Gosforth Cross...

It may be harder than I’d imagined to avoid the coronation of our jug-eared monarch, because the BBC is planning to suspend the licence fee as part of a one-off dispensation for the coronation weekend in May. Every public place will find room for a big-screen TV and bunting; no doubt the marquee will be erected next to the Black Swan. I may take the opportunity, instead, to put all my CDs in alphabetical order or re-watch Sex Lives of the Potato Men on DVD.

Licensed today: the impossibly slender, 10th century, sandstone cross at Gosforth in Cumbria: the tallest Viking cross in England…

Southwell Minster...

A packed house yesterday at Southwell Minster, in Nottinghamshire...

Bernard Ingham...

Bernard Ingham, my nemesis, has died, aged 90. Born and raised in Hebden Bridge, he began his journalistic career as a junior reporter on the Hebden Bridge Times. In later years he penned a regular column in the paper, though, since he lived in Purley, he had little idea of what was going on in the Calder valley. He complained about the influx of gays and lesbians, and even, bizarrely, that there were too many trees. To keep his memory alive, the council is planning to fell a tree every year, on his birthday, June 21st.

Licensed today: two women in wetsuits wading into Semerwater, Yorkshire Dales…

Bungay...

Didn’t get much sleep last night. Well, not during the hours of play, anyway. England had slipped to 21-3 when Joe Root and Harry Brook came together. By the time the rain came they had put on 294 runs together: just about the best batting partnership in a test match I have ever seen. If the rain hadn’t come, England might be starting day 2 on 420-3. Every one of Brook’s runs came off the middle of the bat, and Joe took his ones and twos in his typically graceful fashion. I can’t remember a chance being given by either of them. Sublime stuff, and the New Zealanders didn’t know what to do. Brook didn’t treat the bowling with contempt, exactly (he wasn’t showing off), but he just leathered every ball that wasn’t going to hit his stumps. Amazing. I’ll be watching again this evening. The Ashes? Bring them on!

Licensed today: a street in Bungay, Norfolk… 

Reeth Show...

Licensed today: heavy police presence at Reeth Show, Swaledale, Yorkshire Dales…

Goldeneye...

Took off, this afternoon, for Blacktoft Sands. The last hour, as the light faded, was wonderful. A barn owl quartered over the reed-beds, marsh harriers too. A buzzard caught the thermals and a kestrel hovered. Wigeons whistled, and a cetti’s warbler sang (once heard, never forgotten). Best of all, two pairs of goldeneye seemed to think that spring had already arrived, with both males displaying to the females. They shook their wings and threw their heads back, a performance accompanied by a rattliing call which sounds like a stick being dragged along cast-iron railings. Then the males started fighting – on the water, under the water – while the females looked on impassively. For an hour the world belonged to the birds.

Pic: Creative Commons…

Hebden Bridge...

Licensed today: Market Street in Hebden Bridge...

The eyes have it...

Paranoia in Thorne...

Poundbury...

Licensed today, a street in Poundbury, Dorset...

Woodbridge...

It’s Valentine’s Day… though I won’t be going out tonight. I don’t want to be handed a red rose when I order a pint (and I don’t want anyone playing a violin while I’m supping it)…

Licensed today: the Tide Mill at Woodbridge, Suffolk…

Barn owl...

I called in at Blacktoft Sands in late afternoon for another scan of the wetlands. The light was hazy; if it was July or August you’d call it a heat-haze. The sky was full of marsh harriers, and the female hen harrier was on the wing too. A few of the people in the hide had never seen one before, so they went away happy. As the sun sank – a big red ball of a sun – a barn owl came out to hunt over the reedbeds. Magic! (Pic: Creative Commons)…

Kirkstile Inn...

Licensed today: the Kirkstile Inn, with Mellbreak in the distance, Loweswater, Lake District National Park…

Burt Bacharach...

All pop songs should be as good as those written by Burt Bacharach, who died yesterday. He was never in fashion (who else in the music business is called Burt?), but never out out fashion either. He wrote most of Dionne Warwick’s hits, including the heartbreaking Walk on By, and provided Aretha Franklin with her biggest UK hit, I Say a Little Prayer. I love this lyric from Do You Know the Way to San Jose: the American dream going sour in the space of six lines.

LA is a great big freeway
Put a hundred down and buy a car
In a week, maybe two, they'll make you a star
Weeks turn into years, how quick they pass
And all the stars that never were
Are parking cars and pumping gas.

Licensed today: adjacent betting shops in Boston, Lincolnshire…

Hen Harrier...

It’s heartbreaking to see how women and girls are being treated in Afghanistan, under the despotic rule of the Taliban. And it’s laughable to watch Church of England clerics try to find a form of words which will express their distaste for gay people, without driving them out of the church altogether. Anyone who tries to make excuses for religious intransigence deserves a good slap.

Had a late-afternoon visit to Blacktoft Sands, hoping to see some roosting raptors. I was in luck, with a sighting of a female hen harrier. Very different from a Marsh harrier: lighter, slimmer, more graceful in flight, and – the clincher – the white rump (pic: Imran Shah, Creative Commons)…  

Charles Darwin...

Charles Darwin anticipated the criticism that might greet the publication, in 1859, of On the Origin of Species. He fought against confirmation bias by actively trying to find fault with his own theories, and knew what it would take to falsify them. “If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down” (though, in a more confident tone of voice, he added: “but I can find no such case”)...

Reedling hide...

Spent the morning at Blacktoft Sands where this new hide, called Reedling, now occupies the site where the old Xerox hide used to be. The lower deck of the double-decker hide is now accessible to wheelchair-users. A few feet away from where I was sitting, watching the wildfowl, a barn owl was roosting. Other raptors included a sparrowhawk, careening through the trees, and a sky full of marsh harriers…

Today is Groundhog Day...

If I had to pick a favourite film, it would be Groundhog Day, directed by Harold Ramis. For years I’ve wondererd what it would be like to watch the film every day for a year, but, unlike this guy, I never got round to it. The key line of dialogue may be Bill Murray’s melancholy musings, to a pair of drunks in a bar: “What would you do if you were stuck in one place, and every day was exactly the same, and nothing you did mattered?” Yet, despite the high-concept premise, the film never flags. I might have to watch it every day for a year, as well, to really understand how the trick was accomplished...

Licensed today: a rune stone – part of a cross (possibly 9th century AD) – in the church at Great Urswick, South Lakeland… 

World Hijab Day...

Today is World Hijab Day, a date in the calendar founded ten years ago, apparently. The veiling of Muslim women is still a highly contentious issue, and even in a book of 155,000 words, I can't offer a definitive opinion on the subject. However, by focusing on the freedom of the individual, the human right of autonomy, the issue may become a little clearer. I am not ‘for’ or ‘against’ the hijab, or any other kind of veil; these are, after all, just items of clothing. What I am ‘for’ is a woman’s right to choose; what I am ‘against’ is religiously mandated compulsion.

Licensed today: a narrowboat entering Standedge Tunnel on the Huddersfield Narrow Canal, at Tunnel End, near Marsden, West Yorkshire…