Last drop...

Colne...

Saleable pix don't have to be anything special. This shot, of Colne, has been licensed twice this week (maybe due to the spike in Covid infections on the other side of the Pennines)...

Poundbury...

Licensed today: a quiet corner of Poundbury, Prince Charles's vanity project near Dorchester...

Levens Hall...

Licensed today: the topiary gardens at Levens Hall, South Lakeland…

Saxton...

All Saints Church in the village of Saxton...

 

Goole docks...

Licensed today: silvery silos overlooking Goole docks...

 

Aberdaron...

Licensed today: Aberdaron, on the Lleyn peninsular...

Rubbish...

When I'd finished taking pictures yesterday, I called in at a country pub for an al fresco pint. I was joined by an old guy who was perturbed that his bin was empty, even though he had filled it with garden clippings “just the other day”. We discussed which scenario was the more likely: that a thief had stolen his rubbish in the night or that the bin-men had been. As inconsequential as this brief exchange was, it was still more entertaining than most conversations in the Black Swan in Asselby.

Licensed today: St Mary's Church in Melton Mowbray, Leicestershire... 

Authority...

"Why do we accept, why do we follow? We follow another’s authority, another’s experience and then doubt it; this search for authority and its sequel, disillusionment, is a painful process for most of us. We blame or criticize the once accepted authority, the leader, the teacher, but we do not examine our own craving for an authority who can direct our conduct. Once we understand this craving we shall comprehend the significance of doubt" (Krishnamurti).

Licensed today: The Inn at Ravenglass in Cumbria...

Loch Lurgainn...

Licensed today: Loch Lurgainn and Stac Pollaidh, a mountain near Ullapool, in the Scottish Highlands…

Etton...

Taxi to the airport and a village pub that needs new licensees. Etton, yesterday...

Nothing at all...

We can’t talk about the promise of heaven without also talking about the threat of hell. These posthumous - and entirely imaginary - destinations have been juxtaposed, for centuries, to blackmail people into belief, and to keep them within the fold. However, the bullying stops as we are dying, or someone we love is dying… when the church douses the flames of hell, temporarily, and offers ‘words of comfort’ instead. I picked up a hand-printed sheet in Beverley Minster, featuring half a dozen poems which offered ‘consolation’ in a time of coronavirus.

Even through Christianity is, essentially, a cult of death and human sacrifice, the church’s ‘consolation department’ offers mawkish sentimentality to ameliorate the ‘sting of death’. “Death is nothing at all”, the well-known poem begins, “I have only slipped away into the next room” (in the Old Sunday School that would be the bathroom, which might mean some inconvenience). The equivalent in popular culture is the western, in which a cowboy is offering platitudes to his wounded buddy. “Everything’s gonna be alright”, he says, doubtfully. What happens next? The guy with the bullet wound is dead within thirty seconds, and his buddy closes his eyes...

 

South Dalton...

Sunshine and warm weather seem be be keeping autumn at bay. A cyclist in South Dalton this morning...

Jimi Hendrix...

It was fifty years ago today that Jimi Hendrix died. I saw him perform just the once, on April 3, 1967, at the Odeon Cinema in Leeds, on a ‘package’ tour that, bizarrely, also included Cat Stevens, Engelbert Humperdinck, The Californians, The Quotations and - top of the bill - The Walker Brothers. Hey Joe was still in the charts, Purple Haze had just been released and the summer of love was still to come. Heady days!

 

Selby...

A conversational gambit in Selby this afternoon...

Junk mail...

Come hell or high water, the junk mail must get through. Selby, today, while I was waiting for the Romahome's MOT...

Lacock...

England and Australia are squaring up today for the last international match of cricket’s shortest - and probably strangest - summer. The result really doesn’t matter, to me at least; I just hope it’s a good game. In the last couple of months we’ve had tests, one-day and T20 matches, against Australia, Pakistan, the West Indies and Ireland. The games seem to have been played in a good spirit, which seems entirely appropriate in these difficult times. They’ve also been played in empty cricket grounds. What seemed strange and surreal back in July now seems (almost) normal. I’ve watched an hour or two of live cricket (a couple of games were on the BBC), but mostly I’ve tuned into Test Match Special. Just knowing that cricket is being played has cheered me up no end.

Licensed today: Lacock Abbey in Wiltshire...

Chop Suey Bar...

The AAA Chop Suey Bar in Snaith (the name presumably being a rather desperate attempt to get first place in the Yellow Pages)...

Ferrybridge...

