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WE'RE CHRISTMAS SHOPPING in Dewsbury but I can't resist wandering across the car park and spending a few minutes looking at a short stretch of the River Calder. This retail estate is built on old railway sidings close to the centre of town.There are Victorian mills in the background but this short stretch of Sands Lane serves a pocket-sized country riverbank. A Carrion Crow sits on a metal gate while it's mate is on the roof of a retail unit. There's a Mallard and a Coot on the river. A few gulls fly over. The river is flowing swiftly, well up in it's channel, but twiggy debris snagged in the trees and on fencing shows that it recently rose a further two metres, more than my height, above today's level.
At the Wakefield Naturalists' meeting the main news is of Waxwings which 'invade' the country in winter to feed on berries, often on shrubs planted in the centre of towns. They've been seen in Castleford and in the Hunslet/Beeston area of Leeds.
I was rather surprised too to hear a director of Nasa in an off-the-cuff remark saying 'Imagine a man in a white suit on walking on Mars with the blue Nasa logo on one shoulder, the stars and stripes on the other . . .' It would be absolutely the last thing I'd think about in terms of discovering and experiencing new worlds. The moon above us, the grass beneath our feet. To boldly go, with logos, where no man has gone before. What has become of us?
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Crackenedge, a sandstone ridge, dominates the centre of Dewsbury. Leaving town on the Wakefield Road, we wind up the deep cutting of Daisy Hill. The Town Hall, the mills, the chapel and the parish church, now known as Dewsbury Minster, are all built of local stone.
The town still has a traditional market on Wednesdays and Saturdays.
As we return, the half moon is hovering just above the horizon behind bare trees. It looks like a gigantic golden bowl. I read somewhere that Pizza Hut had considered projecting its logo onto the moon using powerful lasers, but luckily the scheme has come to nothing. I detest the practice of colouring the grass at sporting events with trompe l'oeil perspectives of company logos. Posters, yes if you have to have them, but please leave the turf alone.