It’s that time of year again. You buy the seeds and put them in some mulch, and await the first shoots. Eventually some of them might turn into the thing illustrated on the packet. But that remains to be seen.
It’s Sunday afternoon in the Railway. Meaning, it’s Karaoke Afternoon. This is a regular Sunday thing, like church. And the singing is no better. The arrival of the m.c. — here, about to start his set-up — is a sign to head to a different part of the building, out of earshot.
My debut attempt to ride a scooter — which took place at a sports day in about 1991 — was so phenomenally embarrassing that I have never got near another one since. This is quite a hill the guy is about to head down, too. He has my admiration. At least it’s a one-way street.
Now, she’s on the nest. If it wasn’t for the presence of the nearby, and bright green, drake (unpictured), I would never have seen this nesting mother among the undergrowth. Seeing as ducks don’t have a great deal of offensive capacity, doubtless this camouflage is her only real protection against having the brood eaten by someone/thing or other. She was definitely keeping an eye on me, put it that way.
Although I spent most of the day in Manchester, Hebden Bridge should feature on here for the fourth day in a row thanks to the unexpected scenes which greeted its residents when opening their curtains in the morning. While we were enjoying the balmy spring weather a week ago, I joked with my international students saying “British weather — it could snow again before we’re done”. But I didn’t necessarily think I would be proven right. This was all gone again by the time I came home, however.
Sometimes in my more romantic fantasies of downsizing I wonder what it would be like to live on one of the barges on the Rochdale Canal — but these thoughts never last all that long before I think of the music and movie collections. If I really wanted to do it I’d probably already be doing it. The immediate neighbours would be Canada geese, too.
At some yet-to-be-defined point in the future, there will come a day when not only do I have nothing in particular to photograph, but I also don’t manage to take a usable photo of nothing in particular. Today came close, I have to say. I therefore feel it necessary to fall back on this selfie taken in the morning, for no particular reason. I did think of calling it ‘selfie in red shirt’ but then I went monochrome so even that is somewhat indulgent. At least you can check on how I’ve been aging recently. Clare thinks I appear ‘terribly serious’ here but I guess that’s just what I look like at the moment.
Less sunny that it has been, so the light wasn’t great today and I made only brief forays out of the house. At least, on this, one of the very few pictures I tried today, I got the focus right.
it’s taken Clare and I over a year to get round about four-fifths of the Calderdale Way’s 50 miles, after today. Still a couple of legs to go yet. Today introduced us to the side valley of Shibden Dale, a beautiful spot and, somewhere previously unknown (except as a brief glimpse now and again from the train, as the line crosses the dale not long after leaving Halifax) despite having lived here 21 years now. The cow looked happy to be there too.
After ten shots in a row with no people on them, let’s admit I do still occasionally join the social world. And Whitelock’s in Leeds really is a fine place to do it: the blue plaque acknowledging that this is a pub with much history, opened in 1715 and still going very strong. Arguably this place is the best thing about Leeds, and that’s not even to diminish the rest of the city.
Being 42 