Floods of Biblical Proportions Happened.

Photo taken by Martin Parr:1975: Manikinholes Methodist Chapel [near Hebden Bridge].

It was suggested less than two years ago that my town of Hebden Bridge   should be designated the UK's second city.
Today,as I write this ,the only businesses now  left open in the town are Nathan's Barbers:  Marco's Italian Greasy Spoon  

,2 small charity shops: Bonsalls DIY shop; The White   Lion Pub.; Boots Chemist &The Town Hall.That's all that left open/ habitable!

A week ago .Rain Came over a 12 hour period when  Floods of Biblical Proportions happened...

Destroyed in Hebden Bridge alone  are...2 churches;.3 Banks:8 pubs;The Post Office& sorting office; The Library:The Theatre:The Cinema:The Council's Elderly Day Centre:many hundreds of homes wrecked and/or  evacuated: The Coop Supermarket & approx 200 shops & business:factory units:are not habitable :bridges have collapsed:the only road out has a dirty big crack in it between Hebden bridge & Mytholmroyd.
Even 2 days ago 500 other homes in Hebden Bridge were without electricity.

This was just one town ! Others along the valley were just  as broken or,arguably, even worse.The towns and villages of Mytholmroyd:Todmorden;Copley:Sowerby Bridge:Brighouse:Midgley.etc etc all got hit    .......        

View Local Newspaper Images

A Million things happened this week.Here are just a few Vignettes that will have to act as a taste of things.
Over the New Year Weekend, the local  Town Hall is where the volunteers are organised.
 A huge room (the size of a half a football field) has free dry foods that have been donated & you can come in and help yourself.Plus cleaning products.etc:a kitchen & cafe were the Muslims serve the free hot food. Legal Advice etc etc is also  given.
Local People offer their  skills for free so,[Hebden being Hebden ] you can even get free Reflexology!
Today (new year's eve) I went to our only remaining barber to get a haircut.The owner Nathan (with beard) was offering haircuts/beer & disco.A interesting combination........The kids & Mums seemed to enjoy it..!

Loyds Bank: Hebden Bridge: last Saturday morning.

Sadly I have heard some  terrible stories from neighbouring   Mytholmroyd. The (fairly new build) Catholic church The Good Shepard ( a mini Liverpool cathedral / built in-the-round) is totally fucking. I hear the 80 year old Parish Priest was rescued in the dark while wandering dazed & confused down a side street.waist deep in water.
Nearby, in a big posh housing estate , rescue services couldnt reach because of water levels.Local farmers went from door to door to check everybody was ok (apparently a lot of elderly people lived there) .They burst into one Living Room and  found a silent, immobile elderly gent sat upright in his armchair with  water all around his waist.......Two big farming lads had to carry him out  to safety.......
Read *here* how the town is organising how to mend itself (& how you might wishes to help)

Dec 31st 2015.Beer/Disco/Haircut Promotion:Nathan's Barbers,Hebden Bridge.

This week i having been doing my small bit by trying to help salvage the Council's Elderly Peoples Day Centre.

The British  Army are here.So are groups of Muslim volunteers, from as far afield as London, who have been here this week helping us.

A few of the many Muslim Lads from London (300 miles away!)who came this week help us.

The local Muslim Community has been amazing !Halifax Mosques have set up a food kitchen & have been shipping in daily hot free food.

This is another one  of my legendary Sepia Saturday   posts.

from the halifax mosques.......

Volunteers from Halifax mosques join big clean-up in Hebden Bridge .(no sign yet of EDL turning up to lend a hand to help us ...)

Posted by Tony Zimnoch on Monday, December 28, 2015

Season's Greetings From A Flooded Hebden Bridge.( & our amazing fucking curtains)

John Lennon: 1974 studio outtakes :  

2015: my best photos.

https://zimnoch.smugmug.com/Photos-2015/

Manchester German Markets

click * here * to see images from  the Rochdale hamam's visit to Manchester's German Market.

one last singer in the land.....

