Greyness

Trees in the murk  north of Doncaster Road

Well, I was looking forward to Sunday morning because the weather people promised sunshine after a misty start to the day. Purely for exercise. I needed another long walk and of course it would allow me to gather another batch of photographs.

Former coal mining villages south of Barnsley were my goal - almost twenty miles from here. I planned to mostly walk in the nearby  countryside. The villages are named Darfield and Wombwell and because of past housing developments they now sit so close to each other that they are conjoined like Siamese twins.

Autumn leaf on the shattered glass of a bus shelter at Darfield

In the early nineteenth century they were both peaceful, thinly populated settlements focused upon agriculture but then coal took over and their populations advanced rapidly. Railway tracks and sidings surrounded the pitheads and terraced streets were thrown up to accommodate battalions of coal miners and their families. 

They remain tough places that rather lost their way when the once powerful coal industry was brought to a shuddering halt in the mid-1980's. In the intervening years, they have gradually been reinventing themselves. Wombwell is now home to 12,000 people and Darfield has a population of 11,000. They share a brand new secondary school called Netherwood Academy. Its lofty motto is "Inspiring  Beyond Measure". Good luck with that guys!

Trans Pennine Trail heading away from Wombwell along an old railway bed

Clint parked himself on Belvedere Drive to the north west of Darfield. It was ten o'clock and I was having my doubts about the weather forecast. Could the murky mist that clothed the district really lift before eventide?  It seemed unlikely and as it happens my pessimism was well-founded but at least it didn't rain.

Bracket fungus on a silver birch tree

I walked for almost three hours in the November greyness before Clint sped me back to Sheffield to prepare yet another Sunday dinner that complemented a tender joint of basted pork loin.  Outside darkness descended on a day that had not witnessed even the tiniest shaft of sunlight or a fragment of blue sky.

Old milestone in a Darfield hedgerow

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Eyeball

 “ Whats up with your eye?” 

So asked a patient’s relative moments later after I started to talk to him in the ward office

The sclera of my eye had turned an unsightly red giving me the look of a fat friendly zombie, which is not the look you want to have when you are sharing support on a hospice inpatients department.

Roger had given me a right swipe last night 

I irrigated my eye with chlorampenicol eye drops nicked from the work fridge but when I got home my eye felt sticky and painful 

Sailor John was waiting for me when I walked to the cottage.

Old Trev had had a fall in his garage  and had just been carried to bed by a young passerby who had heard his calls after lying there for a few hours.

I was happy to help sort him out , 

His niece will be accompanying him for a check up in hospital in a few hours time.

Ambulance waits in wales are calculated in hours 

It’s a scandal 

Typical of Trev , after we had assessed his pain , and warmed him up with multiple duvets and after I got him to show me he hadn’t broken his hip 

He said in his sing song , welsh accent, his tiny face peeping from under the bed clothes

“John , do you know you’ve done something to your eye?”

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Monday

 Cool mornings

Are here again

Change is around

May I welcome

Its presence 

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