Chemical works...

Licensed today: Saltend chemical works, near Paull, East Yorkshire…

Happiness...

“Happiness is a by-product, not an end in itself. It is like health: if you do the right things, if you eat the right food, a balanced diet and so on, you are healthy; but if you eat the wrong food and yet search for health, obviously it doesn’t exist. So happiness is something that cannot be sought after; it happens. When it happens, don’t cling to it. If you cling to it, it becomes a memory, and the moment it becomes a memory, it is a dead thing” (Krishnamurti)…

Delivery van, licensed today...

Booths and Skiddaw...

Licensed today: more shots of Booths supermarkets, in the news recently because they have done away with malfunctioning self-service tills. This store is in Keswick, Cumbria. To include the mountain – Skiddaw – in the shot, I hopped onto one of the open-topped tourist buses, with my camera, and took an upstairs seat...

The Lorton Valley...

Licensed today: Palace How Farm, overlooked by Whiteside and Grasmoor, in the Lorton Valley, Cumbria…

Petworth...

The last license before Christmas: a conversation on cobbled Lombard Street in Petworth, West Sussex… 

Hickling Broad...

Licensed today: The Pleasure Boat Inn, Hickling Broad, Norfolk…

Sold and let...

Licensed today: a typical stock shot to illustrate some aspect of the housing market...

Chipping Sodbury...

On my way to the shops today, the car seemed to turn, of its own volition, towards Blacktoft Sands. The reedbeds were very quiet, almost deserted, apart from a few marsh harriers and a cattle egret. A dozen bird-watchers were squeezed into Singleton hide, diverted by the lively antics of an otter.

Licensed today: the broad main street of Chipping Sodbury, a market town in Gloucestershire… 

Cars for cash...

Licensed today: car sales at Hut Green Garage, near Eggborough, North Yorkshire...

Hedon...

Licensed today: St Augustine's Church in Hedon, Holderness, East Riding of Yorkshire…

North Cave Wetlands...

North Cave Wetlands, this afternoon. The birdlife was a bit sparse: no waders at all, apart from a pair of fly-over curlews. I sat in one of the hides with a couple who both had very new binoculars. They wanted to know the names of the ducks, so we spotted them one by one: teal, wigeon, shoveler, mallard, gadwall and tufted duck... plus this mute swan and some energetic dabchicks...

Isle of Mull…

Licensed today: Loch na Keal and Ben More, on the Isle of Mull… 

King Billy...

Licensed today: equestrian statue of King Willam III, erected 1734 in Market Place, Hull…

Escomb...

Licensed today: the 7th century Saxon church at Escomb, near Bishop Aukland, County Durham…

Booths...

Licensed today: a branch of Booths supermarket in Poulton-le-Fylde, Lancashire… 

Langdale...

Licensed today: a tractor at the head of the Langdale Valley, in Cumbria…

Bluebells...

Is there a month of the year more devoid of colour than December? So it was good to see my pic of bluebell woods get another airing in yesterday’s Guardian…

Ravenscar...

Licensed today: the view from the Raven Hall Hotel, Ravenscar, looking towards Robin Hoods Bay, North Yorkshire…

Letchworth...

Licensed today: Letchworth in Hertfordshire… 

Nine Ladies ...

Licensed today: Nine Ladies stone circle on Stanton Moor, Derbyshire… 

The Taliban...

According to a report by Human Rights Watch, the Taliban is causing “irreversible damage” to Afghanistan’s education system. After taking power in 2021 the Taliban swiftly banned girls from higher eduction, including medical schools, which will affect the future number of female healthcare workers. Female teachers have been banned, with the shortfall being filled by unqualified men. The range of subjects being taught has also been reduced. According to a Taliban spokesman, banned subjects include anything “un-Islamic and non-Afghan that resembles western standards”. Boys are not taught anything which might promote democracy, or other faiths, or feature non-Muslim writers such as William Shakespeare.

