I take a photo everyday, but today I brought this one with me.

December 18th, 2013, 12pm

It was 7°C with broken clouds. There was moderate breeze.

If I posted a photo taken today you’d see why I needed to carry this one, taken last time I crossed Lendal Bridge six weeks ago. I needed it to get me through this miserably wet Wednesday and I’ll need others to get me across the long bridge of grey rainy days ahead through December, January, February. Whoever thought having a sky the colour of pavement was a good idea should be sent back to design school.

For six years I took a photo everyday, had a break, and have taken one every day the eleven years and two months since. Before that break I thought that stopping would be something I’d regret. But then I went back to Manchester for the first time after the IRA bomb there. On the train over, I realised I was imagining the picture I would take to capture the bombing in my photo-diary. I was pre-remembering, planning the memory of something I hadn’t yet experienced. So stopping seemed a good idea.

Then after a few years I started again. I guess what I did today wasn’t quite pre-remembering. When I got up in the dark, saw the rain, thought of my trip to York, of this photo, reloaded it into my phone, decided to make this post, I was trying to rethink the weather. Living not in today’s gloom but the crisp, dry light of a late afternoon before winter.


Sanna, June, Adrian, Cassie and 3 others said thanks.

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Steve Dearden

Writer, producer and Director of The Writing Squad - www.stevedearden.com

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