A little bridge

If this looks a tad familiar that's because I've posted the other side of it here in glorious technicolour..

The weekend in black and white is here.

A manifest denial of the truth

With a few tweaks here and there a dull afternoon's walk down Snuff Mill Lane becomes a promenade along a fiery glade. 

On the return journey, in the darkening twilight, we encountered several bats flying just inches over our heads on this stretch. Must be the exceptionally mild weather bringing them out.

 

*Insert the usual seasonal cliché here*

  

I'm feeling even lazier than normal so the next few days may be filled with trees going orangey-yellow like it has never happened before. This scene is near Driffield keld last seen in verdant splendour here.

Sitting in the railway station

I had a few minutes to sit and ponder on the 169 year old Driffield station and what's left of its glory. Above is the old stationmaster's house and the brick stand for a water tank, those white vans are parked in the old coal yards, while behind me the former goods yard is now modern houses. Just up the track to the right there were cattle loading facilities to take beasts to west Yorkshire from the cattle market in town. Below is the passenger station which once had a fine roof like Beverley station but now just awnings keep out the rain. Nowadays just four small trains an hour pass through whereas in the 1940's there were up to 125 train movement in one morning!
Well good riddance to all that I say. Coal is a foul stinking fuel, steam engines are inefficient mucky things and the great British railway system was a complete and utter unco-ordinated shambles with hundreds of uneconomic lines running hither and yon. There's a progress of sorts in all this, canals put out the wagoners, train put out the bargemen and diesel lorries put out the trains. No doubt the lorries and vans will be put out by something as yet unknown (though I don't see drones taking off, if you pardon the pun).
In the UK, unlike just about every other country,  the state played no part at all in planning or building the rail infrastructure. The early 19th century saw a mad rail glut as it were, completely bonkers and bound to fail which it duly did along with much criminality and fraud. After the last war rail was nationalised and rationalised and was working pretty well until monetarist ideology sold it off. Nowadays our rail system is officially much better organised with a mere 28 companies receiving between them a meagre £4 billion in state subsidies though it is said that this may rise (or skyrocket as one opposition MP put it). But surely it is only right and proper for the latter-day successors of George Hudson that the costs inherent in owning a licence to print money from a natural monopoly should be placed firmly on the broad shoulders of the long suffering taxpayer.
I'd better go now, I'm beginning to ramble incoherently ...

If you really want to know just about everything there is to know about Driffield station then follow this link.

What the Hull is that?

You'll have heard of the City of Culture thingy that approaches in 2017, well every thingy like this needs a thingy, a what's it, erm a logo;  that's it. And here,  designed by committee, is the very thing that will adorn all events for that year and thereafter, per omnia saeculorum. I'm told it's not a drowning menorah ... but a series of aitches (aitch, as in Hhhhull, geddit? the irony being that the aitch is almost always dropped in common parlance, it's 'Ull, doncha know!) disappearing into the horizon; like I say, designed by a committee to please a committee.

To go with this there's a collection of soggy slogans whose utter banality defies belief, here's a taster: "Someone bothering you? Tell them to go to Hull" (Ba dum tsh!)  or "I went there for the Hull of it" (that'll have them queuing for miles on the M63!). And they pay real people real money to come up with such an original play on words. I know you think I'm making this stuff up, don't you?  ... well click here or here and be underwhelmed.

For my next trick ...

You sometimes see some odd things as you pass through town on a Saturday. I'm pretty sure a three year-old could figure out this old illusion outside a well known purveyor of beef patties. 

Angel wing

Oh dear. This poor swan has angel wing, a deformity of the last joint of the wing that causes feathers to stick out from the body instead of lying flat. From the little I've read about it, it's thought it could be caused by too much protein in the diet and this guy swimming in a pond near Driffield was very fond of the white bread being thrown to him by little children. So if you're tempted to feed the ducks and so on chuck them some seeds instead.  I've also read that the outlook for birds with this condition is bleak but either there's a lot of this about or this guy has been lurking around Driffield for at least five years since I took the picture below in 2010.

Weekend reflections are here.