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...