Listed Time

A photograph from 1990 of the rather grand ornamental cast-iron clock tower at Greenock Customs House Quay at the mouth of the River Clyde. It's seen better days, but it's listed and about to be restored. And that's half the year gone: time seems to go so fast, and I've seen better days. I'm not listed.

The Law Of Decreasing Recognition

With a look pitched somewhere between haughty and flirtatious, this young woman posed before the camera of the Bingley photographer George Tillett more than a century ago. The resulting photograph will have been passed down family generations, subject to the sad laws of decreasing recognition, until it was sold off in a job lot of old photos at some jumble sale. Rescued and restored she becomes Miss Saturday the 29th June 2024.

Memory Lane

Yesterday I went in search of the day before. In some ways it was unchanged: the cobbles, the chimneys, the stone-thick mill walls. In other ways there have been changes: fine craft replacing hard graft, variety replacing dull monotony. The Shears Inn remains – historic and magnificent, and the beer is so much better than it was 40 years ago.

Shear Luck

 

I took this photograph looking down Boys Lane in Halifax towards the historic Shears Inn some forty years ago. It would be interesting to know how much has changed in this part of the town over those four decades. As luck would have it I will be revisiting the Inn later today, so I will be able to report back. The sacrifices I have to make in the interests of fair reporting!

Scanning Nature

 

I am always being told that I should get out more and that it is unhealthy staying in my little room scanning old images. So today I went out and as I walked the dog down the road I picked a few random wild flowers. I quickly returned to the safety of my little room and scanned them.

Black Friar

For a time, during the late 1970s, I had a job leading parties of foreign visitors on tours of historic London pubs. One of my favourite stopping off points was the magnificent Art Nouveau Black Friar pub on Queen Victoria Street, which, back then, had only recently been saved from the threat of demolition. As jobs go, leading educational pub crawls was about as good as it gets.

Stone

 

Halifax does stone well. The railway viaduct could be part of a Roman amphitheatre, and the mill could be the business end of a Gothic cathedral. The wall could be an early stone version of Tetris, and the chimney part of a Gormley sculpture. And there, in the background, is the source of it all - one of the great stone hills of Yorkshire.

Stirling Scan

What better way to spend Sunday than to walk down King Street in Stirling. On the left are the offices of the Stirling Journal and on the right is the Golden Lion Hotel, and in the distance, the imposing Athenaeum building. The walk started ninety-odd years ago when someone took a photo of the scene, and finished yesterday when I got to scan the faded old print.

Happy Birthday

 

Making the love of my life the subject of my daily calendar on her birthday fulfils two important objectives. It reminds me not to forget her birthday, which, after more than half a century together, I'm still capable of doing. It also provides me with a birthday card I can print off and hand to her - I'm from Yorkshire, after all. Happy birthday my love.

Bus Stops

Bus stops are the punctuation marks of life, the points at which you pause, draw breath, and see what comes around the corner. It might be the bus you want, it might be a new direction in life. The bus stop in this case was at the top of Oxford Street in Crookesmoor, Sheffield. The time was 1979.

Markets

I worked in Bradford for a time just after leaving school, and at lunchtime I would explore the wonderful old Kirkgate Market. It always seemed slightly more imposing than Halifax's Borough Market, as perhaps befits a city rather than a humble town. Bradford's market was torn down in the early 1970s and replaced with a concrete affair that seems likely to share the same fate before too long. Maybe I'm getting old and over-nostalgic, but I mourn the passing of the old, but not the new.