In between

I'm in one of those in between periods of the year. I'm not finishing anything worth writing about, nor am I starting anything. This part of the year sometimes gets me that way. The autumn has mostly wrapped up barring the last of the migrations and the winter keeps poking at me saying, "I'm coming, just you wait." Recently it poked so hard it whipped up a storm powerful enough to blow the dome off the top of one of our local landmarks - Darwen Tower - perched up on the heights of the Darwen Moors. My trips out have been like the snowbound mouse from last Christmas, nipping out into the cold to search for a crumb of sustenance and then darting back into the warmth to my cozy nest. I know I should look up more, or scrub the condensation off the windows and let the world give me something, some inspiration or spark, but it's only when I'm sat here thinking of something to write, to prove I'm still here, that I realise that I didn't.

The tower on the hill

In the background of this picture is Darwen Tower on Beacon Hill. It was built in 1898 to commemorate Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee, though at the time of its completion the local townsfolk had just won the right to freely access the surrounding moors in an action dubbed The Battle for the Moors and the Tower came to represent their victory. Some websites state that the Tower is called the Jubilee Tower and also mention that it is sometimes referred to as Darwen Tower. I've lived in its shadow for nearly 43 years and I've hardly ever heard a local call it anything else but Darwen Tower. Harry doesn't care what it's called. He doesn't know either that if the landowners had got their way all those years ago he wouldn't have been able to spend so many hours enjoying himself on the Darwen Moors.