Haulier "fuelling UK industry" and passing the cooling towers of Ferrybridge power station... 

St Mary's Chapel...

Not my finest hour: shouting profanities at a grazing sheep to make it look up. It's years since I last visited this tiny church, 'marooned' for centuries in a field near Saxton. In 1596 it was reported to be in "utter ruine and decay", yet it's still standing...

Second spike...

A couple of months ago we were speculating about the possibility of another coronavirus spike in the autumn… and now it’s here. The number of people infected is rising again, and it won’t be long before hospital admissions rise too. We’ve been here before, of course, though there’s no way we will be subjected to another national lockdown.   

If it’s hard to be optimistic about what October will bring, it’s harder still to watch Donald Trump’s increasingly desperate, pre-election ploys. Since he is trailing Biden in the polls, I wouldn’t bet against the premature launch of a dangerously untested vaccine… or maybe a military incursion into a small country without the wish or the wherewithal to retaliate.

This is the gatehouse of Bishopthorpe Palace, the residence of the new Archbishop of York (who couldn't find the time or the enthusiasm to answer my query about the scaling down of hell, from an eternity of fiery torment to nothing more than "separation from God"... and on whose authority this change was made. Church of England clerics really are "making it up as they go along")...  

Leeds-Liverpool Canal...

Licensed last week: a narrowboat on the Leeds-Liverpool Canal near Skipton...

John Smith's Brewey...

The oldest of Tadcaster's three breweries...

 

MacDonalds...

Licensed today: waiting in line for a Big Mac...

Healaugh...

 The Norman church at Healaugh, yesterday...

Tadcaster...

 Today in Tadcaster...

Inspiration...

The secret of writing, according to Sinclair Lewis, Nora Roberts, Robert Benchley, Stephen King, Oliver Stone and other luminaries, is to “apply the seat of the pants to the seat of the chair”. Perspiration, then, rather than inspiration. If you wait for inspiration to strike, you can be waiting a long time (while intimating that the ability to string words together coherently is a ‘gift’ over which we have no control).

Licensed today: a point in Calderdale where road, rail, river and canal cross and recross, like the braided flex of an old-fashioned telephone. It's a good vantage point, though I'm sure I could get a better shot if I tried again...

Copy space...

In the cause of illustrating other people’s ideas, stock photos don’t alweays have to be tightly cropped. This shot, licensed today - of a fishing boat on the beach at Aldeburgh in Suffolk - has plenty of room on the left, known in publishing as ‘copy space’, where text can be superimposed… 

Unconditional love...

The promise of “unconditional love, seen here in Pocklington, is rather misleading. The love that Jesus has for us is entirely conditional on our obedience; for any lapse in behaviour we can expect eternal punishment. It is, in fact, our love for Jesus which is supposed to be unconditional… even though being forced to love the one we fear is the very essence of totalitarianism. Not much of a promise, then...

 

Clifford...

Public transport in Clifford, this afternoon...

Tower house...

Licensed yesterday: Comlongon Castle Hotel, Clarencefield, Dumfries & Galloway (which includes a well-preserved 'tower house')...

 

 

Brigg...

A quiet corner of Brigg, south of the Humber, yesterday...

German words...

There’s a German word for everything. Lebenswelt is “that province of reality which the wide-awake and normal adult simply takes for granted as common sense”. Hamsterkauf, applicable to those who panic-buy everyday essentials during a widespread crisis, is inspired by hamsters stuffing their cheeks with as much food as possible. A German word, mitfreude, is the opposite of schadenfreude: sharing in - and being happy for - someone else’s success. It’s a little-known word (I hadn’t heard of it until today), which suggests that we don’t have much need for either the word… or the concept.

Licensed today: a VW van parked up in the Duddon Valley. Volkswagen, the 'people's car', was one of the führer's better ideas...

 

Democracy...

According to an Opinium poll, nearly half of all Americans (47%) say they are worried about the possibility of Donald Trump losing November's election but refusing to concede defeat. A cornerstone of democracy is the peaceful transition of one government to the next… and Trump, by fuelling these uncertainties, has already done serious damage to the democratic process.

Licensed today: the interior of Swarthmoor Quaker meeting house, on the outskirts of Ulverston... 

All previous sales have been with the seats occupied...

Brudenell Mosque...

Just after I took this shot - my old 'stamping grounds' around Hyde Park, Leeds - a guy said "If you take my picture, I'll smash your camera". What do they say... "Never go back"?...

 

BBC...

 The BBC in Hull...