February 26th – Mind you, I say Birmingham is getting better at change, but… this is the real face of the ‘New’ New Street and the preposterously named ‘Grand Central’ project. This place constantly has leaks. Often when it hasn’t rained for days. To walk through the station now is to squelch through wet patches on concourses, platforms and passageways.
This cannot, in any shape or form, be a good sign.
February 26th – In Birmingham at twilight, I was without any kind of tripod, so practiced a steady hand. I used to pass through Colmore a lot, but in recent years barely at all. When I was here a lot, there was a Somerfield where the Costa is, the Waitrose hadn’t been built and the Sainsbury’s was a Marks and Spencer. It was never this handsome at dusk, either; several of the office blocks here are relatively new.
Like Walsall, Birmingham is not mine anymore; places I was familiar with, things I remember, bars, cafes and shops I haunted long gone. Yet I still feel at home here.
Unlike Walsall, change has always been Birmingham’s modus operandi. And it’s getting better and better at it.
February 25th – And then there’s Kings Hill Park, too. I couldn’t resist swinging past on this fine morning to check out the crocuses – and to my surprise, the snowdrops were also out in force; the ones here must be a later flowering variety.
Am I imagining it, or do yellow crocuses flower before other colours? Plenty of yellow ones about, but not so many violet.
After seeing these, you can’t fail to go to work with happiness in your heart: spring is coming, and nothing can stop it now.
February 25th – Sorry, I won’t feature Darlaston again for a few days, promise: but the town is my current muse and I do love it so – and it looks splendid in the winter sunshine.
The curious, frustrating and utterly unpredictable flip-flop weather at the moment means last night’s rain was this morning a gorgeous, almost still, warm sunny winter day. Darlaston Police Station looked fine, as did Victoria Park.
You can’t not take a photo of this place. It’s gorgeous.
February 24th – Little firsts are the art of getting through winter. Little, tiny victories that mark the passage from darkness to light, and tonight, on my way home from work, it was my first normal-time commute in something approximating daylight, rather than darkness.
OK, it was wet, windy, murky, verging on the brink daylight, but it was perceptibly not dark. A little victory.
The joy of this almost totally took my mind off what an unutterably foul ride it was…
February 24th – I’ve featured this remarkable tree in Victoria Park a couple of times, and it’s still growing, still consuming the railing that stands in its way. Having now totally encased the lower rail, one can almost hear it grunting as the upper rail is distorted by gentle, insistent and constant hydraulic pressure.
Despite the things clearly impeding it, the tree seems well enough. The way it has formed around its barriers reminds me very much of pyroclastic flow. It’s like slow, cold organic lava.
February 23rd – On a factory wall in Darlaston, a plaque recording the name of Guest, Keen & Nettlefolds, and a date of 1936. This was GKN, in their heyday, just before the outbreak of war. This place may now be a shadow of its former self, but this is a history Darlaston can be proud of: screws, nuts and other fastening components came out of Darlaston by the million until the late 1970s, and held the engineering of the world together.
GKN have long since gone from here, but some of the products they made are still created here by a German company.
Today, Darlaston’s industry hangs by a thread, not upon it. But these streets still resound to the sounds of industry living and breathing – and it still makes me proud to experience it.
February 23rd – A harsh day to ride to work into the wind. It started out sunny and bright, but it quickly became overcast, but then brightened again, It was hard work, and I stopped to take a phone call in The Butts, Walsall. The former school here has been converted into dwellings, and seems to have been done quite sympathetically. I think the exterior doors would have been better in wood or a darker colour, and the white boarded detail in the water tower jarrs; but otherwise, a great repurposing of a very interesting, surprisingly ornate building.
February 22nd – I returned to Brownhills on a bike with a deflating tyre and bad gears, wet and miserable. I passed Morris on the way home, and he looked sort of grey too, although being stainless steel, he tends to reflect his environment.
I also passed a fox, who was wandering on the canal near to Cooper’s Bridge by the Watermead: he was wet through, with ears almost blown flat to his head. He looked fed up and wet, too.
That clearly made three of us – the cyclist, the statue and the fox.
February 22nd – The weather was vile. Windy, with rain and snow that moved horizontally, and the bike was acting up too. It wasn’t a great ride, to be honest, and Chasewater was deserted.
I noticed the valves were closed again after being opened last week, without too much effect on the overall water level, which is around 300mm from full.
If we get much more of this weather, the reservoir will be full in no time at all…
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