among these dark satanic mills

Gentrifying  The Grimy Republic It's a dirty job ,but someone has to do it.....

 Billy Blake's "Jerusalem " where he spoke of being 'among these dark satanic mills...', was written while he sat above Beacon Hill in Halifax ..(said Ken Kersey over a pint of locally brewed lager ,looking at this view)....

Only an accountant will tell you if the £19 million spent on the Halifax Piece Hall   
was worth the money? All I can say is, I was surprised today  how good it looks.
Me & Cath go next week to the opening of the new Halifax Library which is just next door to The Piece Hall.

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REST IN PEACE     My longtime Blogspot buddy Andrew Keogh here is his obituary in The Guardian. he died of lung cancer aged 66, and was a barrister, blogger, writer and political activist. He  was  born in Leeds.An avid Leeds United.Gratful Dead & Coffee  fan.....(n.b.we also had  a mutual friend in  Clive A.

They went to the L.S.E.in the early 70's)
  here is a link to "White Rabbit" to Andrew's  blogspot.Go on sweetly,dear legal man......

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A bit of a dilemma for me this weekend .
 I keep getting pestered by google to allow this blog to be included on their AdSense programme.Because of my large(ish) number of visitors they have given me some quite generous estimates of how much i might "earn" each month. Essentially, each time you visit here,the more money Google gives me .The joy of capitalism.
 So what to do? Should I take the capitalist shilling which goes against the spirit of what i do here? On the other  hand , what google would give me would more than pay for my smugmug photo album subscription each month. {n.b. never did it} At the  end of the day  I doubt I will take up this offer. But ,whatever , thank you kindly for each visit you make.Long may it continue.............
.

sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment

Me and Cathy with friends.

2nd left:My Aunty Brenda.

This week's sepia saturday

is around sepia ladies 'working out' in The Olden Days.

A fairly easy one for me this week.My Aunty Brenda travelled from

Scotland to Essex in the early 1900's.

It was a Ladies College.She  was training in Podiatry.

And this is how she did it.......

 it looks like she had her some fun.
This  must have been a quite liberating experience for a late-Victorian lass.......

From someone at the start of a career...to someone at it's end.
I retired on Wednesday...... I went out into Hebden Bridge at 4pm this afternoon for a few nice drinks with some of the lassies from work.
On Friday 1st September (kick off 7.30pm) I will be having drinks in The White Lion in Hebden Bridge . All Welcome

love will tear us apart.....

 https://zimnoch.smugmug.com/Peterloo-Joy-Division-Manchester-20-August-2017/
and......today's BBC tv report..here.....

Joy Division play Hulme in 1979

 [here]  

Plus, one of my videos.........

gentrifying the graveyard..........

 a video I took of Holly Lynch ,Labour MP for Halifax speaking yesterday in Lister Lane Cemetery. If you know Halifax,to get your bearings,behind her is Gibbet Street with Lightowler Road on her far left .....(site of the old Poor House). ".....he would smuggle information,shall we say "alternative leaflets", up into  Halifax from   London in a coffin..."
You can see all my photos & videos of the day here......zimnoch.smugmug.com/Lister-Lane-CemetryHalifax-16082017/.

no place to hyde

.So.I am related to the author Robert Louis Stevenson.

I have described some details about this here before.Here is a transcript of something I first posted on this blog  in July 2006[view here]

This week's sepia saturday concerns 'bookish' topics.......

So.Basically.My maternal grandfather was married 3 times. He had a child with each of his wives. (My mum's mum had died in childbirth). I am not related by blood to RLS,but my Aunty Brenda's mum was on that ol'literary  bloodline.. stuff was complicated in The Olden Days .......

I'm a shit genealogist (blushes) I dont know who the old couple are (.tho the bloke isn't my grandfather.I know that much!)But this is a nice ,rare,photo of the 3 half-siblings ,all together.My Mum's  sat on the couples knee.My Uncle Gordon sat on his half-sister Brenda's knee......I guess this was taken in Scotland.Probably Perth or Fife.

Several events coming up in the next couple of weeks that will be featured here later....

• Next Wednesday (16th) I attend an event at Lister Lane Cemetry ,Halifax  .It's the 175th Anniversary of The 1842   General Strike.4 Chartists are buried there.I dont know much about either the riot or deaths ( similar to Peterloo?) although the Mayor & local Labour MP will be in attendance."Brass Bands and refeshments"they say..... ! Let us eat cake While we mark  the   "Plug Riot"
• Next Sunday (20th) at Albert Square  Manchester me & Cathy go to see (among others) actor Christopher Ecclestone (a former Doctor Who) read out the Peterloo Massacre "NAMES"

• A week on Thursday (24th) in Hebden Bridge Pubs  (k.o. 4pm) I will be having a few cheeky drinks to mark my retirement.

Below,a slideshow my    photographs  from the 2015 Peterloo Memorial.

  Read About The Peterloo Massacre here
 
A nice bonus for me was finding thislocal blogspot which seems to cover similar terrain.

have you herd?

So. There was this dream.........a couple of nights ago. We arrived to find  my late mother ,Marjory.Dressed up in her finest. Looking very determined  " I Mean Business " she said,firmly.........looking like a castle with a scar across her shoulder....

"After the advent of Christianity, the goat or God Pan with his beard, cloven hoofs and horns, later became associated as the unofficial image of the devil........"gnosticwarrior.com/goat.html
This week's  sepia saturday
topic is around the theme of "goats".(Ummm...that's what I herd, anyway.......)
 So where to go with this one?
While I pondered this problem  ( not having any sepia goats myself,on my person )  i went on facebook for alternative  inspiration.
I visited a page that posts old photos of Halifax.A few years back i found an old photo of my Mum (working in a Infant nursey ) there..........  that i never knew existed!

This morning I may have found another?
Its taken inside St Mary's church on Gibbet Street in Halifax.It's   of a  Polish Mass  sometime in the 1970's. The priest holding the service is Father Gaik.
Now, I may be mistaken but the figure on the far right,back row,(black hair:brown top)  looks very much like my Mum!Maybe it;s not her at all?It's just that there is something about the way she holds her body,reminds me her.
I dont know if this possibility makes me happy  or sad........?

Pondering this ,while  in Bradford this morning on business.Having an hour to kill at lunchtime. I walked around
Little_Germany[wikipedia] 

and     Bradford Cathedral[wikipedia]

Hoping to find some goats carved or painted somewhere .No Joy, although i did capture some splendid William Morris stainglass windows & fabrics.albeit,goatless..........


https://zimnoch.smugmug.com/Little-Germany-Bradford-Cathedral3rdAugust-2017/ By pure chance,i was later at a meeting in Halifax this afternoon...a 100 yards from where i lived as a child with my Mum& Dad.After the meeting I took a few extra photos of the building i knew best as a child......