December 19th marks the 75th  Birthday of Phil Och.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phil_Ochs
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Hill

PHIL OCHS: Live at Salle Claude Champagne, University of Montreal, Montreal, Canada; October 22, 1966. This song is from a show long been rumored to have been recorded by the FBI!
 Phil Ochs was one the greatest political (or, as he preferred, a topical singer) and songwriter who was known for his sharp wit, sardonic humor, earnest humanism, political activism, insightful and alliterative lyrics, and distinctive voice.
He wrote hundreds of songs in the 1960s and ’70s and released eight albums.
 The FBI kept Phil Ochs under active surveillance for 13 years.
 The introduction of The Freedom of Information Act revealed pages and pages of information on Phil with the FBI labelling him a “communist” with “un-American thoughts”.
Despite the hundreds of pages in his FBI file, the FBI never found that Ochs ever committed any federal crimes. He continued to be under investigation until his death by suicide in 1976.
 Ochs performed at many political events during the 1960s counterculture era, including anti-Vietnam War and civil rights rallies, student events, and organized labor events over the course of his career, in addition to many concert appearances at such venues as New York City’s Town Hall and Carnegie Hall.
Politically, Ochs described himself as a “left social democrat” who became an “early revolutionary” after the protests at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago led to a police riot, which had a profound effect on his state of mind.
 After years of prolific writing in the 1960s, Ochs’s mental stability declined in the 1970s. He eventually succumbed to a number of problems including bipolar disorder and alcoholism, and took his own life in 1976.

drinks in Halifax

Jeux sans frontières

"One in ten deaths during the Blitz was a child. Because of a fear that the Germans would use poisoned gas in their bombs people were given gas masks. Children were given brightly coloured gas masks to make them more appealing and fun......."http://www.thekidswindow.co.uk/news/ww2
Hey!  http://www.viewfromthisside.com/about/  is an important site for us sepians.Well  worth checking out. All my photos this week  are from this charmant website.
This is a   Sepia Saturday  post.  "think of caps, or children, or playground games or any of the hundreds of things Sepians like to think of....."

Practically .Visit this site to help children play in Gaza.     http://www.hopeandplay.org/

Try and get there before the Israeli's do..........

LOU REED, JOHN CALE & NICO
Live at Le Bataclan, Paris, France; January 29, 1972. Very good soundboard.

A one-legged -beggar in Liverpool.Today shook my hand......

Me & Cath went back to Liverpool today.
(We were there a couple of weeks ago.)  Got me a mess of  discount tickets from Northern Rail which 'need using. ......
Although we both had the start of Colds (& I had toothache) If not used today....,they would be  lost .
So,....... we  went to the Bluecoat Museum.
[Not been there since 1976 when i saw a film there with His Drayness .]
 It pissed down. Beggars sat in puddles. England's shame.
 Outside Job Centre Plus+ a man with one-leg was begging.I gave him(after much searching) a 50p coin. I told him it was all the change I had on me .
 He shook my hand. I could have cried as i left him.....a proud man ,who stands taller than i ever will........
This country is a mess......

other photos here.........https://zimnoch.smugmug.com/Other/LIVERPOOL5th-November-2015/

By marble slabs and in fields of stone

other nice pictures from the night.....
https://zimnoch.smugmug.com/Other/Halifax-29th-October-2015/

Ron Sexsmith :Hebden Bridge Trades Club.

Me and Sue Trigg went to Skool in the Olden Days!

https://zimnoch.smugmug.com/G-i-g-s/Ron-Sexsmith-Hebden-Bridge/

don't touch the third rail

  

Me and Cathy went for the day to Liverpool.

photos here..................

https://zimnoch.smugmug.com/Dropbox/LIVERPOOL-15th-October-2015/

Me in  the Walker  Gallery ,Liverpool ,Yesterday.
I studied and lived in Liverpool between 1976-1980.
(Teacher Training Certificate  & B.Ed(hons) from Lancaster Uniy& C.F. Mott,Huyton.)
My life in Liverpool was an in-between time for me. 
Many memories.Mostly good, tho i never loved the place the way i loved East London where I moved onto afterwards.......
Saying that ,Liverpool was,and is ,a Spirited Republic.
I wish it well in these dismal times in Dear Old Blighty.
God.England is shit at the moment.
A type of  purgatory.Non?

