All the walking in this Lockdown Spring sunshine takes us down roads, so familiar, we have long since stopped looking. And then we notice something we must have passed a hundred times, and we see it for the first time. In this case, it was a magnificent stone face on Netheroyd Hill Road in Huddersfield.
A stem of grass seeds plucked from the side of the road. Living within a quarter of a mile of one of the busiest motorways in the country, existing within inches of a noisy main road. Walked on, peed on, kicked, pinched and scattered. Sheer beauty.
Another in my series of high-resolution scanned flowers. I think this was an orchid at one time in its life, but now it is old and withered, a little twisted, and well passed its prime. It is old age. I know what it’s like.
Yesterday, I went for a socially distanced walk with my son in the grounds of Wortley Hall, Sheffield. This magnificent eighteenth century stately home has, for the past half century, been owned by the British labour and trade union movement, and used for meetings and residential courses, as well as being made available to the general public as a venue. A beautiful setting for a gorgeous walk: grandeur without guilt.
When you’ve rearranged all the books on your bookshelves, watched all your box sets, re-indexed your memories, and there seems nothing left to do …. you can always scan a Welsh Poppy.
An old family photograph which must date back to the mid 1930s. The man in the photograph is Charlie Pitts, I am not sure about the woman next to him. It was taken in Blue Anchor, a village in Somerset, when my parents were on a motorbike holiday with Charlie and his lady friend.
Castle Hill in Huddersfield: There have been settlements here for more than 4,000 years and numerous hill forts and castle have stood on top of the hill. The current tower dates only from 1899, when it was erected to mark the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Victoria.
