Walberswick...

Pic just licensed: the ferry boat from Walberswick to Southwold harbour, Suffolk...

Burnley...

Another festive shot, just licensed, of Burnley...

Last sales...

With sales coming in today - including Keswick, looking festive - I've just passed last year's total for number of pic licenses and revenue...

Land Rovers...

A few licenses are limping in before the end of the year, including this shot of a Land Rover dealership (and car transporter)...

Done & dusted...

Christmas done, dusted, with minimal psychic damage. A Wetherspoons breakfast never tasted so good…

Kirkby Stephen...

My ribs ache from coughing so much yesterday, but the cough has stopped. God wasn’t punishing me, after all. I thought I’d be laid low for a week or more, but now I feel invigorated. I think it might be a miracle. God saw a hole in his punishing schedule and was able to answer my prayers. Hallelujah!

I was in a shop in Kirkby Stephen when a little old lady asked if I could help her put a few items into her shopping bag. “I’ll have to be careful”, she said, “I don’t want them to think I’m shoplifting”. But she wasn’t just a little old lady, she was a little old lady from central casting. Any casting director looking for a rosy-cheeked, twinkly-eyed grandmother for some romcom would give her the role right away. I told her she could have a profitable career in relieving shops of excess stock, and that, if caught, she could say she’d forgotten, or the doctor had changed her medication. She would get away with it, no problem.

Licensed today: Burton Agnes Hall in East Yorkshire...

Proper poorly...

Tossed and turned last night as a cough turned nasty. Can’t write; head full of cotton wool. Is God punishing me for not celebrating Christmas?…

Reeth...

Last year, about this time, I was trying to escape from Christmas. I drove north, into Scotland, and turned left - holding my nose as I drove through Stranraer - to explore the Galway peninsular. Yesterday, in trying to escape from Christmas and Brexit, I headed north-east. I drove from Barnard Castle this morning, as the landscape got wilder and wilder (and where the only living things seemed to be grouse and Herdwicks). I landed in Reeth (which the sat-nav lady pronounces as Re-eth) and parked up on the cobbles…

Paedophile priests...

“Prepare for divine justice”, Pope Francis warns Catholic clerics who abuse children. Never mind “divine justice” (spoiler alert: it doesn’t exist); paedophile priests should be handed over to the police… 

Fakenham...

Licensed today: a shot of Fakenham in Norfolk...

José Mourinho...

José Mourinho, sacked today by Manchester United, will, according to the club, be paid “no more than £15m” in compensation. That should soften the blow of being sacked at Christmas, even though £15m wouldn’t even buy one of Paul Pogba’s shins…

Library...

With libraries closing at an alarming rate, I read an article on the Guardian website, about how important they can be to new mothers and their babies: a safe, free, convivial space where 'anything goes'. 

I'm writing today in Otley’s temporary library, housed in the community centre. It’s busier - certainly noisier - than the proper library, but I rather like the to-ings and fro-ings. The mother and toddler group is meeting in the next room, and I can hear them singing “Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer”. Some of them are in tune. A few people wander in, wearing Santa hats and Christmas sweaters. Mums and dads are reading stories to their kids. Old guys are reading the paper and keeping warm. Nobody knows where to find the books they want, not even the librarians. An odd-job man comes in, with a ladder, to mend the lights. I tell him he needs to sort out the lights on the Christmas tree as well, because they keep going on and off. Ho, ho, ho! The true spirit of Christmas? It’s here!…

A recently licensed (but not very good) pic of Corfe Castle...

Winter...

I’m in my favourite Dales campsite, busy writing, writing, writing. It’s cold, the sky is like a whiteboard that’s just been wiped clean, and I’m hearing on the news about snow and, worse, freezing rain. So, once I retrieve my clothes from the tumble drier, I’ll be off. If the weather’s turning nasty, I need to be somewhere warm, where’s there’s food, drink and rosy-cheeked women…

Forge Valley...

I drove through woodland in the Forge Valley, near Scarborough, and parked up in a little car-park where people feed the birds. I worked on the book while watching the action: a flurry of tiny wings, as great tits, blue tits, coal tits, marsh tits, long tailed tits, chaffinches, blackbirds, nuthatches and a pair of greater spotted woodpeckers came down to the feeders. Very entertaining. Better than TV!

Licensed: a shot of Trinity House in Hull...

Greystoke...

A rare sale, of a church interior: St Andrew's Church in Greystoke, Cumbria...

Must and must not...

More wise words from Krishnamurti, which arrived in my in-tray this morning. "Must" and "must not" are two of the building blocks of our monotheistic religions, emphasising their binary nature: heaven/hell, saved/damned, etc.

