February 24th – Saint Matthews Hall – sometime church hall, Walsall County Courthouse and wine bar, has been turned in a specialist real ale pub by Wetherspoons, and by all accounts it’s a decent transformation. I’d not noticed before, but it’s lit with colour shifting, high power LED lighting. I’m not shire what to make of it; it looks gimmicky and cheap, but it is rather impressive. A curious thing…
February 24th – I took plenty of photos in the morning, as it was another wonderful morning – but sadly, I left the camera in the wrong mode and they were all awful. Luckily, I realised my mistake, and returning from Walsall at 7pm, I took some shots of a peculiarly deserted town. This seemed odd to me; when I was a youth, the euphemistically branded ‘nightime economy’ was normally well underway by this time, but it seems not to be the case now. Few were at the bus stands, and few outside the bars and pubs. Bridge Street was deserted, and the town hall looked imperious in the street light. An odd end to an oddly draining week.
If you can’t work that out from the subject matter, then there’s no hope for you. http://brownhillsbob.tumblr.com/archive
Bob is himself. He’d rather let his work do the talking.
Thank you for your wonderfully kind words. Tumblr is a bit crap, really, and gives no stats, so I have no viewing data. Comments like yours tell me folk are interested in what I’m doing, which is nice and encourages me.
I selected Tumblr for this journal, got it started and then realised my mistake. You can comment if you’re a registered user (free signup) or if I finish the post with a question mark (i.e. it’s a question). However, I seem unable to reply to most comments. If I did this again I’d use anything but Tumblr.
What many folk do is follow me on Facebook where I’m ‘William Roberts’ and comment on the automatic tumblr posts in my status updates. You are, of course, welcome to comment on my main blog too – visit it here.
We’re very lucky to live where we do – right on the edge of a major conurbation, with rolling countryside close to hand. We have canals, bike paths, parks and the most wonderful rural lanes. L love this place and I’m glad you do, too.
Cheers and thanks
Bob
February 23rd – Returning home late through Shelfield, I passed Bunker Service Station. I have no idea why it’s so named, but I noted diesel was now 1.43 a litre. People have often asked me how I can afford to keep buying bits for the bike and feed my gadget addiction – it’s simple. I’ll run for days on a gallon of earl grey, marmite sandwiches and sweet treats like Haribo. I’m not spending huge amounts of dough to sit stressed in a car, watching my sanity and bank-balance wane with the fuel gauge pointer…
February 23rd – On my way to work on a sunny, warm summer- sorry, February day, I was in shirtsleeves. Taking the scenic route through Kings Hill Park in Darlaston, the spring flowers were just crying out for attention. As was a wee ladybird, sunning itself. 2012 certainly is running the whole gamut of weather, that’s for sure…
February 22nd – Recently saved from the bulldozer, Brownhills Business Park at night is an interesting combination of discharge light, shadow and angle. Partially consisting of some of the surface buildings of the former Walsall Wood Colliery, this is an interesting little industrial park which always has lots going on, and a wide variety of businesses operate here. Lurking on the corner of this site is a former mineshaft used for dumping millions of gallons of industrial effluent in the 70’s and 80’s, so perhaps it’s for the best that they didn’t get permission to build houses on this site.
February 22nd – After a thoroughly awful day at work, I disembarked from the train at Walsall to find myself travelling home through a soft, pervasive drizzle. The town was looking particularly down-at-heel in the dusk, although, it has to be said, twilight at 5:45 is a wonderful thing right now. Walsall has never been blessed with architectural complexity, and on days like this, it really, really shows. I love this place with all my heart, but by jove, it’s very hard to on days like this…
Thanks for that, cheers. It’s certainly an oddity.
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