"The Dinner Party" [1980] by Sam Walsh. 

He was a Liverpool lecturer who painted this in the last years of his life.
 The sitters , who would never meet all at the same time, are people who from periods in his life. They include neighbours, solicitor, ex-wife, partner, bank manager & friends.

Simone Felice:8th October 2015:St.Michael's Church, Ancoats,Manchester.

Me & Cathy went with Capo Martin to St.Michael's de-consecrated church in Ancoats.
It was the first ever gig in a place that the Roman Jesus had  just vacated.........
(On the night, I think we all struggled with what  the correct ceremony for such an  occasion might be......?)
All i can say is that the acoustics in the place  are superb.Its clean,it's light & it has a good vibe.
A lovely sweet venue (tho the Bar charges Old Trafford prices!)
Simone was his usual Spiritual Self........a most underrated soul.
He had flown in from  New York that morning.He had been detained in a small room alone for 4 hours at Gatwick because of passport irregularities
 He seemed unimpressed with UK Border Control.......

[click to see all my photos]

a video i took:

The People's Assemby: Manchester March.

click  for all my Photos=  https://zimnoch.smugmug.com/Dropbox/The-Peoples-AssemblyMarch-4th/

flags & bunting from some grimy republic

I am nearly 65. Yorkshire Born & Bred! I was brought up in Halifax in the 50/60/70's . I always throught it "a grimy republic" . I love the place, but i still think it dark.......

UPDATE 28 feb 2018:   http://everton.blogspot.co.uk/2018/02/looks-like-some-cunt-from-cheshire.html

(n.b. all photos below are NOT B.H.'s )

Halifax.(origin unknown)

Although ,a case in point, clickthis Martin Parr photograph of Old Halifaxto see a photo  very similar to some of B.H.'s photos. Now Martin Parr    is probably my favourite English photographer. Remember ,me & Cath went to his curated exhibition at Manchester Art Gallery recently.I beg to suggest that several of B.H. 's unseen photos stand comparison with Parr's?
n.b. I wrote  this very brief overview
of Martin's work.  
This is a Sepia Saturday post.

My previous post here reports of my visit last Sunday night to Hope Baptist Church in Hebden Bridge .
I heard the political commentator & journalist Owen Jones speak.
 He talked about how we English are becoming disenfranchised from the  politics in our life.We  start  to believe poverty ,hunger& unemployment etc are all'Acts of God' .Inevitable ...just like the rain outside......
 As it happens, the BBC are filming a new series of Happy Valley at the moment ,in Hebden Bridge.
Two nights ago, on the street that I work, they were filming this scene.
Given the nature of Yorkshire weather,dig the irony.It wasn't raining,so they had to use artificial rain!

As a Halifax child of the 50's, I remember during our Wakes Week some people , not themselves away on holiday, would climb to the top of Beacon Hill to admire the view.
 We live in a beautiful place.During Wakes Wake all the factories shutdown spewing smoke,so it was the only time you could  see the beauty!
The photos I share here show plenty of washing-lines.All those white clothes! How did they keep'em clean within the smoke & rain?
To me,the clean washing look not like white flags of surrender ,but  defiance .
 I believe we see the same defiance in the works today of Jeremy Corbyn & that fine American Bernie Sanders.( a tad strained link....but there you go!)
Incidentally,Mr Sanders name was respectfully mentioned several times at the  church on Sunday

Halifax

I must admit,i cringed a little when i saw this on the telly live.('seemed a little bit too "Bono" for my taste ) But I agree with the sentiment , and it does make for a cracking end to this post.....
. Although!This is a Beautiful Englishman singing the song to its best
.Everytime i hear Robert Wyatt's voice ,i sort of roll myself  into a ball & weep gently...it's so beautiful in my humble opinion.