Today’s my last day of being ‘confined’ to barracks as it were – although it’s not been a bad one at all. This morning I was kept busy in the office, sorting out emails and preparing for the conference in Goole tomorrow. I’ll be blogging throughout the day (as time permits) to keep up abreast of what’s going on. Organised by Birmingham’s BCRRE the title of the event is ‘Supporting the rail supply chain’. There’s a good range of speakers and the guest list shows the event is well-attended. I’ll certainly be catching up with some old friends and familiar faces at least.
This afternoon the tempo was very different. Rather than being chained to my desk I was stapled to the sink! I’d several dishes to cook for Dawn’s works ‘do’ tomorrow, which kept me occupied for most of the afternoon. Now the house is full of delicious smells because of all the different fresh spices I’ve used. There’s or staple – tarka dahl (dahl with fried spaces). Aromatic Bombay Potato, which I haven’t cooked for a while, plus another batch of cucumber curry. After work Dawn made a creamy Chicken Korma whilst I finished off the session with fragrant Basmati rice, cooked with Cinnamon, Cloves, Cardamon pods and Bay leaves – with an added dollop of butter. If you’re hungry, look away now…
All prepared. The ingredients for Bombay potato.The finished product – and just as good as I remember it.Tarka DahlCucumber curry. I posted the prep’ for this a few days ago.
Time to go. I’ve got to pack my kit for tomorrow as I’m on an 07:39 train in the morning…
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Today’s been a mixed one here at Bigland towers. After yesterday’s unplanned adventures we’ve stuck very much to home. The slowly improving weather and lack of rain presented me with the opportunity to get out into the garden, tidy up and pot/repot more plants. I’ve now a haul of yellow Irises ready to go to a new home with the friends of Mytholmroyd station. Ironic really as my original specimens were rescued from canal dredging and bank rebuilding in…Mytholmroyd! The Irises have spread like wildfire over the past few years so I’m more than happy to pass some on as I reorganise the front garden. I’m also amassing a collection of Lupins as the original I put in the garden a decade ago has proved to be be rather invasive and in need of dividing. Add in this years bumper crop of herb seedlings and in a couple of years I could open a garden centre!
This afternoon the focus switched to shopping. The pair of us headed out to a couple of local Indian supermarkets to stock up on ingredients we were running low on, slab of tins of chopped tomatoes being one as we go through them like a dose of salts! Red lentils are another. Part of the reason for our expedition was the feast we’re preparing for Dawn’s work gathering next week. Sadly, I can’t make it as I’ve got to be elsewhere but I enjoy the cooking – even if I don’t get to see people enjoying the end result. Mind you, I’m cooking on a scale that means there’ll be plenty to go in our freezer as well as to feed other folks.
Now the day’s moving on and the two of us have decided to have a relaxing evening. Tonight we’re eating some of Dee’s fabulous home-made lasagne on a bed of salad leaves whilst we watch some entertaining but lightweight spy/action nonsense on TV. We’ve chosen ‘Operation Fortune: Ruse De Guerre’ on Amazon Prime. Directed by Guy Richie, it stars Jason Statham and Hugh Grant along with many other names, providing some good action sequences and quite a few laughs. Hugh Grant as an arms dealer is particularly good. So, whilst we enjoy that I’ll leave you with today’s picture which comes from yesterdays trip out to Oxenhope and Haworth. On the way back we took the road along the Northern edge of the Calder valley which offers some fantastic views. This shot was taken high above Mytholmroyd looking South-West.
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Today’s been one of unexpected variety and visits to places I’d no idea that I’d end up in. Because of that it’s now late, too late to write a blog that does the day and the places we visited justice – so this is going to be a very short blog indeed. I’ll explain more in detail tomorrow.
Our impromptu afternoon meant that we ended up having lunch in the Robin Hood Inn at Pecket Well high up in the hills on the road between Hebden Bridge and Oxenhope. This is a lovely pub in a great location and the food is well worth calling in for. Dawn had the fish and chips whilst I enjoyed a huge Yorkshire pudding stuffed with beef and gravy, served with chips and vegetables which I struggled to finish. At £12.50 one can hardly complain about the price. Feel hungry yet?
Dawn’s was a small portion! The exterior of the Robin Hood. They have a beer garden to the right which has some great views across the Calder Valley.
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Another double dose of blogging today. First there was the High-Speed 2 update this morning, now were back to the usual summing up of the day, which was pretty much as I expected it to be thanks to the weather – cold wet and windy! I’m getting bored of April showers. I know February was meant to be a very dry month but both March and April must have made up for it by now, so can we have some sunshine soon, please? We’d both appreciate it – as would our heating bill. I don’t mind wearing an extra layer of clothing whilst I’m sat at home working but I draw the line at bashing a keyboard whilst having to wear mittens!
