The start of a new week and the end of another month has been a mixed sort of day here in the Calder Valley. It was heralded by torrential rain and winds that beat against the bedroom window as the kind of dawn chorus you really don’t want to wake up to. Fortunately, I wasn’t booked to go anywhere and Dawn has the next fortnight off so I was happy to leave the weather to it whilst I pottered around at home, finishing another magazine article and getting my copy and pictures out to the Editor.

As the day progressed the weather grew tired, the wind and rain abated and the two of us nipped out into Halifax to meet Dawn’s parents for coffee for an hour at the magnificent Piece Hall, which was quiet due to the conditions. Caffeine levels topped up we went our separate ways in order to pick up some shopping and attempt to buy petrol. Thankfully, Yorkshire folks are less prone to panics, so whilst the Sainsbury’s garage in the centre of town was busy, it had fuel and the queues only stretched into a handful of cars – which is just as well as we’re driving down to Shropshire for a week in a few days time!

Back at home I retreated into the office to tidy up a few projects I’ve got in hand and finally get around to scanning a handful of old slides that have been sat on my desk for the past few weeks. The welcome return of commissions and work around the country has meant I’ve neglected that mission recently. As much as I wanted to, I can’t see me getting all the pictures scanned by the end of the year, but I won’t be far off. 2022 will certainly see the last ones completed – much to my delight!

I certainly won’t be getting any done tomorrow as we have have the funeral of our dear friend Tony Allan to attend. With everything that’s happened since he died I’ve not had chance to write the blog about him I’d in mind. Hopefully, tomorrow will provide a few more stories that’ll allow me to add other dimensions. Tony was quite private about sections of his much-travelled life and private family life, so I’m hoping to learn more as Dawn and I only knew him for less than 10 of his nearly 70 years. Sad as it will be, we’ll all be adjourning to our local pub afterwards where we’ll celebrate his memory with his own Phoenix brewery beers.

So, I’ll bring this blog to a close with the picture of the day, which is from the slides I’d scanned today. These were a batch that have never seen the light of day since I shot them back in July 1992. Taken in Java, Indonesia, they’d never even been catalogued as part of the film had been damaged soon after they were taken, so they sat in their sleeves waiting for me to get around to doing something with them. It’s taken a while…!

This shot was taken as I was wandering through Yogyakarta towards the end of the day. I love stree photography and always look out for snapshots of life like this. Stallholders whose shops lined the pavement had packed up for the day to allow their places to be taken by the night food markets, one woman found it all too much and decided to ‘power-nap’ by wrapping her head in a newspaper. The effect novel and all a bit Klu Klux Klan but it certainly caught my eye!

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If you enjoy reading this blog, please click on an advert or two. You don’t have to buy anything you don’t want to of course (although if you did find something that tickled your fancy that would be fab!), but the revenue from them helps to cover some of the cost of maintaining this site – and right now (because of Covid), us freelances appreciate all the help that we can get to aid us in bouncing back from lockdowns. Remember, 99% of the pictures used in my blogs can be purchased as prints from my other website –  https://paulbigland.zenfolio.com/

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There’s no long blog from me today. It’s Sunday and I’ve been busy having quality time with Dawn. The ‘orrible weather we’ve been having these past few days finally broke so the pair of us decided to ditch the plans we’d had for working at home and went out for a long walk along the Rochdale Canal towards Luddenden instead. We had a lovely stroll watching life returning to the trees as well as the canal. There’s an explosion of greenery right now as the woodland wakes up for summer. That said – it’s not all green – the woods along the canal and by our home are carpeted in bluebells! The wildlife is making the most of it too with ducklings busy making frantic zig-zagging convoys on the canal, accompanied by their (sometimes indifferent) parents. Boaters have also returned. We passed several narrowboats making their way to Sowerby Bridge although the town itself was surprisingly quiet as several pubs with outdoor seating remained closed – on a Sunday, normally one of the busiest days of the week. Maybe they’re busy getting ready for the relaxation of the rules on Monday? Who knows…

All in all, it was a lovely interlude. Now we’re back at home. Dawn’s busy cooking a curry for tonight and the smells coming from the kitchen are wonderful. I’ve been occupied mounting a load more slides to be scanned later in the week and getting ready for another foray to the South tomorrow. The new national rail timetable started today but tomorrow is the first weekday. Many trains that were knocked out of the timetable due to Covid have been reinstated as passenger numbers are growing again. Plus, there’s some new services too. East Midlands Railway have started their new electric train service from London – Corby today, so I’m going to sample it tomorrow. This means another early start as I have other things to check out as well. I’m expecting a long and busy day. I’ll be running a rolling blog as I see how services are faring and what day brings.

