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.
Witnessed in the Miners’ Arms, Garforth, near Leeds, this lunchtime. They did eventually arrive in person to consume their lunches; which if they were as good as ours were, were worth the wait (mild, unsolicited advertising).
And so ends July 2021, a month of refreshing normality, and the last complete calendar month before this blog reaches the end of its tenth year, on 25th August.
If you ask me, one of the most damaging consequences of The Great Fear is that it has driven a bulldozer through our close social bonds. It’s ripped apart international solidarity as well, taught us to fear the foreigner again, and that will ultimately kill far more than the virus, but I can’t do much about that right now. I can try to get together with mates more, though — and so today, Steve and Geri, both once regulars on here, make their first appearances on here for (shockingly) nearly three years. We’re all still here, at least.
The Railway pub has featured very regularly on here down the years, but it’s had its long bouts of closure in the last decade; two flood-related and last year’s thanks to the Great Fear, with it not even reopening during the relatively Fear-free summer of 2020. And because of that, I drifted away…. until this afternoon, anyway. There was still not much happening on the picnic tables now set up round the back, but it’s an excuse to present a study of shapes and colours, at least.
I’m posting a day late and Friday seems a long time ago now after a busy Saturday. I like this picture mostly just for the shapes made, but the woman’s blood sugar monitor also fascinated me. I’ve never seen an implant like that before.
Morecambe FC’s impressive season continues but even though fans have been graciously allowed to return to grounds thanks to the decrees of Our Glorious Leaders, this is in arbitrarily low numbers, so no chance of getting tickets for the play-off semi-final this lunchtime. A hunt around the local hostelries ended up with Clare (the real MFC fan) and I (the hanger-on) watching it in Halifax. The effort was worth it; they will be at Wembley on the 31st. Go Shrimps…!
Tony pays the boss his dues. OK, so it’s early to be in the pub but plenty of people were; starved of true human contact for so long, there is a great deal of lost time to be made up between friends.
Manufacturers of outside awnings and other shelters for pub gardens have probably been one of the few economic sectors to see some positive growth in the last few weeks. The skies were blue this evening, but it’s not going to last.
Back in the long hot days of June 2018 I spent a whole working week in London, most of it here, in McGlynn’s pub on Whidborne Street (see this photo for instance). Finally it is open again, albeit for outside drinking only, so I and the other customers stoically ignore the fact that it is about to rain. Tonight’s real significance was that this was the first night I have spent away from home in 2021. Life, of a sort, returns: but not yet in full.
This is the 99th London shot to feature on here, by the way.
It’s been a hard few months. Photographically I mean (of course there have been other reasons). But lockdown, in all its arbitrary ways, has drained the land of life, at a time of year when we really benefit from the company of others and the things they bring. In that respect, at least, things are slowly looking up. Manchester now seems to have some energy back, as befits a big city. Finally.
Being 42 