"The very first thing to do, if I may suggest it, is to find out why you are thinking in a certain way, and why you are feeling in a certain manner. Don’t try to alter it, don’t try to analyze your thoughts and your emotions; but become conscious of why you are thinking in a particular groove and from what motive you act. Although you can discover the motive through analysis, although you may find out something through analysis, it will not be real; it will be real only when you are intensely aware at the moment of the functioning of your thought and emotion; then you will see their extraordinary subtlety, their fine delicacy. So long as you have a “must” and a “must not,” in this compulsion you will never discover that swift wandering of thought and emotion. And I am sure you have been brought up in the school of “must” and “must not” and hence you have destroyed thought and feeling. You have been bound and crippled by systems, methods, by your teachers. So leave all those “must” and “must nots.” This does not mean that there shall be licentiousness, but become aware of a mind that is ever saying, “I must,” and “I must not.” Then as a flower blossoms forth of a morning, so intelligence happens, is there, functioning, creating comprehension"...

Hibernating...

Busy writing and keeping warm. If I slept a couple more hours each day, I would officially be hibernating.

Pic of a half-built school in Hull, licensed today...

Marquis of Granby...

Having parked up in Knaresborough, I had a pint in the Marquis of Granby pub. There’s a reason why most towns have a pub called the Marquis of Granby, and why there are more pubs named after him than any other person. John Manners, Marquis of Granby (1721-1770), commanded six battalions of British infantry at the battle of Minden, in the Seven Years War. After the war many of his soldiers set up as publicans, with financial help from the Marquis (there being no pension provision, at that time, from the army). So, in gratitude, they named their pubs after him (and kept his name alive while so many other military men have been forgotten).

Licensed last week: Letchworth, Herts...

Christmas...

On my travels I see people who love Christmas - the turkey, the lights, the carols, the presents - but I see other people who don’t have a good word to say about it. The complaints they offer have a familiar ring. Christmas starts too early. It’s too commercialised. It doesn’t mean anything any more. It costs too much. Yet 99% of the complainants aren’t prepared to do anything about it. Shops have been displaying festive tat since late September, and Christmas will arrive on cue in every household. The commercialised aspects of Christmas are getting worse, year on year, not better, but even the grumpiest of people go along with it. Apparently, they would rather complain about Christmas than do anything to change the habits of a lifetime. So much for free will!

Just licensed: a quiet corner of Winchester, at twilight...

Otley library...

My short stint at Otley library ends today: not because I’m leaving the library, but because the library is leaving me. The books are being packed up into boxes, to be taken to the library’s temporary home, in a nearby community centre, while the library itself is getting a facelift. It won't reopen till next spring... about the time this recently licensed shot was taken, in the village of Finchingfield, Essex...

Violence...

Just read an interesting article on the Guardian website, featuring men (including the actor Patrick Stewart) who are campaigning against men's role in domestic abuse. “Domestic violence is a man’s problem,” Stewart says. “We are the ones who are committing the offences, performing the cruel acts, controlling and denying. It’s the men".

Leafy lane in Hampshire...

Blackwell...

Licensed today: a detail of the dining room at Blackwell, the arts & crafts house near Bowness...

Brighouse...

Living the dream with breakfast in Brighouse, where the cavernous Methodist chapel is now a Wetherspoons pub (with the pews - and organ - on the upper level still in situ). I wonder what John Wesley would say about that? Of course, he also said that “sin is the moral cause of earthquakes”.

Licensed last week: the statue of Samuel Lister, in Lister Park, Bradford...

Peterborough...

Still writing and editing in the library, as low cloud hides the Chevin; there’ll be no sunshine today. Never mind. November was my best month ever for picture licences.

One of my recent sales: a narrowboat on the River Nene in Peterborough...

FGM...

I’ve written in the book about FGM (female genital mutilation). Though the custom predates Islam by centuries, today it is found only within, and adjacent to, Muslim communities. Despite what a handful of apologists say, there are no health benefits to FGM, but a host of problems, both physical and psychological. FGM is typically inflicted on girls at an age when they are too young to offer informed consent, or to fully understand what is being done to them.

The procedure, which is believed to have affected about 170,000 women and girls currently living in Britain, has been a criminal offence since 1985 (it also became illegal, in 2003, for UK nationals or permanent UK residents to take their child abroad to be ‘cut’). However, it wasn’t until 2013 that the first prosecution was brought. The police and social services have often been reluctant to prosecute people for what they see as religiously mandated customs. I read on the Guardian website today that the number of girls in England who have experienced or are believed to be at risk of female genital mutilation (FGM) has more than doubled in a year, according to assessments by council social workers. What a depressing statistic.

