This is not a time of the year when much seems to happen. Four years ago I was on St Helena in November but even then, 12/11/2021 was being spent in quarantine (and battling ants). There have been a couple of late November trips. But right now I’m just happy not to have been in Manchester today. Meanwhile, shot n+1 of ‘bloke(s) working on a roof’. With autumn leaves.
Took me a day to decide on this one, if only because I am now going to end up with two consecutive shots taken from the same place, viz, the back of my house. But never mind. There is a clear sense of autumn on the turf roof on the extension to the mill — younger than this blog, although it doesn’t feel like it.
You could consider this an abstract. Or, a sign that I didn’t particularly leave the house today and so was needing to point the camera at something that could be seen from within it. Or that I’m spying on the neighbours again. Either way, that’s been nearly four weeks at home, and 18 of the last 26 photos in Hebden. Time to go somewhere else for a bit.
Attending to the roof does seem to be his primary task, going on the strip of felt that is either not yet attached to the front, or is partway through being removed. It’s a fairly low-power way to house oneself, I imagine — and maybe in a few years time, once AI eats 95% of all electricity generated, anywhere, many more of us will be having to engage with it. (Note: not one pixel nor letter of this or any other of my blogs has been generated by AI, nor ever will be.)
Whatever it is that pigeons do to communicate the information that it is time for a collective take-off, they do it well enough, and quite frequently, too. They will then fly around for a couple of circuits, come back to land (or roof) again, and wait a few minutes before doing it all again. Perhaps it’s just training.
There was certainly a decent amount of smoke coming out of one of these stacks; but it seems he was satisfied that nothing was particularly amiss. I pray that I never have to get up on our roof, or the roof of any of these overdwellings, for any reason, professional or otherwise. It’s a long way down from five stories up.
Another day where not a great deal happened, so let’s bring out one of the recent Hebden Bridge staple shots — Blokes Working On A Roof. This time, with added Autumn Foliage for garnish.
A quick return to the same point in space as depicted last Thursday, but now from the other direction. One of the two guys who’ve recently been scrambling about on our roof, fifty feet up — I hope to all hell that I never have to get on it — waves his arse into our bedroom window. But such behaviour can be excused, seeing as the guttering’s finally being sorted out.
Both species — jackdaws and roofers — are becoming perennial aspects of the house view. The roofers on the Mill have been working there for nearly six months now, and I have the photos to prove it. Even on another frosty morning. Maybe they just like the view too.
On the tourist trail today, and boy were there a lot of them, or should I say us. People everywhere, cramming the narrow streets of York, maybe they were enjoying themselves or maybe they were just participating, robot-like in the early stages of the now-mandated 7-week Thou Shalt Shop And Wear Silly Jumpers period: a reminder to some, there’s a whole month yet before Christmas Day. Anyway, this included walking past the Minster, as one does in York, and taking pictures of the people taking pictures — surely I appear on the shots captured by the woman in the red hat and the guy two places to her left.
Being 42 