Aberford...

Photographed one of my favourite buildings this morning: the Gascoigne Almshouses in Aberford...

Mecca...

I read an article today, on the Guardian website, about the difficulties that will soon be faced by pilgrims to Mecca, if climate change remains unchecked. As soon as next year, apparently, summer days in Mecca could become unbearably hot. Doing the hajj is an obligation on all Muslims who are physically capable of making the trip (and who can afford to do so). However, nowhere in the article does the author question why this is so. Millions of people fly to Saudi Arabia each year for a week of ritualised self-abasement, because of what one illiterate merchant heard in a cave 1,400 years ago. Does going to Mecca in such numbers really suggest that the participants are closer to an omni-present God? And, if not, then all those flights represent one hell of a lot of pointless air-miles.

A street in Hull, called The Land of Green Ginger...

Fish & chips...

No need to rustle up a meal this evening, having stumbled across this mobile chippy in a gorgeous little village called North Newbald...

"A loving gesture"...

Rugby player Israel Folau was sacked by Rugby Australia for posting on social media that “hell awaits drunks, homosexuals, adulterers, liars, fornicators, thieves, atheists and idolators”. He is back in court today, seeking $10m in damages, an apology from Rugby Australia and reinstatement into both his club and national teams. Having become a ‘born again’ Christian in 2017, he is also arguing for the right to express his religious beliefs.

According to a statement read out by his lawyer, Folau believed it was “a loving gesture to share passages from the Bible with others”. Who else but a true believer could spout such hateful nonsense, while configuring it as loving concern about the welfare of others?

Licensed today: a boat moored on Bassenthwaite Lake...

Harvest time...

I can’t remember a time in my (quite long) life when our political masters have looked quite as clueless as they do today. In 2016 David Cameron asked the country to vote on an issue which simply could not be boiled down to a binary choice: ‘leave’ or ‘stay’? Since then, parliament has been in meltdown. Now we hear that Boris Johnson will ask the queen to suspend parliament for a few weeks, while he gets on with the job of leaving the EU wihout a deal. This suggests that, in extremis, the queen might say “no”.

On her way to a UN summit on climate change, Greta Thunberg has sighted land. She tweeted this morning that she could see “the lights of Long Island and New York City”. We know we're living in strange times when we're outsourcing the solving of our most pressing issues to a woman of 93 and a 16-year-old girl…

William Wilberforce...

I was here - outside the house of William Wilberforce in Hull, waiting for a photogenic couple to complete the shot - when Ben Stokes was hitting the winning runs in the Headingley test match. It was such an unlikely victory. Out of the seventy runs required when last man Jack Leach joined Stokes at the wicket, Leach scored just one run. But he kept his wicket intact while Stokes blazed away at the other end. It was a game to rival the best test matches of all time (including Headingley 1981), and it keeps the Ashes alive...

Charity shop...

Licensed yesterday: a shot of an Oxfam charity shop...

Nickey Nackey Lane...

If I ever write a book for children, it will have to be set in Nickey Nackey Lane (a short thoroughfare in Cawood)...

A day out...

Off to Selby today, to get my will counter-signed and to pick up my new pair of glasses. Hey, at my time of life this represents a fun day out. Tomorrow I’m having a day off from my punishing schedule of writing, taking pix and faffing about, to enjoy day one of the third test at Headingley: a must-win game for England, realistically, if they are to reclaim the Ashes.

Hmmm... I wonder why you don't see many cars this colour? MGB GT in Cawood...

Riccall...

The rowan berries are out already in the churchyard of St Mary's Church, in Riccall...

Abandoned car...

Movement and immobility on the outskirts of Selby...

Cawood...

Taking pix today in the villages around Selby; this is Cawood...

Home...

It’s exactly four months since I moved into the Old Sunday School and I have yet to feel a twinge of ‘buyer’s remorse’. I drove back along the M62 this morning, the landscape flattening and the traffic easing once I’d passed the motorway turn-offs for Bradford and Leeds. Leaving the motorway, I took the ‘locals-only’ back road, through the village of Airmyn, with fields of wheat on either side, and back into Asselby. It feels like home…

Just licensed: the Lister Arms in Ilkley...

The open road...

Licensed these shots today of a traditional VW campervan... passing Crummockwater and parked up in the Duddon Valley...

Punters...

I watched the second half of the Man United v Chelsea game in a Howden pub. Most of the other guys seemed to be following two games at once: the football on the big TV screen and the progress of their bets on their mobile phones. In 2018, UK gamblers lost £14.5 billion, mostly online, while, in the same year, Denise Coates, the majority shareholder of Bet 365, paid herself an eye-watering salary of £265 million. It’s almost impossible for the online gambling companies to lose. There’s no obvious limit to how much the punters can lose - savings, house, job, wife, family, friends, reputation, own life - but canny gamblers who find a way to beat the odds will quickly find their online accounts terminated.

The gambling companies try to appear responsible - “When the fun stops, stop” - but the fact remains that they target the poor, the ill-educated, the luckless and the hopeless. Gambling is about as close as we can get to a tax on poverty. Their customers are those who, almost by definition, cannot afford to lose, and who are getting poorer with every spin of a wheel and every turn of a card. As for 'fun'... when does it even start?