Still, not a bad day all in all. I managed to get a fair bit done before venturing out down to Sowerby Bridge to pick up some shopping. I even won £5 on a scratchcard, so things must be looking up. OK, a few added zeros would have been nice, but hey ho..
Back at home I knocked off early in order to indulge in some cooking therapy and practice making a dish I’ve not made for a while. Next week Dawn and I are taking in some home-cooked Indian dishes to the Community Rail Network office in Huddersfield for a staff gathering and I thought make one for us this evening. Cucumber curry. No – really! This is made with cucumber, red pepper, creamed coconut and a variety of spices and tastes divine. So, today’s picture was taken in our kitchen as I prepared the dish. Regular readers will know that I like to have all my ingredients pre-prepared and laid out ready for cooking. Here’s tonight’s.
Clockwise from the top: Chopped cucumber. Roughly crushed salted peanuts. Dried red chillies. Garlic and Curry Leaves. Mustard and Cumin seeds. Sugar, Salt and Turmeric. Creamed Coconut mixed with water. In the centre – chopped Red Pepper. Also used is some vegetable oil.
Tomorrow’s rather different as the pair of us are off to Mytholmroyd as guests of the station friends for their annual lunchtime gathering which is always a convivial event. No doubt a few pictures will appear at some point…
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Another less than vintage day here in the Calder valley as the weather forecast wasn’t far wrong. Whilst last night’s high winds had dropped by this morning the rain returned, making this a rather wet Wednesday. As if that wasn’t enough to lower one’s mood I ended up in a frustrating fight with technology for several hours. I’d planned to update my eBay account to reflect the new postal rates but the site kept crashing which was rather annoying. Undeterred, I started consolidating 2023s pictures from various hard-drives only to find one decided to play-up by refusing to copy over large folders. I ended up needing to leave my machine running and go for a walk whilst it huffed and puffed but at least that way I got some exercise – even if it was in the rain. I suspect I’m going to have to invest in a new portable hard-drive although I rarely need to use them nowadays except for extra storage and as a back-up whilst I’m travelling – although cloud-based services offer enough space to do that now – as long as you have an internet connection, which is where the hard-drives still come in useful.
Come late afternoon I decided ‘bugger this for a lark’ and retreated to the kitchen to knock up this evenings meal. I made a Chana Masala from scratch. Cooking is one of my therapies and today that was needed! There’s plenty left over for portions to be frozen for another day, although we did polish off the last of the chapattis – something else to add to the shopping list. Much as I like preparing Indian meals from scratch I’m quite happy to buy ready-made Chapattis!
As for tomorrow, another day struggling with technology beckons I reckon – and yet more indifferent weather. Still, as always – there’s plenty to do. Now, what picture can I entertain you with today? I’ve not been out with the camera for a few days now because of time limitations and the weather, but I did come across this with the camerphone the other day when I was walking along the canal. Here’s when you only have a narrowboat but want to channel your inner Viking…
Storage is always at a premium on narrowboats but these boxes with solar-panel roofs are a nifty way of solving the problem – and decorative too!
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There’s not much of a blog from me today. Not that there’s nothing to say, rather that there’s too much and I’m not in the mood for polemics. Much of my day has been spent catching up on bits of work and planning my diary, a task made slightly harder when a a press lunch invite is sent out (so entered into the diary) only for it to be cancelled without reason just a few hours later. Ho hum!
My morning was spent glued to my desk, which wasn’t much of a hardship as the weather here in the Pennines has been pretty miserable with lots of cloud, temperatures way short of double-figures and buckets of rain. I did venture out this afternoon as I needed to drop a parcel off at the Post Office in Sowerby Bridge and pick up a few bits of shopping, but it wasn’t much fun walking back along the canal as the rain decided to follow me. Even the dog walkers I passed looked like they’d rather be somewhere else. I know the feeling!
This evening the rain appears to have stopped, but only because the winds sprung up. The forecast suggests we’re in for another wet and blustery day tomorrow so it looks like another day working from home is the best plan. No matter, I’ve got plenty to be getting on with…
With the weather being so miserable I’ve opted for a more colourful picture today so here’s one from the archives. I didn’t really make it to a beach on my recent Asia travels, unless you count stopping off to admire one whilst waiting for a bus on Penang Island. In retrospect I wish I’d had some beach time, but it wasn’t to be. Here’s a beach I used to frequent on a regular basis but I haven’t been back for 20 years now and I doubt it looks this empty anymore. This is the long beach at Arambol, North Goa, India seen on the 31st January 2000.
