It’s nice to travel, but it’s also nice to come home. So the family can feature on the blog for the first time for a while (as a duo, anyway). Not much is going to happen in the next few days, and it doesn’t look like we can expect the sun out, so I foresee more of this kind of thing.
Come Friday after work, the pub beckons — particularly with this beer on in Calan’s. It is well named, for it is worth respect and tribute.
We approach the anniversary of last year’s floods on December 26th, which took out most of Hebden Bridge’s town centre. Prior to that, this place, the Railway pub, had probably featured at least once a month for the four and a half years I’d been doing it, so say about 50 times…. But none since 22/12/15. I think this has been the last of all the businesses in the town to reopen after that day, but here you are…. One year to the day since last we drank there. Welcome back.
It’s a portrait of a stranger in a pub (the Kro Bar on Oxford Road, Manchester, as it happens), but it’s also a self-portrait. This is me, this is how I feel at the moment. I need a break. But I’m getting one, after tomorrow.
It’s Clare’s birthday on Wednesday, one of those significant ones — or rather, one that we culturally choose to assign significance to because it has a zero at the end. Anyway, the celebrations are taking place in various locations over the next few days and start this weekend with her & I going down to Brighton, where this shot is taken. It’s a mess I know, but so are most things by 10.35pm on a Friday night out; the time makes this the latest shot on the blog since June 2015.
Still sunny… but that little bit chillier, as we pass the Equinox and head into autumn.
A good weekend ends with us being taken out to lunch here, courtesy of my parents who had been Joe-sitting while we were in London. I like the perspective of this shot, the lighting and the general symmetry. The beer was quite good too…
So let me start this blog’s 6th year, and mark my 47th birthday, by putting up a photo of someone else… After so long doing this, people are going to start reappearing after a gap of some years and this is true of John B, who first graced these pages back in November 2011. Carol can join the cast for the first time.
It’s a Saturday, it’s a time for relaxation, and drinking. It’s still raining. It’s the Hebden Bridge “Steampunk” theme weekend, what this really does to advance the cause of social justice I haven’t worked out yet but people turn up in places dressed in Victoriana. All these things combine in today’s shot.
As I start back at work on Sunday, I would like to make the most of the remaining days of the holiday; hence today’s family gathering. My Dad (well, some of him) makes his fourth appearance on the blog; my Mum (somewhat shamefully, perhaps) her second, Clare and Joe, you know.
Being 42 