For the past two days the weather has stopped being fun, a novelty to explore and capture on camera. There’s been no sunshine, just a dirty white cloud cover. From my kitchen window I’ve watched hour by hour as the icicles on the roof grew, melted when the temperature got above freezing for a couple of hours in the afternoon, and
View from my kitchen window
Our mailboxes
then refroze. Choir was cancelled. The director was snowed in. The recording of a CD by the wind band I joined was postponed since the recording engineer couldn’t get over the
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Pennines. I’d changed my travel dates for going to Ireland so that I could do the CD. Now I’m thanking my lucky stars that I wasn’t meant to be heading to Dublin yesterday. Many airports in the UK are closed. Less than 1/4 of the flights are leaving. 3000 people were stranded in their cars on the M62 overnight. That’s the main motorway between
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Lancashire and Yorkshire over the Pennines. The only road open over the Pennines is the A646 which runs directly past my apartment. Ah, that explains why I was woken by lorries passing in convoy before dawn. The news channels have relegated Mrs May’s Brexit speeches to second place as we see farmers digging sheep from show drifts as tall as houses and doctors walk 10 miles to get to their work.
Around lunchtime I heard the distinctive clip-clop of horses’ hooves and looking through the window I saw the incongruous sight of a Victorian funeral cortege driving along the road. Men in top hats sat atop the carriage pulled by six black horses.
I spent the day quilting, playing with iMovie and writing up my summer journal. I’m up to 19,122 words and I’m only up to July 22nd. It goes to August 25th, the day I flew back to the US. I feel that I really must finish it before I embark on my next trip.
From the chippy downstairs
I ventured outside mid afternoon but although the pavement by the road had been gritted, the passageway from my front door onto the street was literally one sheet of ice. There are two small grocery stores on my block. The first only had the 3 inch tubes of table salt. “No larger sizes?” I asked. “No, all sold out.” Next customer asks for milk. “Sorry, all sold out.” “Aw,” sighs the customer, “The Co-op’s all out of milk – and all veggies too!” It made me feel lucky that I’ve got milk. So I tried the next store. “Have you got any packets of salt?” I asked. “For cooking? Or de-icing?” I left with a bag of de-icing salt that she slit 
open for me so that I could spread it around on the ice in the passageway immediately. Supper was fish, chips and mushy peas from the chip shop beneath my apartment, and now I’m going to sit back and relax to Tones, Drones and Arpeggios. Yep, I’m a total nerd! 
through their white blankets. I headed for my favourite cafe, only to find this sign on the window. Really? It occupied the old Co-op building and had retained as much of the 
interior decor as possible – and it had always been packed when I went. It just didn’t seem to make any sense. So, next door is my favourite coffee shop in the town, Kava, so I had lunch there – which seemed to be exactly the same as the Co-op menu, so I asked about the closure. Apparently the lady who ran it has got tired and decided to give it up – simple as that.
magazine. It was filled with village activities. Again, I ask myself,”Where are these opportunities for social interaction in the U.S. There was even a flier advertising a photography project in which ‘participants will capture the ways they think their area is (or isn’t) ‘Age Friendly. Refreshments and travel expenses will be provided – and it’s all free.’! Hmm, that sounds interesting. One of the things that made me actually dive in and make the plunge to come and live in England was a morning I had spent in Todmorden, taking photos of the elderly, the disabled, the parents with toddlers and infants in papooses who were all doing their shopping, and I wondered where all those people are in America. I remember soon after I had moved to Boston, U.S, and i was doing the grocery shopping with my baby twins, and a lady came up to me and said, “Did the Nanny not show up today?” At the playgrounds it was primarily babysitters who were in loco parentis.
In the boxes I even found a doggie pedigree. The last Abraham Gibson was an avid Airdale terrier man. The current owner knew a lady who Mr Gibson used to give a ride to when she was a little girl. He had one of the first cars in Calderdale. His detailed account books are in the archives and go right up until the week he died in 1956. His personal diaries are there too, and postcards he received from friends or perhaps relatives on holiday in Blackpool and on a steam ship. Absolutely fascinating.
market on Thursday, and also got a baguette from the tiny bakery that’s directly beneath my apartment – along with the fish and chip shop. Once a week I see the potatoes arrive in big sacks carried over the delivery man’s shoulders!
It’s only a couple of miles around the reservoir and I found that it reminded me a lot of Entwistle reservoir in Turton. After crossing the dam I found myself in the woods, but what was this – a pile of old Christmas trees? I did a double take. OMG. Around the entire
perimeter of the reservoir is a hedge made out of recycled Christmas trees. I looked in vain, hoping to see at least one Christmas ornament, but the only object I found suspended from one tree was a price tag! By the time I got around to the far side of the lake the sun was on the horizon and the light was beautiful. Taking photos was a bit
And there in a wood a piggy-wig stood with a ring at the end of his nose
At some point I knew that I had to head down into the valley. Ah, I see a Public Footpath sign. Perhaps I should take that track. but what’s that I see lying in the grass?
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