Things in Hebden Bridge are largely all recovered now after the floods of June and July; most establishments are back open again. This includes the Railway, my local pub, last seen on the blog on 22nd July when we got together there to have what might have been a final drink-up and tried to coordinate our plans to keep it open. Well, for now, it is still open, in independent ownership and not quite the same as it was, but near enough. Happy Fridays.
Was here for the football, Huddersfield Town v Brighton – the mighty (well, reasonably so) Seagulls winning 2-1. Did not get a decent photo of the game, but this rather over-the-top piece of pub decor did grab the attention earlier on.
It’s day 450 of the blog today, so I have updated the Best of the Rest page with some more good shots that didn’t quite make the one-a-day cut.
You know this game? You have to create loops of one colour or the other to win? Well, never mind. It passed the time during the usual Sunday afternoon in the pub.
Incidentally, a numerological curiosity. Day 444 of this blog falls on 11/11, and as of today I have 111 followers. This doesn’t mean anything, it just appeals to a certain sense of neatness.
All bars are kind of different, aren’t they? Like people’s houses, different arrangements of basically the same ingredients but it all comes through into something original. The people who want to take all enjoyment out of drinking alcohol would rather there were no ‘public houses’ like this and we all just drank stuff bought in the supermarket, at home. Well, sod that. Where there’s life there will be pubs. Hell, we might even get the Railway back some day.
Here is not the place for the fine detail, but the ‘significant’ news that hit on my first day in Tuscaloosa, mentioned below, was that the giant ‘pubco’ (pub ownership company) that owns the Railway has decided that it is unwilling to stump up the cost of a refurbishment following the damage caused by the floods on 22nd/23rd June and 9th July. They want to sell the pub, but no one is particularly convinced that they have an interest in keeping the pub in the hands of someone who will, well, keep it as a pub and not convert it into something else. The last few years in the UK have, to say the least, not been kind to the pub trade.
Well, we – the customers – want to keep it as a pub, so today we had a meeting there to discuss what we were going to do. It was a lovely sunny day and there was also a social aspect to it – no one wanted their last drink here to be that horrible 22nd June. But it shouldn’t have to be the last today, either. We’ll try not to make it the last.
Free wi-fi. You gotta love it. A proper working lunch.
Had planned to get a photo of a fraternity house today, this being ‘Idiosyncracy part 2’ (see yesterday) but Tuscaloosa was having a dull and rainy day and the pictures I got were not very interesting. So I stopped myself from feeling constrained by my own plans and got this different side to campus life here at the University of Alabama. Phil is not a person, incidentally – apparently it is short for ‘Philibuster’s’.
This whole line of ducks took it upon themselves to saunter up the main street of Hebden Bridge today: sort of like we used to do while at primary school, to dash through the secondary school campus now and again on the way home and feel dead hard about it. I was too slow with my camera to capture more than this one, but never mind.
Must say I approve of this recent trend, of the establishment of temporary office accommodation – offering free wi-fi and refreshments of an alcoholic nature – at several points on the way home from work. Just the thing for the tired professional who wants to marry his unfortunate need to do more work with his understandable need for a beer. The service pictured here is provided by the White Lion, Hebden Bridge. There are others. Any one would have been welcome after a day that started early, finished late, and I still have to pack to go back to Norway tomorrow.
Friday evening, end of the week; doesn’t matter how busy I am, I don’t work Friday nights or at all on Saturdays.
Friday evening is George’s [Georgina’s] night on the bar in the Railway. Cheers, George. Mine’s a pint of Black Sheep.
One of the nice things about Joe is that he will engage very well with adults, having no problem at all with social situations. It makes it much easier to also be ourselves when among friends, to relax after the efforts of the week just gone, and not have to constantly be looking out for him. (That’s orange juice he’s drinking, in case you were wondering.)
Being 42 