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Don’t you just love Bank Holidays? Today’s was very traditional in that it was a complete washout. Yesterday was iffy but Easter Monday here in the Calder Valley was awful. Whilst the morning seemed fair to middling the afternoon was one of persistent rain and gloomy light levels that made you think you were in Winter, not Spring. There was no chance of getting out for a decent walk without getting soaked so the pair of us stuck to the indoors until the afternoon when meagre sunshine broke through the storms long enough to allow us to nip out to do some food shopping. Please Sir – can I go back to Asia?
Now it’s late evening and the only solace has been food. I knocked up a stir-fry earlier using some of the leftover Duck from yesterday which has been followed by Dawn’s superb ginger puddings.
I’m looking forward to normal service being resumed tomorrow as I’ve lots of things I want to get done. I’ve never been a great fan of the Easter bank holiday. I was always happiest when I was working across them and earning the money to spend when no-one’s charging premium prices and the kids are back at School! Still, there’s lots of things to look forward to in the next couple of months and my May Diary is packed to say the least. In the meantime, expect a few blogs from here and there as I stretch my legs around the UK on assignment for various clients.
With the weather being so crap today I’ve been limited in what pictures I can take, so today’s another foodie shot. Ginger pudding and cream anyone?
I’ve a small favour to ask… If you enjoy reading this or any of the other blogs I’ve written, 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 me to cover some of the cost of maintaining this site (which isn’t cheap and comes out of my own pocket). Remember, 99% of the pictures used in my blogs can be purchased as prints from my other website – https://paulbigland.zenfolio.com/
Today’s been one of those rare days that has absolutely nothing to do with railways. Instead it’s been all about the holiday – and food…
Dawn’s been a busy Easter bunny over the past couple of days, cooking up an absolute storm as we’ve spent to day with her parents over in Huddersfield, having prepared a festive feast for the four of us. I played my part as kitchen assistant and chief washer-up, but the lions share of the work’s been done by Dee. We’ve eschewed the traditional Easter fayre of lamb and went for pork and duck instead. But even that wasn’t particularly traditional as the Duck was served cold or in a stir-fry medley mixed with Hoisin sauce. So, for the past few days our cottage has been filed with the most delicious smells as the pork was prepared in a slow-cooker and the duck in the oven.
The idea was to get as much prepared at home before we ferried the food (and ourselves) over to Dee’s parents where everything was assembled in their kitchen. Oh, I forgot to mention the home-made gravy with apples, Shallots, Dijon mustard, celeriac, white wine, chicken stock and honey garlic and Thyme. Then there was the pork crackling, made from the fat off the joint and crisped to perfection at home. Plus – as a dessert – sticky Ginger puddings with a ginger wine and brandy sauce…
Feeling hungry yet?
In preparation for such a repast the two of us stretched our legs and burned off a few calories by wandering around a local beauty spot. Beaumont Park is on the edge of the valley looking out towards Castle Hill and a place called Armitage Bridge. It was the nearest I got to a railway today as there’s an impressive viaduct below which allows Penistone line services to cross the gap.
Now, having stuffed ourselves, we’re back at home. The surplus food’s stashed away. It’ll feed us for the next few days, allowing us to concentrate on other holiday activities. We’d planned to have a long walk tomorrow but the forecast isn’t looking like the weather’s going to play ball. Even so – tomorrow’s a day for just the two of us. We’ll get out somewhere – we just don’t know where yet. Meanwhile, i’ll leave you with today’s picture, which is one of the views from Beaumont Park. I must come back with the proper camera one day…
With Castle Hill in the background, the Honley viaduct on the Penistone line dominates this view from Beaumont Park.
I’ve a small favour to ask… If you enjoy reading this or any of the other blogs I’ve written, 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 me to cover some of the cost of maintaining this site (which isn’t cheap and comes out of my own pocket). Remember, 99% of the pictures used in my blogs can be purchased as prints from my other website – https://paulbigland.zenfolio.com/
Today’s been another glued to my office chair sort of day as I’ve waded through various files, folders and general paperwork whilst trying to clear my desk of various old tasks as well as book some new ones. The diary’s now looking fuller as a consequence. The day started off as miserable as yesterday weather-wise but picked up by the afternoon, although the sun was beaten back by a cold wind so temperatures remained on the chilly side – something I really noticed when Dee and I broke away from or desks to venture into Halifax in order to sort out various chores. Dawn dropped me off in the town centre so I could pick up a parcel and wend my way back via my bank. Gone are the days when I was a regular at my old bank in Crouch End in North London, paying in a stream of cheques from various clients. Not only is the Crouch End branch of Natwest now history but I can’t think of the last time I was paid by cheque. I visit the Halifax branch around once a year and that’s only to deal with issues with bank cards as I happen to be in town. Even they can be dealt with online nowadays either via the internet or banking apps on one’s phone. The days of imposing (and busy) bank branches are long gone. Sowerby Bridge doesn’t have a single bank left and Halifax is losing many – including branches of the Halifax! Walking home in order to boost my daily steps gave me time to reflect on these things. I’ve only lived here for 13 years but the changes I’ve seen in that time are many. Talk about time flying…
One change that seems to be taking one step forward and two steps is the treatment of women in the railway preservation movement. Today, Twitter has been all aflutter over the treatment of a well-known woman fireman (Joanne Crompton) who’s up for a Women In Rail award due to her fight against discrimination in the preservation movement and to improve the lot of female volunteers. Having won a case for unfair treatment and unacceptable behavior against the East Lancashire Railway she was promptly sacked as a volunteer.
