It can’t honestly be said that April 2020 promises much variety. Not as things stand. Forgive me then that this shot repeats the theme of two days ago, but local birdlife is at least photogenic and active at the moment. I marvel at the ability of this tiny creature to happily cling to a fully vertical surface using only its feet: something we humans have yet to master.
Day 10 of house arrest. Amongst the various ways in which this virus is causing trauma to the human world is the added strain it is putting on our communications infrastructure. WordPress seems to presently allow me to upload photos at around noon each day, but at no other times. And lower-resolution pictures are the only ones getting up there. Right now, it’s the way it is.
But at least there is no need to go out panic buying salad leaves at the moment. I have found the wild garlic motherlode a few hundred yards from home. All edible and delicious.
Well, he’s feeling happy, at least. Or maybe belligerent, as robins are quite territorial. He may well have a larger territory than many people, at the moment.
I don’t know if I’m the only one having problems uploading pictures to WordPress at the moment: these difficulties explain why these posts are coming out at odd times right now. It’s been a case of when it works, grab the opportunity. Maybe it’s all a consequence of the ongoing hiatus in civilisation…. There must be many groups who are having to come to terms with changed circumstances. What are the inveterate gamblers doing at the moment, I wonder, with no (public) sporting events taking place? We did consider a live sream of our afternoon game of Totopoly. Number 2 did turn out to be the winner — odds of 5/1, don’tcha know. Clare in the background looks excited, as well she might, as she was the owner.
This day last year I was in Singapore. Horizons are rather more limited in late March 2020, for all of us I imagine. I acknowledge, however, that I am one of the lucky ones in that this landscape resides a few minutes’ walk from my house and at least here, one can be immersed in the countryside for a time each day: like this father and son, taking the air. Cooler today, though: it is inevitable that the run of good weather we have been having will end, but confinement will be harder to take once the sunshine ends.
At the end of all this, how long before we are able to feel comfortable with each other again, physically close? Even the dogs are getting the message.
So, the longest number of consecutive Hebden Bridge shots on this blog — as faithfully recorded on the stats page — is 10, and that was way back around the end of 2011 and start of 2012. (Blimey, have I been doing this that long…?). The trip to Manchester last Saturday gave the present run a later start than it might have had, but as things stand the eleventh day will be 1st April, and assuming we’re all still here on 6th April, it will then take Brisbane’s record of 15 days in a row in the same place.
Ah, I’ll get used to it. It’s pleasant enough at the moment, in the ongoing very fine weather.
Most of Hebden Bridge was built over a fairly short span of years in the later 19th century. Of the houses from that time, these ones on Birchcliffe Road are the grandest. And when the sun goes down and you see they are the last homes in town to catch the light — you can see why the nobs of 1880 coveted this particular hillside.
The UK is now formally — but terribly politely — in a state of lockdown. I will not be leaving Hebden Bridge for a while. If this blog is to keep going, new insights will have to be found in familiar places. The words here are to be found on the stairwell up to Clare’s treatment room, shared with a private tutoring service (temporarily closed).
I did not have to go very far from my house to take this picture, and nor did I have to interact with anyone in order to do so. For all sorts of reasons, it makes me sad that I have to say these things at this time, but it’s where we’re at. Yet the world is still out there, folks.
Maybe I should have cropped the birds, but I left them there in the end.
Being 42 