Jembaboy's profile

Signifiers of the past are built into the fabric of the Hill. Historical generalities rest on the surface. In the network of too-narrow roads or the facades of early Victorian houses. Or Georgian, even Tudor, buildings. More personal, particular histories lie deeper. Buried beneath the everyday. Jane Pole had lived in her early Victorian terraced cottage for five months before she unearthed the first broken shard. It was a warm July day, and the sun gave out an enveloping heat which made her ...

It was a few days before Christmas. The early afternoon sunlight, never more than a suggestive paleness behind grey clouds, was killed by the pollution-caked window of Paul Thomas’s Civic Hall office. What natural light reached his desk was no more than a cold remnant of the off-white radiance soaking the outside world, where concrete buildings, cement pavements and tarmac roads reflected the colour of the sky — water marks, chewing gum blotches and oil stains dappling their canvas. He didn’...

Blue to left and right. Apparently I live in A land of rivers.

Mr Cook paid no attention to the Planet World advertisement the first time he saw it on dinner time tv, happening to be engrossed in the slicing of a particularly well done pork chop. Only when the same commercial was repeated in the break during Football Funtime, while Mr Cook was negotiating the froth on the top of a can of draught Budleigh Best Bitter, was his attention drawn to the superlative vacation experience Planet World offered families from every socio-economic group above delta mi...

The Last Place The cemeteries of Heptonstall Are feted by the living, With faded tombstones lying flat, Anonymous as eggs; A pavement of remembrance. A mourning and a ruined church Hold hands like leaping lovers might. While one serves life the other lies In shadow, and returns to dust. Like parents who have lost a child, Consoling words demand their tears, While Hebden Bridge, a daughter, chimes A future bridegroom, flowing white. The valley cannot lose the rain Which cries upon the town in ...