The weekend’s tour of non-glamorous Northern towns continues. Actually Accrington is a more pleasant place than you might imagine, with signs of civilisation…. Not in the market today, though, not on a Sunday. Day of rest and all that. Did you know that bricks made in Accrington were used in the foundations of the Empire State Building? Now you do.
Post-Sunday lunch card gaming. Clare demanded to play cribbage for the first time in a long while. Only the Brighton & Hove Albion cards could be found. Didn’t faze her – she won 2-1.
With little better that was worth doing this morning I wandered over to Bradford where the local Sunday leagues were running their first round of fixtures for the season. Three games were taking place simultaneously on Peel Park and this shot is taken from a point kind of in the middle of each of them, but with this pitch slightly elevated, hence the low viewpoint. This was one of those pictures which is being used here because it was what was intended when the shutter was pressed: always a good thing.
I have had one of those weekends where I did virtually nothing but still reached the end feeling no more refreshed than I was on Friday afternoon. The Handmade Parade, in all its colour and movement, had been taking place earlier in the day but I do not feel I got a representative picture of it — the day was much more as seen here, kind of soft-focus and dim. The recent run of interiors therefore continues.
I don’t care that I haven’t captured him actually picking up the piece. Somehow it works just fine like this, and chess is an intrinsically black-and-white subject matter.
This afternoon something about the look of Geri on the other side of the pub made me think ‘white witch’ — which (witch?) is of course a compliment, white witches are the good guys. It was mostly the hair, I think.
I don’t know whether St Bernadette’s — the church in the background — was busy on this Sunday morning, possibly it was. Hough End Playing Fields across the road certainly was, although this picture doesn’t capture the fact that at least half-a-dozen sports matches of various kinds were taking place around me at this point. I like the combination of the bright orange shirt and the slight dullness and tattiness of the background.
Heading to Sunday morning football in Bradford was better than hanging around at home doing nothing. With this shot I guess I was just hoping the symmetries came out OK. On reflction I say that the imbalance of the black windows at the top, vis-a-vis the dranpipes below, is not my problem. Anyway, why should I be the one pointing out the imperfections?
I went to two football matches today. In the evening, one at the Tottenham Hotspur stadium, a vast construction of steel and glass and with all these escalators that make it look like an airport. In the morning, here — Hackney Marshes, with none of those things. I have to say, I preferred the morning.
This trip started in London on 6th January and ends here too. But it’s time to go home.
A typical Sunday afternoon scene in the Railway, Hebden Bridge. The crow is a bit of added Halloween ambience, but otherwise, we could be on any weekend in the year…. and this guy is here, every weekend.
Being 42 