bank holiday notes

After sitting in the bath writing I put my notebook and pen on the toilet seat pulled the plug grabbed my towel and stood up. I don't know how long I blacked out. Not for long because there was still water in the bath. I felt light almost but not quite sick and dizzy. Then I was crouching with my towel trailing in the water.

A man carrying a saw walked across the frozen canal to the field on one side. A large wet fallen black tree trunk lay behind a tree. After circling the tree trunk a couple of times he started to saw through it.

Bypassing Manchester en-route to Macclesfield the motorway was almost static in either direction for the last two junctions before the Trafford Centre.

I decided to take some deliberately mundane photographs in the flat to accompany this post. It felt necessary to break up the text but as I left my camera here over Christmas I had nothing from Lancaster to use. I set a white balance. The exposure time was so long I had to use a tripod.

A pleasant surprise speaking to a friend on my mobile phone as my fingers froze. At one stage a moorhen flew off the towpath ahead and landed on the ice at the other side of the canal sliding into the bank with an audible impact.

At home and finally back online I was sad to see that Jayaben Desai who stood up to the management of Grunwick's film processing plant had died. She and other mainly immigrant mainly female workers at the plant went on strike for improved conditions in a dispute that ran from August 1976 to June 1978.

Near Stockport a plane flying low with its wheels descended reminded me how much I enjoy flying.

A heron stood on the frozen canal. One foot curled. Not from injury so far as I could tell but for stability on the ice. When bread was thrown the heron lunged over the heads of the mallards to grab it.

Walking home from Manchester Piccadilly I was glad that despite the day's gloom and the wetness underfoot it wasn't raining.

That morning in Lancaster every bud that's likely to be leaves next year had a water drop. Everything solid being turned into the mist.