When I spotted a broken tile on the roof of the Old Sunday School, one neighbour let me have a couple of roof-tiles left over from a re-roofing job (I’d feel daft going into a builders’ merchants and asking to buy just one tile!). Another neighbour got out his extendable ladders, removed the damaged tile and slotted in the new one… just before it started to rain.
Licenced yesterday: the town hall of Bourne in Lincolnshire, a Palladian mansion in miniature...
Local traffic still crosses the tidal River Ouse on Boothferry Bridge, build in 1929. As the name implies, the bridge was built to replace a ferry which had operated since the 14th century. Despite it being a swing bridge, I have yet to see it open to allow a boat through. The Ouse is no longer a busy waterway. A traffic bottleneck at the best of times, the bridge is currently undergoing repairs, and is best avoided.
The traffic sails serenely past on the new bridge, built in the 1970s, which carries the M62 motorway across the river. Pic licenced today. The price? Somewhere between a nod of appreciation and a snort of derision...
It’s time to say goodbye. The Romahome is sold, the money’s in the bank and the new owner will drive it away this afternoon. I feel kinda sad - we’ve shared some good times together - but also relieved. I can’t imagine a time when I won’t want to drive somewhere, park up and have a kip… so I’m on the lookout for a bog-standard van… just big enough to throw a mattress in the back…
In response to Afghanistan’s $500m budget deficit, the Taliban have dissolved five key departments of the former US-backed government. It will surprise nobody that the country’s human rights commission has been deemed surplus to requirements. Human rights in Islam are firmly rooted in the belief that God, and God alone, is the law giver and the source of all human rights: a conviction considered to be entirely orthodox and in no sense extreme.
Licenced today: the cooling towers of Drax power station, and some of the new houses, on the edge of Drax village, whose residents enjoy an enviable view...
More prescient observations from Krishnamurti, which arrived in my email in-tray this morning.
“Religions the world over have insisted on the torture of self-denial, abstemiousness, control, suppression, and every form of psychological amputation. Surely to find whatever there is to be found, something not the result of your tortured, despairing life, you must have a mind that is untortured, unmutilated, very simple, very clear, without having any particular direction; a quality of mind that is really innocent, though it may have lived a thousand experiences. You must have a certain quality of open, fresh innocence”.
Licenced today: the Leeds & Liverpool canal in the centre of Skipton...
