together. One of the few signs of human life in Hebden Bridge this afternoon.
Not much to do other than look at plants again, and to save having a second ‘autumn colours in the mist’ shot in a row (though the woods looked good once more), let me instead document the reason why one of our gutters was overflowing onto the front step below. A garden cane with a fork taped to the end provided a solution. I bet you’re excited now… There went weekend no. 1 of House Arrest 2.0.
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.
Now that’s a mackerel sky if ever there was one. A change in the weather is on the way…
Let us ignore the rest of the world and indulge in some Hebden heron-spotting. I have no idea how long these creatures live, but I would expect a few years at least would be normal for a bird that size, and so I think this is the same bird as pictured on 8/5/17. The particularly sharp neck markings are one clue, but to be honest, the main one is those slightly comical knock-knees. Both photos show this. This is not the rather more butch-looking, and generally bigger, one that I had christened Humph (see 25/5/16, 23/1/17 for example).
So this one needs a name of its own. And I’m going to call it “Maris Crane”. You’ve seen Frasier, right?
For now, I’m not saying anything about the reimposition of house arrest that comes tomorrow. The weather was far too good for that, and far too good to stay at home, so I went out and bagged another of my County Top walks while I could still do so without breaking some ridiculous new legislation. And a good walk it was too, given added interest by walking over this gargantuan piece of engineering, the Humber Bridge. This was the longest suspension bridge in the world when it was built in 1981: 1.4 miles long, it took me over half an hour to cross, and the colossal stanchions are over 500 feet high.
Great bridges to have featured on this blog? In the UK at least, the Tay Bridge, the Forth Bridge, Devil’s Bridge, Hebden Bridge 🙂 (OK, maybe not the last one). There was that very long one in Lisbon too. It’s good to get out and see parts of my country that I’ve not seen, which is the ultimate point of my walking project. It’s good, and it’s healthy, and Johnson and his cabal of losers can all piss off. Oh, I said I wouldn’t say anything about it. Sorry.
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.
Being 42 