"It's fading away"...

A timeline of statements about the pandemic from the 45th president of the United States…
January 20, 2020… “It’s one person coming in from China. We have it under control. It’s going to be just fine.”
February 27…  “It’s going to disappear. One day – it’s like a miracle – it will disappear.”
March 10… “We’re doing a great job with it. And it will go away. Just stay calm. It will go away.”
April 29… “This is going away. It’s gonna go. It’s gonna leave. It’s gonna be gone. It’s going to be eradicated … If you have a flare-up in a certain area – I call them burning embers – boom, you put it out.”
May 11… “We have met the moment, and we have prevailed. Americans do whatever it takes to find solutions, pioneer breakthroughs, and harness the energies we need to achieve a total victory.”
June 17… “It’s fading away. It’s going to fade away. But having a vaccine would be really nice.”
July 19… “I’ll be right eventually. It’s going to disappear, and I’ll be right.”
Meanwhile, as the president sits on his hands, or plays golf, or posts on Twitter, the death toll across the states continues to rise…

Sports car...

Before they go on sale, my photos need captions and keywords. No matter how good - or bad - the pix themselves may be, without appropiate keywords they will never be found by potential picture buyers on Alamy’s huge database. This is generally an undemanding chore, but sometimes I’m stymied. I posted this shot on the forum for Alamy contributors, hoping someone could expand my caption beyond ‘sports car’. Even better, someone pointed me towards this website. Type in a car’s registration number to get the make, model and year (and, incidentally, whether the vehicle currently has a valid MOT). So the sports car in this pic is a Lotus Exige (MOT up to date). That’s better…

Beverley...

A quiet corner of Beverley, this afternoon.

Nellie's, in Beverley: the plain facade to one of Yorkshire's great pubs, still lit by gas mantles...

Public transport...

Licensed today: a bus at Calcott coachway, near Reading...

The Old Neptune...

Licensed today: the Old Neptune pub, almost on the beach at Whitstable, Kent...

Democracy...

Our democratic tradition allows for the peaceful transition of power, after an election, from one government to another, from one set of political principles to another: a tradition which Donald Trump, behind in all the polls, may seek to undermine. This week more than thirty advocacy groups and grassroots organisations joined Protect the Results, a project to mobilise millions of people should Trump “contest the election results, refuse to concede after losing, or claim victory before all the votes are counted”.

All Saints Church in Hovingham...

Looking...

“You know, to perceive something is an astonishing experience. I don’t know if you have ever really perceived anything; if you have ever perceived a flower or a face or the sky, or the sea. Of course, you see these things as you pass by in a bus or a car; but I wonder whether you have ever taken the trouble actually to look at a flower? And when you do look at a flower, what happens? You immediately name the flower, you are concerned with what species it belongs to, or you say 'What lovely colors it has. I would like to grow it in my garden; I would like to give it to my wife, or put it in my buttonhole', and so on. In other words, the moment you look at a flower, your mind begins chattering about it; therefore you never perceive the flower. You perceive something only when your mind is silent, when there is no chattering of any kind" (J Krishnamurti).

The residents of Haxby, north of York, are handily placed to worship either God or mammon...

Livestock...

The transportation of livestock...

Jogger...

Jogging through Stillington yesterday morning... with both feet off the ground...

Holker Hall...

Licensed today: Holker Hall in South Lakeland, one of our less impressive stately homes...

Hovingham...

Top-down in the village of Hovingham yesterday...

Arnside...

Licensed last week: drinking al fresco at the Albion pub in Arnside... before we'd learned about social distancing...

Over by Christmas...

Our political masters may be talking about a “return to normality” by Christmas, but that sounds ominous rather than reassuring (after all, a lot of people thought that World War I would be “over by Christmas”, only to see hostilities drag on, calamitously, for four long years).

Americans, meanwhile, seem to be lurching between denial and fatalism… thereby providing an object lesson in how not to deal with a global pandemic. While I don’t want anyone else to die unnecessarily, I do want Trump to be ousted from the White House, with a Democratic majority so big that even his pre-emptive excuse - “the vote was rigged” - will fall on deaf ears.

Licensed yesterday: turning the hay in South Lakeland...

Woodbridge...

Licensed today: the Shire Hall in Woodbridge, Suffolk...

Packwood House...

Licensed today: Packwood House in Warwickshire...

Latterbarrow...

One of the benefits of carrying a tripod is that you can be your own model (if nobody more photogenic turns up). My camera's self-timer gives me a maximum of twenty seconds to trip the shutter, and take my place in-shot. Of course, I can't run as far in twenty seconds as I used to! This pic, licensed today, is of Latterbarrow, one of the little nature reserves managed by Cumbria Wildlife Trust...

Selborne...

According to Jay Rayner, writing in the Guardian, "The national steakhouse group Hawksmoor has just launched the Hawksmoor at Home box. It serves two people and costs £120, including delivery to anywhere in the UK. Inside you’ll find a hulking 35-day-aged Porterhouse steak, the makings of a bone marrow and madeira jus, alongside a bottle of Malbec and a bottle of pre-mixed Hawksmoor Martini based on Hepple Gin, plus a few other things besides: 500 boxes are available each week". They won't need to reserve a Hawksmoor at Home box for me. £120 and it still needs to be cooked! I don't think so.

Licensed this morning: one of the ponds near the village of Selborne which the Rev Gilbert White knew so well...

Easingwold...

