Time to do some exploring. It’d be nice if the weather improved — even the locals are complaining that it should be sunnier and warmer by this time in the year — but at least the drizzle gives this shot a nicely melancholy atmosphere. This is taken almost in the very centre of the island, very close to where Edmond Halley, the famous astronomer, set up an observatory in 1677.
Hebden Bridge in autumn plumage. A nice place to be. Cold at the moment, though, but the trees look good.
Can’t say I had the greatest day at work today but at least it was sunny outside. A walk in the woods helped, a little. I guess because these trees are more sheltered than most, they’ve barely begun to turn yet — just the merest splash of autumn has hit them, thus far.
The ‘Strategy Forum’ came and went — nice to meet people again, not so nice to be presented with visions of the future ruled by metrics and process management, with scholarship now an apparent inconvenience, allowed for grudgingly if at all. I couldn’t make it even to the end of the last half-day so escaped about 11am and shortly afterwards was in Banbury, which can become the 349th different location to feature on the blog. St. Mary’s Church is one of those buildings that it’s very difficult to get a full impression of on a single photo, but here’s my best attempt.
On this, the 101st day that London has appeared on this blog, we had left for home by 10am, but there was still time to discover another of the quiet little corners that make this a pleasant city in so many ways, and partly explain why I come back so often. Granville Square sits not fifty yards off the Kings Cross Road, right in the centre of the city, but you wouldn’t know it on this glorious June morning.
An improvement in the weather, at least temporarily. The red tree proudly stands out from its neighbours; dare to be different…
This one was a matter of looking out of the window at just the right time, and having clouds at just the right layers of opacity. It’s not often we get a visual sense of the sun as being spherical, but this gets close, I think.
The white stuff hasn’t featured properly in my life since I was last in Tromsø in April 2018, and there is presently none of it in Hebden Bridge. But it took only a short walk up into the hills to be faced by scenes like this. Contacts in Tromsø also suggest that at the moment, they have none at all, while Spain and Portugal suffer under the worst winter in living memory. This is one of those shots that honestly is not monochrome, though you wouldn’t know it.
Spring Wood is its name…. but it is going to feel like a very long time until spring. With weeks of stagnancy and economic devastation to come, let us at least hope there are more days with as good weather as today. If Bojo thinks I’m staying at home on such a day, he is mistaken.
No, I won’t do it. I won’t stay cowering at home, plugged into the Matrix and denied the world outside. My physical and mental health — the things we’re supposed to care about, right? — these are too important. And most of the woods and parks that I am frequenting are pretty busy with other people, suggesting that these souls, at least, have taken the same decision. It is not for the gaggle of failed journalists and lobbyists for the tobacco industry who got themselves elected about a year ago to tell us what is healthy and what is not.
Being 42 