Aberford...

Photographed one of my favourite buildings this morning: the Gascoigne Almshouses in Aberford...

Mecca...

I read an article today, on the Guardian website, about the difficulties that will soon be faced by pilgrims to Mecca, if climate change remains unchecked. As soon as next year, apparently, summer days in Mecca could become unbearably hot. Doing the hajj is an obligation on all Muslims who are physically capable of making the trip (and who can afford to do so). However, nowhere in the article does the author question why this is so. Millions of people fly to Saudi Arabia each year for a week of ritualised self-abasement, because of what one illiterate merchant heard in a cave 1,400 years ago. Does going to Mecca in such numbers really suggest that the participants are closer to an omni-present God? And, if not, then all those flights represent one hell of a lot of pointless air-miles.

A street in Hull, called The Land of Green Ginger...

Fish & chips...

No need to rustle up a meal this evening, having stumbled across this mobile chippy in a gorgeous little village called North Newbald...

"A loving gesture"...

Rugby player Israel Folau was sacked by Rugby Australia for posting on social media that “hell awaits drunks, homosexuals, adulterers, liars, fornicators, thieves, atheists and idolators”. He is back in court today, seeking $10m in damages, an apology from Rugby Australia and reinstatement into both his club and national teams. Having become a ‘born again’ Christian in 2017, he is also arguing for the right to express his religious beliefs.

According to a statement read out by his lawyer, Folau believed it was “a loving gesture to share passages from the Bible with others”. Who else but a true believer could spout such hateful nonsense, while configuring it as loving concern about the welfare of others?

Licensed today: a boat moored on Bassenthwaite Lake...

Harvest time...

I can’t remember a time in my (quite long) life when our political masters have looked quite as clueless as they do today. In 2016 David Cameron asked the country to vote on an issue which simply could not be boiled down to a binary choice: ‘leave’ or ‘stay’? Since then, parliament has been in meltdown. Now we hear that Boris Johnson will ask the queen to suspend parliament for a few weeks, while he gets on with the job of leaving the EU wihout a deal. This suggests that, in extremis, the queen might say “no”.

On her way to a UN summit on climate change, Greta Thunberg has sighted land. She tweeted this morning that she could see “the lights of Long Island and New York City”. We know we're living in strange times when we're outsourcing the solving of our most pressing issues to a woman of 93 and a 16-year-old girl…

William Wilberforce...

I was here - outside the house of William Wilberforce in Hull, waiting for a photogenic couple to complete the shot - when Ben Stokes was hitting the winning runs in the Headingley test match. It was such an unlikely victory. Out of the seventy runs required when last man Jack Leach joined Stokes at the wicket, Leach scored just one run. But he kept his wicket intact while Stokes blazed away at the other end. It was a game to rival the best test matches of all time (including Headingley 1981), and it keeps the Ashes alive...

Charity shop...

Licensed yesterday: a shot of an Oxfam charity shop...