A 30-year-old Texan deserves a Darwin award (which recognises those individuals who have contributed to human evolution by removing themselves from the gene pool) for attending a ‘covid party’. According to Dr Jane Appleby, chief medical officer at Methodist Hospital in San Antonio, the patient looked at his nurse, just before he died, and said “I think I made a mistake. I thought this was a hoax, but it’s not”.

A quiet corner of Easingwold...

Pocklington Canal...

Angler, today, on the Pocklington Canal...

Hull...

Street scene in Hull...

Haircut...

By the time she arrived at her barber shop, at 9am, the hairdresser found half a dozen guys waiting for what looked to be their first - and much-needed - post-lockdown trim. When it was my turn, I put on my mask, sanitised my hands and waited while she decontaminated the chair, scissors, comb and clippers, changed her disposable plastic apron and adjusted her clear plastic face shield. I wrote my name and telephone number on a clipboard, along with my inside-leg measurement and latest audited sperm count. It was good to resume the traditional barber shop badinage: “Going anywhere this year?” A number 2 buzz cut transformed the wild-haired ‘mad professor’ look into something tidier. I spurned the opportunity to look at the back of my own head, and, stuffing the mask back into my pocket, walked back into the cobbled alleyways of Howden.

Holy Trinity Church in Hull, now open for 'personal prayer': the perfect opportunity to thank the creator of the universe for gifting us a global pandemic, while neglecting to provide the cure...

Schadenfreude...

Ah, shadenfreude! He trivialised the pandemic by downplaying the risks, resisted any attempt at social distancing and refused to wear a mask (only "fairies" wore masks, he said), even as Brazil became the second-worst-hit country after the United States, with more than 65,000 deaths and 1.6m confirmed cases. And now the far-right Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro has tested positive for coronavirus. Praise be... perhaps there is a God after all!

The estate village of South Dalton...

Vaccine...

According to a new poll, 16% of of British adults would “probably” or “definitely” refuse to take a Covid-19 vaccine, if or when a vaccine becomes available. “Our hope for a return to normal life rests with scientists developing a successful vaccine for coronavirus,” said Imran Ahmed, the chief executive of the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), a non-profit organisation that commissioned the research. “But social media companies’ irresponsible decision to continue to publish anti-vaccine propaganda means a vaccine may not be effective in containing the virus. The price for their greed is a cost paid in lives".

Licensed today: a new housing development on the outskirts of Kendal, with every house having solar panels on the roof...

The slave trade...

When we think about the slave trade, we may conjure up an image of sailing ships taking slaves from West Africa to the cotton plantations of the West Indies and the southern states of the USA, and returning with a cargo of sugar, cotton, rum and tobacco. But slavery has been around ever since humans left a written history, and no doubt long before that. In the earliest known records, The Code of Hammurabi (c.1760 BC), slavery is treated as a long-established institution. So it’s really no surprise that slavery is mentioned, in an entirely uncritical way, in both the Bible and Koran. The only criticism is aimed at slaves who fail to obey their masters. In fact, the biblical mandate for slavery was used by plantation owners of the southern states, in an attempt to give legitimacy to the buying and selling of human beings (and is, even now, one of the reasons why evangelical Christians feel able, with an apparently clear conscience, to vote for a racist president).

We also like to think that slavery was abolished during the early years of the 19th century, thanks to fair-minded men like William Wilberforce, whose house in Hull I walked past yesterday. However, according to Wikipedia, there are currently more than 40 million people worldwide subject to some form of slavery. If we want to find people who are working under duress, with little or no personal autonomy, we need look no further than the nearest nail bar (for women) and car-wash (for men). And sexual slavery - or trafficking, as we usually call it now - is endemic throughout the world.

Brantingham...

All Saints Church in Brantingham, today...

Angry drunks...

John Apter, the chairman of the Police Federation, was on shift in Southampton last night, where he dealt with “naked men, happy drunks, angry drunks, fights and more angry drunks”. He said what many people feared: “It was crystal clear that drunk people can’t/won’t socially distance”. The fact remains that we are leaving lockdown with a higher reported daily coronavirus death rate than when we entered it, back in March…

Licensed last week: a street scene in Woodbridge, Suffolk…

Mount Rushmore...

How the 45th President of the United States sees himself...

Hopes for November...

Walburn Hall...

Licensed today: Walburn Hall, a fortified farmhouse near Downholme, North Yorkshire...

Patterdale...

Donald Trump has said - yet again - that he believes the coronavirus will “just disappear”, on the day after the USA recorded a new all-time daily high of more than 44,000 new cases (with Dr Fauci intimating that the daily total of infections might soon rise to 100,000). If there’s one ray of light in this farago of presidential incompetence, it’s the increased likelihood that Trump will lose to Biden in November.

Licensed today: the Cumbrian village of Patterdale…

Tower blocks...

With pubs due to re-open on Saturday, the police are urging people to drink “responsibly”. Good luck with that! Of all the days of the week, whose bright idea was it to start pulling pints on a Saturday? I don’t envy the bar staff, overworked and underpaid, who will have to keep a pub full of weekend revellers in line. I wouldn’t like to be working in A & E either.

I had an appointment to see someone in Leeds but was half an hour early… so took the opportunity to take a few pix of these tower blocks in Armley. And one of the pix has just been licensed for the highest price of the year so far. It will be used for TV advertising. The moral? Don't leave the camera at home...