Stretch the Horizon

This burning pile of ash is all that remains of a group of Rhododendron bushes in Tandle Hills, Royton as of Thursday the 10th of January 2013 and it’s come as a bit of a shock, let me tell you. I myself am 42 years old and these overgrown bushes – their waxy green leaves bulging out on either side of a set of winding stone steps that lead up to the Tandle Hills’ War Monument – have been a fixture in the country park as long as I can remember. If you were hardy enough to clamber through the entwined branches and reach the middle, there was a clearing which as kids we knew as ‘The Witches Circle’; a wary place to a small child exploring, a scary place to a teenager under-age drinking and an even scarier one to an idiot tripping on Acid!

Anyway, yet another example of how things progress and move on in this so-called Life. At least someone in the local Oldham Council offices got paid for the idea to destroy a 50 year old beauty spot; me, I just felt myself age a little more as I stood and watched the smoking, fire-cracked embers of my past blowing away on the wind…

*Shot on a Canon 600d 18mp dSLR using a Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 mkll lens with settings at ISO-100, aperture at f/2.8, spot metering mode and an exposure time of 1/50 seconds*