The statue of King William III, in Petersfield, Hants...

Writing...

Since I’ve been writing the book, I’ve had a change of heart and mind. Not just about religion, which now bothers me much more than it used to, and in so many different ways. It seems I’ve also stopped thinking about my destination as a place. For the first time in my life there’s a subject that really engages me as a writer. As I’m coming to the end of this book, and look forward to the next part of the process, I’m thinking about what to write next. Something that isn’t 130,000 words long, that’s for sure. It almost doesn’t matter where I am. I enjoy good conversation, about things that matter, and, conveniently, the ‘conversation’ can continue when I’m on my own: the interplay between what I’m thinking and what I’m able to get down in written form. I’m hoping it will help to keep the mind active for a few years yet.

Yateley Common, Hampshire, looking rather painterly...

Crying wolf...

It was interesting, this morning, to see how people reacted when the fire alarm went off in the library. Instead of rushing for the door, they just covered their ears and grimaced. We’re so accustomed to hearing alarms going off that we no longer associate them with danger, but just inconvenience.

Adjacent betting shops in Boston, Lincs: licensed today...

Missionary position...

Christian missionary, John Allen Chau, tried to “declare Jesus” to the tribespeople of North Sentinel Island in the Indian Ocean: a virtually ‘uncontacted’ tribe thought to be at least 30,000 years old and known to aggressively resist outsiders. In a letter to his parents, Chau wrote “You guys might think I’m crazy in all this, but I think it’s worth it to declare Jesus to these people”. He went ashore, with only a Bible and some gifts; predictably, the tribesmen, armed with bows and arrows, killed him.

Though I can’t summon up much compassion for the guy, who just sounds like an idiot, the episode reminds me of an anecdote, quoted by Annie Dillard, in her book Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. An Inuit hunter asked the local missionary priest: “If I did not know about God and sin, would I go to hell?” “No,” said the priest, “not if you didn't know.” “Then why," said the Inuit, "did you tell me?”

Artwork framing the landscape, on Holme Moss, West Yorkshire. Engraved on the frame: "Many people look, but only a few see"...

Burnham Beeches...

Licensed today: the Burnham Beeches, Bucks, with sister Kari in the glade...

Bob...

There’s a new acronym, I hear today: as heartfelt as it is ungrammatical. ‘Bob’ means ‘bored of Brexit’, which makes me a Bob, I suppose. Despite the referendum vote to leave the EU, I just couldn’t see it happening, and now, two years later, I’ve heard nothing to change my mind. Once Theresa May’s deal is voted down by parliament, in a few days, we’re guaranteed political mayhem until we have her resignation, followed by a general election. After that, all bets are off. I just hope we are to able to negotiate these choppy waters without people fighting in the streets.

Licensed last week: houses in Thornton-le-Dale, North Yorkshire...

Phone call...

Holed up in my favourite Yorkshire Dales campsite, busy processing new pix, including this shot of the Grand Union Canal...

Catholic priests...

I read on the Guardian website the good news that Catholic priests are being issued with photo identity cards. Children can now be reassured that they are being abused by a genuine Catholic priest rather than some counterfeit cleric.

Licensed yesterday: Stac Pollaidh, a mountain near Ullapool, and Loch Lurgainn, Ross-shire, Scottish Highlands...

Greggs...

Someone at Greggs thought that this picture - substituting a sausage roll for the baby Jesus in a Christmas nativity scene - was a good way to promote their cheap and nasty pastries. The Christians took it pretty well, considering. In a nice turn of phrase (and one we don't hear often enough from religious folk), the UK Evangelical Alliance said it was "not too outraged”. Substituting a Bakewell tart for Mohammed might not have gone down so well…

Black Friday...

Today, apparently, is ‘Black Friday’: a rather inauspicious name for what retailers hope will be a profitable spending spree. I’m keeping away from temptation, parked up in my favourite Yorkshire Dales campsite, with pix to process and the book to edit. Seven pix licensed yesterday, and twelve today. Wayhay!

Licensed today: The Leeds-Liverpool Canal in Leeds...

Belton Hall...

November is looking good for image sales, which means I should just about pass the number of sales (and maybe even the revenue) I had in 2017. Seven licences have dropped in today, and it's not even lunchtime yet.

Sold today: Belton Hall, near Grantham...

Otley...

Worked on the book today in Otley library, with more of the same tomorrow. In Wetherspoons now, having ordered a Christmas pizza. This is the life!

