Most of us respond positively to a challenge. I don't mean serious, grown-up challenges such as dry rot in your floorboards or your wife running off with the milkman, but life-enhancing challenges such as climbing a mountain or collecting matchbox labels. For some people it is pedalling a bike backwards up a very steep hill … Continue reading Temporal Adrenalin
Year: 2020
1949
My weekly instalment of a photograph from each year of my life is an appropriate one as, on Fathers' Day, it features my father, Albert, and me. It is doubly appropriate because his birthday would have been next week - he was born on the 25th June 1911. Happy Birthday, Happy Fathers' Day.
Strange Lockdown Hobbies No. 257 : A Tumbling We Will Go
My dear wife bought me a rock tumbler for my birthday. It's not just any rock tumbler, it's a National Geographic Variable Speed Professional Rock Tumbler! It is designed to stimulate my curiosity, occupy my stagnant mind, fill the empty hours of lockdown, and open my eyes to a world of beauty I had never … Continue reading Strange Lockdown Hobbies No. 257 : A Tumbling We Will Go
Hunting A Finisher
Old Haligonians in their hundreds came forward yesterday to pin down the location of the photo of, what I though was, Gaol Lane: it appears that it was, in fact, most likely the adjacent Ann Street. During the day I was sent several old maps of this particular part of Halifax, and the fascinating exercise … Continue reading Hunting A Finisher
Core Values
Happier days, when social distancing was all about getting your deck chair as near as possible to your loved ones. Times when faces weren't covered, but head were. Eras when a tracking app was nothing more than a core left on a railway line.
Go To Gaol
At some stage in the late 1960s, large sections of the bottom end of Halifax were demolished. These were the streets that ran from Market Street, down to the appropriately named Winding Road. They are etched into my youthful memory - longer, grander, greater than they undoubtedly were - but their names are largely lost … Continue reading Go To Gaol
1948
Given that it's my birthday, and given that I can't spend the day in the pub trying to ignore the onset of old age, I though I would revel in the passing of years by finding a photograph of myself from every year of my life. This will have to be a weekly project, so … Continue reading 1948
Salt, Pepper And Hillside
I must have taken this photograph in the late 1960s or early 70s. The two Halifax cooling towers - affectionately known as Salt and Pepper - were demolished in 1974. The first attempt to blow them up was remarkably unsuccessful, and a giant wrecking ball had to be brought in to complete the job. Between … Continue reading Salt, Pepper And Hillside
The Price Of Coal
This was taken at the Yorkshire Miners' Gala in Doncaster in 1982, just before the ill-fated miners' strike (1984-85). Within five years of it being taken, most of the Yorkshire pits were gone. Eternal vigilance was clearly too high a price.
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