The news soon went viral. The negative reaction to the news was compounded when it was discovered that the Chair of the ELR board had been on a pre-emptive spree on Twitter, blocking dozens of people in the rail industry and rail media, many of whom had never interacted with him or even heard of him. The block list even includes rail company MDs! Talk about an own goal!
The ELR have yet to make any public statement about the matter (unless you count the Chair of the board frantically blocking people as a statement) which has compounded the problem – and outrage. Of course, every story has two sides – as Joanne herself has said – but many of us who have been involved in railway preservation in the past feel uneasy about this, because we know what it can be like.
I was a teenage volunteer in railway preservation back in the 1970s when the landscape for women was bleak. If you volunteered you’d end up in the shop or the cafe – forget about getting anywhere near the footplate. Misogyny was commonplace, as was racism. I’d hoped times had changed but I know the problem with the ‘nostalgia’ sector is that sometimes it isn’t just about recreating the positive things about the past, there’s a hard-core who want to preserve less inclusive social attitudes too.
Joanne is one of those people whose been brave enough to challenge these attitudes and even gave a speech about her experiences to the Railway Heritage Association in 2021. Here’s a link via Youtube.
Joanne’s no wrecker. Her passion and commitment shine through, as does her sense of justice. If it’s to survive, the railway preservation movement needs to listen to Joanne and all those other people who want to volunteer but who feel excluded for a number of reasons (including gender, and sexuality) because in voicing these problems Jo is not alone.
So, today’s picture is another video – and it’s dedicated to Joanne and the work people like her who to try and drag railway preservation into the modern era…
I’ve a small favour to ask… If you enjoy reading this or any of the other blogs I’ve written, 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 me to cover some of the cost of maintaining this site (which isn’t cheap and comes out of my own pocket). Remember, 99% of the pictures used in my blogs can be purchased as prints from my other website – https://paulbigland.zenfolio.com/
Yesterday we had wall-to-wall sunshine, today we’ve had wall-to-wall rain! It’s been a thoroughly miserable one here in the Calder valley. Half the time you couldn’t even see the valley tops. Still, I had plenty to keep me at home today so the my time wasn’t wasted. I managed to finish editing all my pictures from last weeks trips to Nottingham and the various HS2 sites – as well as yesterday’s jaunt over to Manchester and Stalybridge. I’ve also made a serious dent in some paperwork as well as getting another selection of recent eBay sales off to the successful bidders. So, all in all – not a bad day. The eBay sales involved a trip down to the post office in Sowerby Bridge so I still managed to get in my daily constitutional, even if I was looking rather soggy by the time I returned. I’m missing the warm rain of SE-Asia!
Another day working from home beckons tomorrow as I’ve a load more stuff to stick on eBay as well as adjusting the postage rates for the previous batch of stuff that remains unsold. It’s a chore but it has to be done. Hopefully, by Friday I’ll be free to sally forth once more…
Yesterday’s pictures can have been divided between several galleries. There’s Northern rail services here, Trans-Pennine services here and infrastructure and engineering pictures here.
Now, having cooked a meal for the pair of us (Dee’s still slaving away over her keyboard downstairs. The end of the financial year’s a mad time for her work, which involves long hours) it’s time for me to switch off at least. Therefore I’ll leave you with today’s picture which features on of the current crop of Trans-Pennine express services diverted via the Calder Valley. The Diggle route via Stalybridge reopens on the 7th April so these trains will revert to their normal paths during the week until the next blockade takes place. I’ll bring you pictures of the rebuilt Stalybridge station just as soon as I can.
TPE’s Hitachi built unit 802209 speeds through the classic old station at Hebden Bridge with 1P32, the 1543 Newcastle to Liverpool Lime Street, making an interesting contrast from the staple diet of Northern DMUs which work the line.
I’ve a small favour to ask… If you enjoy reading this or any of the other blogs I’ve written, 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 me to cover some of the cost of maintaining this site (which isn’t cheap and comes out of my own pocket). Remember, 99% of the pictures used in my blogs can be purchased as prints from my other website – https://paulbigland.zenfolio.com/
