We were waiting for the train a few Saturdays ago and on the platform an elderly lady started chatting with us. She had been a teacher on a Mercy ship, teaching the children of doctors and nurses as they sailed along the West African coast. When she asked where we were going I said Hebden Bridge, a town to the north in Yorkshire where I'd heard there were good charity shops. It is also the final resting place of Sylvia Plath. Her face shuttered. "It's very New Age there, it's not for me," she said disapprovingly. There was a garden center in the nearby town of Todmorden that was called "Tod Almighty" and this lady was shocked that there could be something so blasphemous. I made some neutral sounds. As we parted, she asked if she could give me something. It was a pamphlet containing the Gospel of John.

City was playing United so the trains were full of uncles being herded by cops. Everyone seemed to be behaving themselves. At least in the mornings, the groups on a train who are clearly headed to a game of some kind are usually pretty upbeat, 8am beers notwithstanding. The one time I ever started to feel unsettled was on a very crowded tram when someone yelled "ANYONE HERE FOR THE ROOGBEH" and a lady told him to shush so her baby could sleep and he pretty much did. Anyway, uneventful journey with a detour to an arts and crafts store in Middleton, home of Steve Coogan and a hotel with a great name.

From our brief visit, Hebden Bridge was not quite the hotbed of countercultural activity I was expecting, but the charity shops were indeed fruitful. One of them sold bags of birdseed which is what my son is flinging at the ducks in the picture below. Maybe some time we'll make a day of it and visit Sylvia or take a barge tour down the canal.

I made a routing error on our way home. If we had stayed on the train for one more stop, we could have covered in 10 minutes a distance that took nearly an hour on the tram. On the other hand, we would have missed Oldham Mumps.