Summer in Selby...

Helter skelter...

According to the Guardian's website, a 55ft tall helter skelter has been installed in the nave of Norwich Cathedral, so visitors can get a closer view of the ornate roof, before sliding down. The article points out that the helter skelter comes after Rochester Cathedral in Kent installed a crazy golf course in the aisle. I don’t know where this new trend is heading. I only know that we need to find alternative uses for many, perhaps most, of our churches. They can’t all become carpet showrooms… or mosques.

A church I saw yesterday, in the suburbs of Selby. As a stock pic - and a visual metaphor - I thought there might be a multiplicity of possible uses...

Selby Canal...

I’m ashamed to admit that, until today, I didn’t even know that Selby had a canal. I took some pix at the canal basin, where, via a lock, the waterway connects with the River Ouse. There are moorings for narrowboats, and the seemingly obligatory waterside apartments. What I hadn’t expected was a covering of duckweed so thick, I suspected it might bear my weight. This strange, purpose-built craft was hoovering up the duckweed and depositing it in the lock. When the lock was full, the duckweed was sluiced into the river…

Toni Morrison...

Toni Morrison has died: obviously a very influential writer, though I confess I haven’t read any of her novels, plays or stories (and in naming her books I would probably get her mixed up with Maya Angelou). My only excuse is that I read very little fiction at all. I saw a few quotes by Toni Morrison in the Guardian today, and was rather taken with this one. “If there’s a book that you want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it”.

A pic licensed today of a multilingual welcome sign on a church door...

Circumcision...

What’s a foreskin worth? Well, according to an article on the Guardian website, it’s £20,000. That’s how much a man was paid in compensation, after the staff at Leicester Royal Infirmary mixed up his notes; instead of having botox treatment, he was circumcised. Circumcision is an entirely unnecessary surgical procedure, with no medical justification, generally undertaken for religious reasons. How typical of the religious to focus forensically on the genitalia: the source of so much of their own angst and sexual repression.

Thanks to the TV drama about Anne Lister, diarist and lesbian, pix of Shibden Hall, near Halifax, are regular sellers...

 

Geoff Boycott...

For the first time in this summer of cricket, Geoffrey Boycott is back with the Test Match Special team, occupying the pundit’s chair. Age has not mellowed him. His motto, embraced with even more certainty as the years roll by, is “the older I get, the better I was”. He has a pre-Copernican view of the cricketing universe, convinced that all the cricketing planets revolve around him… which undermines his status as a pundit and outs him as a crashing bore. So divorced has he become from the current cricketing scene, that he appears to be commentating on a different game altogether: some game from the 1960s in which he played a prominent part. It’s time for the BBC to cancel his contract and put him out to grass.

Licensed last week...

Meeting and greeting...

What a great day yesterday: meeting and greeting visitors at Blacktoft Sands. From the moment I arrived at the reception hide, the lagoon was alive with birds: ruff, wood sandpiper, green sandpiper, common sandpiper, snipe, dunlin, greenshank, oystercatcher, spotted redshank, curlew, lapwing and black tailed godwit. Water rails, little egrets, bearded tits, reed buntings and a bittern made an appearance in the reedbeds, and a couple of spoonbills flew overhead (though, strangely, I didn’t see a marsh harrier all day).

Visitor numbers were bouyant too, following a write-up of the reserve in the RSPB magazine. I have to differentiate, right away, between the experienced birders and those who are new to the hobby. It’s fun to point out a few birds from the reception hide to visitors who say they can recognise a coot and a moorhen… but not much else. However, pointing out a greenshank to a twitcher would produce nothing but a withering stare.

Licensed yesterday: Pentre Ifan, a neolithic dolmen in Pembrokeshire...

It's always a pleasant surprise to see a pic of mine in print or pixels. I found another shot from Wales in the Guardian...

Tribute acts...

What do Rod Stewart, Kylie Minogue, Cher, Lady Gaga, Freddy Mercury, Dolly Parton, Michael Jackson, Madonna and Robbie Williams have in common? Answer: they’ll all be performing at the Viking over the next few weeks. However, you have to read the small print on the poster to establish that these are all tribute acts; out here ‘in the sticks’ this is, sadly, what constitutes live music in 2019. It's not even performing... just impersonating.

Licensed today: Wareham in Dorset...

Finally... the Ashes...

After a ‘slow-burn’ summer of white-ball cricket, the Ashes are finally here. England’s recent - and ridiculously exciting - win in the World Cup seems to have generated a fair bit of media interest, even if the lead story on the back page of most newspapers is whether Gareth Bale will, or won’t, go to a Chinese club for about a million pounds a week. I wonder how much interest in cricket will remain, once the Premier League kicks off.

The forthcoming contest looks appetising, between two well-matched teams. If England are favourites, that’s only because they have the advantage of playing at home. I’m looking forward to every minute. In half an hour I’ll be banging on the door of the Viking pub, a couple of miles towards Goole, hoping to see on the big screen the first ball of the first day of the first test. Bring it on!

Another pic licensed during the end-of-month surge: visitors relaxing in the gardens of Great Chalfield Manor in Wiltshire...