My latest post in the occasional series, “random items strangely abandoned by the roadside”. There have been a number of shoes in this series, a pair of spectacles once. But kitchen utensils? That’s a new one. There must be a story behind this. Not just that a perfectly servicable wok was dumped, but dumped in this specific place. Someone, somewhere, knows why.
I worked on Sunday so I could walk today, Monday. I’m no idiot. There were reasons for this.
The picture is taken in the valley of Yewdale, north of Coniston in the Lake District. The fell in the background is Wetherlam. And an appearance for the moon, too — hiding away among a couple of similar little fluffy clouds, which is as aggressive as the sky got all day.
Having stayed at the in-laws’ over the weekend, it was announced that I was being taken out for dinner this Sunday night — and the justification being that they hadn’t had the chance to be taken out for my 50th birthday back at the end of August. Seeing as a rather long time had elapsed between then and today we decided that, like the Queen, I should have a real birtday and then an ‘Official Birthday’ — weeks later in the year (Queen Elizabeth II has her real birthday on April 21st and then an Official thing in June some time). Forgive my presumption, but I got a cake and everything, here pictured with sparkler flaiming, so I’m happy to embrace a second such day each year. On November 17th perhaps — let’s see if I remember it 🙂
Saturday, a day to chill out, and get out, and try to see the world at its best — or at least, certain localised bits of it. Arnside is a place that I have frequently admired from passing trains: they trundle over the estuary of the River Kent on a bridge that is behind me as I took this shot. Not long after this the tide came in with astonishing speed, you can literally see it moving up the sands; no wonder Morecambe Bay is so dangerous in that respect.
It’s the end of the working week but there’s still some cleaning up to do, after the mess that everyone else has left. Symbolic of things in my own week? I’ll leave that up to you to ponder.
The nights draw in. Driving to Burnley over the tops, well before 5 and it’s still getting dark already. November can have its flashes of excellence now and again (I remember this walk up Bowfell for example), but it’s mostly a depressing month, don’t you think?
I do still turn up on campus now and again but because of the increasingly painful train journey that it takes to get there — and, just as importantly, back — I am trying to do so less and less. Rainy mornings (which lead to me smelling damp all day) are no help either. But every so often I have little choice.
I started this blog on my 42nd birthday, 26th August 2011, and was just going to run it for a year in the first instance. Here I am eight years, two months and sixteen days later — day 3,000. Whatever the quality of the shots each day, I can honestly say I have never cheated; every day’s post has featured a photo taken, by me, on that day. No camera disasters, no broken SD cards, no waking up one morning with a nagging feeling of having forgotten something important. This blog has become, at least, an exercise in persistence.
But it also brings a little pleasure into each day, at least one moment where I am obliged to be creative. So if it’s all the same with the rest of the world… I will carry on for a while longer yet.
Following my lament about the day’s football match on Saturday’s blog post, I shall not depict it — but here is Joe on his way to it, on a very pleasant November morning.
Golly, look what tomorrow is — day 3,000 of the blog. It would be nice to mark this with some momentous journey of some kind, but it ain’t gonna happen, as I will be spending the day working here in Hebden Bridge. But as with every other day on here, I will do my best — let us see what the light brings.
As I post this on Sunday evening, I already know my weekend has consisted of two football matches. One was far more entertaining than the other and played out in front of 87 people (officially) in a relaxed atmosphere where no one’s bag was searched, there were no drug-sniffer dogs and no one questioned whether I should or shouldn’t be bringing a camera into the ground. The other, less entertaining but far more expensive one, was played out in front of 73,556 (again, officially) people and, well, all the other things. Guess which of the two games this is.
Being 42 