Licensed today: the postman on his round in Tadcaster…

Cycling in the Wolds...

Licensed today: a cyclist near Huggate, in the Yorkshire Wolds… 

Skipton...

Licensed today: another outing for this shot of the Leeds & Liverpool Canal in Skipton, North Yorkshire...

Cawood...

 Licensed today: All Saints Church in the village of Cawood, North Yorkshire...

Piel Castle...

Licensed today: Piel Castle, on Piel Island, near Barrow-in-Furness, Cumbria… 

Lavenham...

A sad day, but not unexpected, with the death of Shane MacGowan: the writer of the only Christmas song I can bear to listen to.

Licensed today: another street scene in the village of Lavenham, Suffolk...

Kirkstall Abbey...

Licensed today: Kirkstall Abbey in Leeds…

Welcome & goodbye...

Welcome to the world, Arlene, and goodbye to Ian Davidson, the Bard of Broughton Mills. I’m glad to (finally) have a grand-daughter; the extended family is already awash with testosterone…

Windermere...

Licensed today: sailing boats on Windermere...

Barmouth beach...

Licensed today: boats at Barmouth, Gwynedd, North Wales…

The Scallop...

Licensed today: The Scallop, an artwork by Maggi Hambling, on the pebble beach at Aldeburgh, Suffolk…

Westward Ho!...

Licensed today... Not much of a picture, and not much of a price... but Westward Ho! is the only place-name in England which includes a punctuation mark... 

Hallaton...

Licensed today: the buttercross on the village green of Hallaton, in Leicestershire…

Wivenhoe...

According to a “shocking” report (featured in the Guardian), older people in the north of England die earlier, spend more years in poor health and are more likely to be out of work compared with their contemporaries in the south. The report would be “shocking” only to someone who has never spent a few hours wandering around northern towns such as Doncaster, Castleford and Scunthorpe.

Licensed last week: a boy and his dog outside the Black Buoy pub in Wivenhoe, Essex…

What's on...

Licensed today… Before every village had a Facebook page, this was how local events were publicised: pinned to a barn door. The village is Troutbeck in Cumbria… 

Waiting for a bite...

I’m busy spring-cleaning the Old Sunday School: a job postponed not from spring this year, but from spring 2022…

Licensed today: a man – and his dog – fishing from a narrowboat on the Leeds-Liverpool Canal near Rodley, Leeds, West Yorkshire...

Boston Stump...

Licensed today: the tower of St Botolph's Church (the “Stump), and statue of local MP, Herbert Ingram, in Boston, Lincolnshire...

Bradford-on-Avon...

“Religion has completely lost its meaning. Education is training technicians, not human beings. Modern existence is so utterly superficial. We know all this – what is one to do? How is one to find a way out of this wilderness, this chaos? It all depends on how you ask this question. You can ask either as a reaction and therefore find an answer which will still be a reaction and not an action in itself, or you can ask the question which has no answer. It has no answer. Because it has no answer you are thrown back upon yourself. Therefore you have to inquire within yourself and not ask the question outside of you” (Krishnamurti, from a public talk in 1962).

Licensed today: a street scene in Bradford-on-Avon, Wiltshire...

Oakham...

I’m not the only person to be exasperated by supermarket self-checkouts, and I don’t think I’ve ever had a transaction go so smoothly that human intervention is not required. A lot of the people who work there feel the same. “It doesn’t seem to like bananas”, a guy in ASDA said, with a grimace, as he came to my rescue with a turn of a passkey and a reset of the machine. He returned a minute later to verify that I was old enough to buy alcohol. That “unexpected item in the bagging area” is probably just my frustration boiling over. According to this article in the Guardian, Booths supermarkets are ditching their machines, and going back to human cashiers. Hopefully, other stores will follow their example.

Licensed today: a street-scene in Oakham, the county town of Rutland…

Poppies...