In today's Guardian, Justin Welby, Archbishop of Canterbury, has rejected singer Ariana Grande’s suggestion that God is a woman. “God is not male or female,” the archbishop said in a lecture at St Martin-in-the-Fields in London. “God is not definable. All human language about God is inadequate and to some degree metaphorical.” The Guardian can't take this seriously, I'm happy to report, and nor should anybody else. Welby should have said "Look, this whole God idea is a scam. It's worked pretty well for 2,000 years, but c'mon, it's 2018!"

Pic licensed today: Hereford Cathedral and the bridge over the River Wye...

Up north...

Drove back up north through heavy rain, with the windscreen wipers on double speed. Leeds looks a bit grim after the leafy lanes of Hampshire.

The Drunken Duck, near Ambleside, at twillight: one of the first pix I uploaded to Alamy, and a regular seller (one more license today). It was a gastropub years before the term was invented…

Hawkshead...

Another Lakeland pic licensed for a book: the grammar school in Hawkshead where the young William Wordsworth studied (and carved his name on a desk)...

Holker Hall...

Just licensed some Lakeland pix for a new book; this is Holker Hall...

First draft...

Back to Hartley Wintney for the weekend, where I printed off a first draft of the book. I don’t know if it’s any good, but it sure as hell is big!

Alamy sales are bouyant. Licensed this shot today of the Keswick Museum & Art Gallery...

Glenfinnan...

Another church pic - at Glenfinnan, in the Scottish Highlands - licensed today...

Langstone...

After a couple of days in Bishop’s Waltham (either a large village or a small town, take your pick), I drove a dozen miles to the coast. Langstone is a favourite place, because I can park up next to the estuary and carry on writing, as redshanks, curlews and egrets are feeding on the saltmarsh. There’s a tide-washed pub - the Royal Oak - accessible on foot along a raised walkway...

Brockwood Park...

I spent yesterday morning in the library of the Krishnamurti Centre, at Brockwood Park, in Hampshire. I am one of a dwindling band of people who saw him - and heard him talk - in a big marquee in the grounds. The year? It might have been 1976 (or 1977, or 1978, or 1979). I’m very glad I made the effort (I think Joy and I attended the Brockwood Park talks two summers in a row, but I may be mistaken). What I do remember, with great clarity, is Krishnamurti walking onto the improvised stage, sitting down on a stiff-backed wooden chair, smiling, and taking a minute or so to look around the audience. He sat very still: such presence, such composure! When he started talking - always without notes - he was mesmerising. According to what I read yesterday, he often didn’t know, even minutes beforehand, what he would be talking about.

Way back in 1929, having been groomed by the Theosophists as the World Teacher, he disbanded, with one stunning speech, the organisation that had been built up around him. His stated aim, from that moment on, was to help “set man unconditionally free”. “Truth”, he insisted, “is a pathless land” (a sentence more profound than anything to be found in either the Bible or the Koran). He was as good as his word: spending the rest of his long life speaking to groups of people around the world. I knew I was in the presence of someone very special, though he emphasised that he was not a guru and he didn’t need followers. His message to the world included the conviction that we shouldn’t take anything for granted. Instead of defaulting to what some authority tells us - and especially some divine authority - we should think things out for ourselves. Krishnamurti died in 1986, aged 90...

Petersfield...

I parked up yesterday evening in a little wooded car park, along with a kebab van. I was busy writing when there was a knock on the door. The kebab guy reckoned I was in the way (I wasn’t) and his customers couldn’t park (they could). It takes a brave man to argue with a guy who habitually works with knives and skewers, so I drove a few miles further on, to Petersfield. I’m parked up behind the Wetherspoons, still trying to tie up loose ends in the book.

Just licensed: the Alice Hawthorne pub in the village of Nun Monkton, near York...

A flash of understanding...

"I do not know if you have noticed that there is understanding when the mind is very quiet, even for a second; there is the flash of understanding when the verbalization of thought is not. Just experiment with it and you will see for yourself that you have the flash of understanding, that extraordinary rapidity of insight, when the mind is very still, when thought is absent, when the mind is not burdened with its own noise. So, the understanding of anything—of a modern picture, of a child, of your wife, of your neighbor, or the understanding of truth which is in all things—can only come when the mind is very still. But such stillness can not be cultivated because if you cultivate a still mind, it is not a still mind, it is a dead mind" (Krishnamurti).

Just licensed: Tewkesbury Abbey...

St Swithun's...

Licensed today, good price too : the shrine of St Swithun in Winchester Cathedral...

Footfall...

