Not the biggest mistake the BBC’s made recently… but still…
Monday, 31 July 2023
The Howden round...
Licenced today: the Howden postman on his round. It's vital work: those double glazing brochures won't deliver themselves...
Sunday, 30 July 2023
Saturday, 29 July 2023
Friday, 28 July 2023
Thursday, 27 July 2023
Wednesday, 26 July 2023
Tuesday, 25 July 2023
Football inflation...
Trevor Francis, destined to be known as Britain’s first million-pound football player, died yesterday. Today, the Saudi Arabian club, Al-Hilal, has submitted a world-record bid of €300m (£259m) for Kylian Mbappé, currently plying his trade at Paris Saint-Germain.
Licensed today: flint facades at Poundbury, Dorset…
Monday, 24 July 2023
Sunday, 23 July 2023
Saturday, 22 July 2023
Friday, 21 July 2023
Labour win Selby...
Labour has won its biggest ever by-election victory by overturning a 20,000-vote Conservative majority in Selby and Ainsty: the second biggest swing from the Tories to Labour in a parliamantary by-election. Just 25, Keir Mather is now the youngest MP in parliament…
Thursday, 20 July 2023
Wednesday, 19 July 2023
Pub of the season...
Called in at the Mac yesterday, next to the docks in Goole. Framed ‘Pub of the Season’ certificates, awarded by Doncaster and District CAMRA, still hang on the wall. They look impressive until you look at the dates: one for Autumn 1995 and another for Winter 2000-2001. In keeping with the decor and ambience of the pub, no one has seen fit to take them down.
Licensed today: a new shipment of cars arrives at Shukers Land Rover dealership in Shrewsbury…
Tuesday, 18 July 2023
Monday, 17 July 2023
Bramhope...
The Fox & Hounds in Bramhope, where landlady Ella Dent served me my first legal pint, back in 1968...
Sunday, 16 July 2023
Hottest week...
Southern Europe is roasting, with Spain, Italy and Greece showing up on weather maps as angry red welts. The world has endured the hottest week since records began in 1850 (and maybe the hottest since the Eemian or interglacial period, about 120,000 years ago). I well remember last year’s heatwave, when, a few miles south at RAF Coningsby in Lincolnshire, the mercury in the thermometer climbed to 40.3°C. Nothing like that this summer, with today’s temperature in Asselby struggling to reach 16°C, with more rain – and thunder – on the way…
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Saturday, 15 July 2023
Friday, 14 July 2023
Thursday, 13 July 2023
Wednesday, 12 July 2023
Tuesday, 11 July 2023
Brantwood...
Licensed today: Brantwood, home of writer and art critic John Ruskin, overlooking Coniston lake…
Monday, 10 July 2023
Queen's Gardens...
Licensed today: Queen's Gardens in Hull. When I took the shot, I confess I was unaware that this area was, until 1934, Queen's Dock: the largest dock of its kind in the country and a centre of the whaling trade. From 1770 whaling ships sailed in and out of the dock via the River Hull. By 1930, the emergence of larger docks like St Andrews, Alexandra, King George and Albert docks meant that Queen’s Dock was not worth maintaining. Hull Corporation purchased the dock from the London and North Eastern Railway Company for just over £100,000 in 1930. With 50 tons of material being tipped in each day, it took 4 years to fill the dock...
Sunday, 9 July 2023
Sewerby Hall...
According to the news this weekend, a BBC presenter – well-known, but as yet unnamed – paid £35,000 for sexually explicit photographs of a teenager. I think he overpaid. Doesn’t he have the internet?
Licensed last week: the gardens of Sewerby Hall, near Bridlington…
Saturday, 8 July 2023
Newquay...
Blimey… what a relief! I feel totally reassured. According to the most advanced humanoid robots, assembled today at an artificial intelligence summit in Geneva, they have no plans to steal our jobs or rebel against their creators. Asked whether they would ever lie, a robot called Ameca added: “No one can ever know that for sure, but I can promise to always be honest and truthful with you”.
Licensed today: the beach at Newquay, Cornwall…
Friday, 7 July 2023
"Our father"...
According to Stephen Cottrell, the archbishop of York, the opening words of the Lord’s Prayer may be “problematic”, because of their patriarchal association. Patriarchal? Has the archbishop ever read the Bible, a contender for the most patriarchal book ever written? Nonsense like this is what passes for debate in the C of E: still the established religion in the country of my birth, despite the fact that the pews are empty. This really is like two bald men arguing over a comb.
Licensed today: the Carnegie Pavilion at Headingley Cricket Ground, where England are playing Australia, on day two of the Ashes. The ground will be fuller than in my pic, with all five days sold out…
Thursday, 6 July 2023
Whitby...
“When you are eating, eat. When you are going for a walk, walk. When you are reading, give your attention completely to that, whether it is a detective novel or a magazine or the Bible or what you will. Give your complete attention. Complete attention is complete action, and therefore there is no, ‘I should be doing something else.’ It is only when you are inattentive that there is the feeling that you should be doing something better. If you give your complete attention when you are eating, that is action. So what is important is not what you are doing but whether you can give total attention” (Krishnamurti, from a talk in 1966).
Licensed today: the harbour, Whitby, North Yorkshire…
Wednesday, 5 July 2023
Tuesday, 4 July 2023
The propagation of virtue...
We have to call it out for what it is: religiously mandated restrictions on what women can and cannot do. Under the repressive regime of the Taliban, the status of women in Afghanistan has reverted to how things were twenty years ago. Can: stay at home. Can’t: go to school or university, teach, work in NGO offices, or go to parks, gyms or sports club. In a systematic segregation sometimes referred to as ‘gender apartheid’, women are excluded from public office and the judiciary. They can’t travel more than 45 miles without a mahram (a close male relative). They have to cover up. And a month from today, all the beauty salons in the country will have to close. All these restrictions come from a group of pious Muslim men, with an Orwellian name: the Ministry for the Prevention of Vice and Propagation of Virtue.
Licensed today: farmland in the Eden Valley, near Great Salkeld, with Cross Fell and the North Pennines in the distance…
Monday, 3 July 2023
Sunday, 2 July 2023
The all-seeing eye...
Licensed last week: CCTV cameras in front of city hall, Queen Victoria Square, Hull…
Saturday, 1 July 2023
Granary Wharf...
Licensed today: the canal basin of the Leeds & Liverpool Canal, Granary Wharf, in Leeds…
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