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...