Bowder Stone...

Just licensed: the Bowder Stone in Borrowdale...

Windermere...

Licensed today: Storrs Hall Hotel...

Lacock Abbey...

Lacock Abbey, licensed today: the home of William Fox Talbot, the 'father' of photography...

Blasphemy...

Asia Bibi, a 47-year-old mother of four, and a Christian, was sentenced to hang for blasphemy in Pakistan. She had angered fellow farm workers - all Muslims - by taking a sip of water from a cup she had fetched for them on a hot day. When they demanded she convert to Islam, she refused, prompting a mob to later allege that she had insulted the prophet Mohammed. She has been in prison, in solitary confinement, for the past eight years. Her sentence has now been quashed, on the sensible basis that she has no case to answer. However, members of TLP a fast-growing political party dedicated solely to the punishment of blasphemy, have vowed to hunt her down and kill her, along with the judges who decided she should be freed.

Sam Harris has been criticised for suggesting that “the Muslim world is utterly deranged by its religious tribalism”, but he was right. How can we talk to people who believe such nonsense, and who believe it with unshakeable conviction? How could that conversation even start?

A poor month for Alamy sales was rescued by a late surge of sales, including this shot of Scale Lane Bridge in Hull...

Satnav...

Pic licensed today in a flurry of end-of-month sales. The moral? Don't believe everything the satnav lady says...

 



 

Hay-time...

More wise words from Krishnamurti... "You are now listening to me; you are not making an effort to pay attention, you are just listening; and if there is truth in what you hear, you will find a remarkable change taking place in you—a change that is not premeditated or wished for, a transformation, a complete revolution in which the truth alone is master and not the creations of your mind. And if I may suggest it, you should listen in that way to everything—not only to what I am saying, but also to what other people are saying, to the birds, to the whistle of a locomotive, to the noise of the bus going by. You will find that the more you listen to everything, the greater is the silence, and that silence is then not broken by noise. It is only when you are resisting something, when you are putting up a barrier between yourself and that to which you do not want to listen—it is only then that there is a struggle"

Licensed this pic, over the weekend, of hay-making in the Scottish Borders...

Death raffle...

Two doors down from the Wetherspoons in Leek is a characterful little pub, the Wilke’s Head, which, in decor, ambience and clientele is everything that Wetherspoons is not. On one wall is a blackboard, announcing the results of the latest Death Raffle, with locals betting on the next celebrity to croak. So I offer my heartiest congratulations to ‘Jackie’, who is now £612 to the good after forecasting the demise of Burt Reynolds (1936-2018).

The barmaid either had badly-applied make-up or a facial tattoo. When she wasn’t pulling pints, she was hollowing out pumpkins with a knife, ready for this evening, when the pub will be filled with even more vampires and zombies than usual. Requiring only a minimum of make-up, I could have joined the ranks of the undead; instead I’m heading for a family get-together in Coventry.

The blackboard in the Wilke’s Head, from a previous visit…

Uppingham...

Licensed today: some of the school buildings, Uppingham...

Memories...

Saw a rag & bone man, and his horse and cart, clip-clopping through the streets of Otley. It took me straight back, for a few moments, to a world of farthings, florins, farenheit and fuzzy felt. Antirhinums, antimacassars and avoidupois. Dubbin and dolly blue. Green Shield Stamps, twin-tubs, tiger nuts, singing cowboys, coltsfoot rock, barley sugar twists, temperance hotels, sarsaparilla and sweet cigarettes (what a great idea they were, introducing kids to two lifelong addictions - sugar and tobacco - for the price of one!).

Drax power station...

Zip Hotels...

I read in the Guardian  that we’ll soon have a new, budget, no-frills hotel chain, called Zip Hotels, whose tiny en-suite rooms will cost just £19 per night. Hmmm… I might be tempted to have the occasional night indoors. There will be electric plugs, to charge my gadgets, plus free wifi, hot showers, big towels, free shampoos, soap and shower cap. I can watch TV in my underwear, before falling asleep in a bed with clean sheets. I have no need for space, or luxury, and the price is right. I already pay a similar amount to stay in a campsite, where the amenities may be little more than some hard-standing in a field, for parking the van, an electric hook-up and a shower block just a ten-minute walk away (maybe twenty minutes if you forget to take a torch)…

Drax...

Just finishing off my two-day stint in the campsite: quite productive and very restful. Gout easing (I have the pills, but it still takes time). Off to Leeds now, to pick up the printer.

The village of Drax, with its rather splendid church...

Slaithwaite...

The Huddersfield Narrow Canal at Slaithwaite...