Past and present

It was the greyest of grey days today. The sun didn't shine, the cloud was dense and the light low, visibility was poor. It didn't help that I am still reading Cormac McCarthy's "The Road" set in a grey, bleak post-apocalypse landscape. It infected my mood.

We went for a muddy walk from Longwood in Huddersfield up onto the hills above the town, eventually looking down on the arterial M62 motorway.

The picture I've blipped today though was taken from the window, indeed through the blinds, of Dr T's first floor flat in Longwood. This view in many ways for me encapsulates the old and the new Huddersfield. A South Pennines mill town, there are redundant mills and chimneys everywhere and above the town a network of small scrubby fields and woods. The stonework of many buildings is still sooty from the days when the mills and homes all burned coal. The landscape is now post-industrial, the buildings often have preservation orders that prevent them being demolished and replaced. New uses have to be found and often enough it is conversion to apartments as here with the Parkwood Mill.

Back at home now, preparing for another week at work. Thursday is the deadline for the 1000 word selection statements. The guidance for these is vague and ambiguous, and staff are interpreting it in different ways. I'm trying to help other people as well as do my own. I'm drawing on my experience of using a similar system in recruitments, but will the people who will be scoring these statements have the same understanding as me? It all feels like a bit of a lottery.

I fear too much of my feelings is coming through in this journal. I'm not feeling very upbeat, and I don't think that is typical of me. But I set out for this to be a record of my year, so I suppose I am being true to that. All I can say is sorry to those other folk who perhaps read this stuff. Optimism will return soon, I promise.