Had a day at Spurn: partly for the birds, partly for the bird-watchers. Both fascinating, in their own way. No waxwings, no crossbills, no snow buntings; others saw them, but I didn’t. Best sighting was a female hen harrier – a ringtail – which was chased by a crow across the Canal Scrape.

Poppies at Easington today...

The Twelve Apostles...

In 1963, as Beecham's cost-cutting axe fell on railway branch lines across the country, Flanders and Swann mourned their loss in elegiac verse...

"No one departs, no one arrives,

from Selby to Goole,

from St Erth to St Ives.

They’ve all passed out of our lives”…

Licensed today: the Twelve Apostles, a row of fishermens’ cottages, in Catacol, on the Isle of Arran…

Freedom of expression...

A few choice words from Salman Rushdie in today’s Guardian (full article here). “We live in a time I did not think I would see, a time when freedom – and in particular, freedom of expression, without which the world of books could not exist – is everywhere under attack from reactionary, authoritarian, populist, demagogic, half-educated, narcissistic, careless voices; when places of education and libraries are subject to hostility and censorship; and when extremist religion and bigoted ideologies have begun to intrude in areas of life in which they do not belong”.

Licensed today: cricket at Bristol, in 2017, England women v Australia women…

"A lifestyle choice"...

Home Secretary, Suella Braverman, has gone on record to suggest that homelessness is “a lifestyle choice”. No wonder so many Tory MPs are scanning the ‘situations vacant’ columns for alternative employment opportunities. The sooner they are out of government, the better.

Licensed today: Broomfield Campsite at Ullapool, in the Scottish Highlands…

On writing...

Some observations on the solitary nature of writing from Rachel Carson, the author of Silent Spring. “Writing is a lonely occupation at best. Of course there are stimulating and even happy associations with friends and colleagues, but during the actual work of creation the writer cuts himself off from all others and confronts his subject alone. He moves into a realm where he has never been before – perhaps where no one has ever been. It is a lonely place, even a little frightening”.

Licensed today: Burnley town centre at dusk... 

Castleford...

If Donald Trump’s self-pitying bleatings sound familiar, he may be channelling this pre-trial statement, in 1927, from mobster Al Capone. “I've never done anything wrong. Nobody can prove that I ever did anything wrong. It's pretty tough when a citizen with an unblemished record must be hounded from his home. I am feeling very bad - very bad. How would you feel if the police, paid to protect you, acted towards you like they acted towards me?”

Photographed yesterday: Castleford's curving footbridge across the River Aire, and a shot up-river, taken from the bridge...

Masham...

In his 1991 book Consciousness Explained, the cognitive scientist Daniel Dennett describes the juvenile sea squirt, which wanders through the sea looking for a “suitable rock or hunk of coral to … make its home for life”. On finding one, the sea squirt no longer needs its brain and eats it. I know some people who behave like this, and I don’t have to swim too far to find them.

Licensed today: The Bay Horse pub in Masham, North Yorkshire…

Levens Hall...

I drove past Scalby Grange Farm, where, in summer, I make occasional stops for strawberries. Today the fields were full of pumpkins, instead: thousands of them, the colour of Donald Trump’s spray tan. Of course, one day after halloween, no one was taking up the invitation to ‘pick your own pumpkins’. What happens to them? Do they all end up in landfill, or are they ploughed back in?

Everything about Levens Hall, in South Lakeland, is spectacular: the architecture, the topiary gardens. There’s so much to gladden the eye… until you venture inside. This is the gloomy drawing room, licensed today…

Nipples...

I read in today’s Guardian (yes… the Guardian) that Kim Kardashian is launching a new bra, which will accentuate the wearer's nipples, making her look either sexually aroused or rather chilly. I am trying, in vain, to generate an opinion about this.

Licensed today: the formal gardens at Holker Hall in South Lakeland...

Carlton Marshes...

Licensed today: Carlton Marshes, a Suffolk Wildlife Trust nature reserve, near Lowestoft, Suffolk…