In the meantime, here’s todays picture. During my travels over the decades I’ve come across many strange sights and incongruous stuff that makes you do a double-take, think ‘what the f**k?’ – or just burst out laughing. Here’s one such sight. My last picture was from the amazing Mentawai islands and their incredible inhabitants who lived a life so removed from modern society and the present day. On our return to the modern world we were travelling downriver in canoes to get to the sea, ready to catch a ship back to Sumatra when I spotted this – a TV aerial atop a palm tree in the jungle! God knows how they were generating the power to run a television back in 1992 – or how they managed to get the thing up there! Mind you, I also wonder what the picture must be like when the tree sways in a high wind!

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If you enjoy reading this blog, please click on an advert or two. You don’t have to buy anything you don’t want to of course (although if you did find something that tickled your fancy that would be fab!), but the revenue from them helps to cover some of the cost of maintaining this site – and right now (because of Covid), us freelances need all the help that we can get. Remember, 99% of the pictures used in my blogs can be purchased as prints from my other website –  https://paulbigland.zenfolio.com/

Thank you!

I’m so happy we took note of the weather forecast and went out walking yesterday as today we’ve had traditional bank holiday weather – absolute crap! When I first gazed out of the bedroom window this morning I thought “well, it’s not brilliant, but at least there’s no rain”. Little did I know what was in store for the afternoon…

As we’d nothing exciting planned and Dee was feeling the effect of so much walking uphill we decided to have a lazy start to the day. Well, it was a bank holiday after all and we’d certainly put effort into yesterday! Several cups of coffee later we both decided that – actually – a day at home wasn’t really a bad thing. Then the rain arrived…

One of the beauties of where we live is that we have a commanding view across the Calder Valley and the direction that most of the weather arrives from, so we can literally see it coming. Today was a case in point as the skies got darker and more ominous, making it clear what we were about to experience. Depending on the speed of the wind we can normally expect to see the rain sweeping in about 10 minutes before it hits us and today was no exception so it was a case of batten down the hatches, make another coffee and get on with other things. In my case this was sifting and editing pictures for my next article in RAIL magazine then spending time Photoshopping another load of old slides from my 1991-92 travels that have been added to this gallery. So, not entirely a wasted day and listening to the rain beat against the windows was actually rather therapeutic.

Having felt virtuous because I’d achieved so much I decided to venture out for some shopping and get some exercise despite the weather. OK, I’d have to don full walking waterproofs, but what the hell, I was only going to the supermarket, not the North Pole. It seemed like a great idea at the time until I started walking back and the high winds arrived which turned the rain almost horizontal! It was at that point I realised that perhaps my waterproofs need a little TLC as they were were more water than proof! Despite my rainwater revelation I rather enjoyed being out in the eye of the storm. I don’t quite know what it is but there’s something about being out in the elements when you feel the full force of nature. Perhaps it’s the fact it puts you into perspective – puny humans with their momentary lifespan against the elements that are timeless and ageless.

The theme of the elements brings me on to the picture of the day which is another of my latest batch of old slide scans. I took this at Lake Maninjau in West Sumatra, Indonesia during the first week of June 1992.

In some ways Maninjau reminds me of where I live now although the landscape couldn’t be more different. Maninjau is a lake in the caldera of a massive extinct volcano. But, the lake is so wide and where I was staying faced the prevailing weather you could watch storms approach in the same fashion that I can now. The little ‘homestay’ I shared with several other travellers was right on the lake. We has access to canoes and rubber rings (old wagon inner-tubes) so we’d spend many a happy hour floating or swimming in the temperate waters of the lake. In the evening we’d sit there with a few beers, chatting and watching the sun set, which sometimes produced scenes like this.

I’ve a favour to ask…
If you enjoy reading this blog, please click on an advert or two. You don’t have to buy anything you don’t want to of course (although if you did find something that tickled your fancy that would be fab!), but the revenue from them helps to cover some of the cost of maintaining this site – and right now (because of Covid), us freelances need all the help that we can get. Remember, 99% of the pictures used in my blogs can be purchased as prints from my other website –  https://paulbigland.zenfolio.com/

Thank you!