Four day holiday

I am at the end of four days holiday. Rather than anything between Christmas and New Year, or the day between New Year and the weekend, I took the two days after the weekend following New Year.

Over those days I took a few walks. On Saturday I walked out to Astley (near enough) along the Bridgewater Canal, and back via the East Lancs Road and Salford. On Sunday I walked out to Carrington Moss where I recorded my next Friday vocal sound improvisation, The Ground Talks Back to the Feet. Yesterday, Monday, I walked to Stockport and back, and earlier wrote the piece previously posted here, The Seven Deaths of Donald Trump. I have become aware since writing that there is already an existing play of the same name. I may have been dimly aware of the title when the play came out in 2018 and I think gained publicity. But beyond that I have no idea what the play is about. So this is just an unfortunate collision of the exact same title.

Today, for my last walk of the holiday I walked to Oldham. Usually the outward journey is by road, unless I am short on time and take the tram. Then from the town I will go to The Oldham Way and follow footpaths through various parks into Manchester. This time, because of the shorter daylight hours, I decided I would do it in reverse. So I set out from home, walked to Philips Park (the Manchester one, not the one in Prestwich), from there to Clayton Vale, to Daisy Nook Country Park, then to Rocher Vale. I really love this valley, it's beautiful. I had some trepidation about the short but precipitous section of footpath which I find worrying even in summer. I expected it to be treacherous, wet and slippery in the snow, especially with temperatures a little higher, but it was fine. It is where I recorded my latest short improvisation, Tuesday Should Be Sunday. Once in Oldham, the plan was to go across town and take the Rochdale Canal all the way back into Manchester. But there was not a lot of daylight left, so I came back by road.

Earlier in the day I finished the poem that I had been working on for six weeks. This is the second poem in a projected sequence of four, Another Collapse (see my previous post).

I feel refreshed, as though I have had more than four days off. I am not psyched about being back in work tomorrow, but that's how I pay the bills.

All the photos here are from today's walk. As is the short below, in which you can see part of that walk as previously mentioned.