Month: February 2015

February 6th – It’s been chilly now for a couple of weeks, and I now have my winter cycling skin on, and barely feel the cold. It gets you like that in the end; you become tempered, inured, used to the climate; so much so that you feel it when it warms up that much more acutely. I love being in this position. It means when spring comes, it’s even more joyous.

At Green Lane on another cold, icy commute, I was wrapped up and felt warm, and the barren beauty of the season really struck me.

I’d like spring to hurry up, of course: but I can live with this, for now.

February 5th – In the backstreets of industrial Darlaston, part of the former Guest, Keene and Nettlefolds works: Salisbury House. Half derelict now, decaying ungracefully, a red terracotta brick edifice in mock victorian gothic complete with bay windows and cornices. The saddest part is that it’s almost impossible to get a good photographic angle on it.

This is a remarkable building – rather ugly, but beautifully executed; it has a proud heritage and it’s sad to see it carried to dust like this.

I think the internal light fittings are probably collectors items, and that lost football must have been frustrating for the poor kids that kicked it up there…

February 4th – We’re in the season of great sunsets again. Caught on the way home, a glimpse over the black country of an old-style GSM transmitter in Darlaston. I love the contrast of the lattice-work tower with then sky and streetlights behind.

I don’t know why, but I love this sort of stuff – radio towers, pylons and suchlike. They can be so beautifully elegant, and so often derided and overlooked.

February 4th – I had to nip into Wednesbury from Darlaston mid-morning, so hopped over Kings Hill. Something about the light, the cold, the slightly softening haze caught my eye. It’s brittle cold at the moment, but I’m at the stage where I’m barely noticing it. I love days like this, wrapped up well they’re a joy to ride in.

February 2nd – bright and cold, I cycled to work in glorious sunshine, and for a change, pottered through Alumwell’s backstreets. On the corner of Ida Road and Scarborough Road, I’ve just noticed this old, empty building. The Edward Shelley School closed a while back, and the site became part of Walsall College, which later closed it when the institution moved to new premises. I don’t have specific dates, and I’ve only noticed it recently because the thick hedgerows have been cut back. It’s a lovely building, and in very good condition; I’d love to know more about it.

I hope the sudden grounds maintenance is a precursor to reusing this place…

February 2nd – Not noticing I had the camera on a poor setting, I took several photos today that came out really, really badly. By the time I realised, I was on the way home, and my hands were cold, and I was tired. But Bullings Heath – the area around the Black Cock Pub and bridge, at the north end of Hall Lane, Walsall Wood, looked great in the dusk.

It’s worth pointing out that tonight, it still wasn’t properly dark at gone 5:30. I’ll have me some more of that if I can – but it was a horrid cold evening, the kind that makes your forehead hurt and finds every sensitive part of your teeth.

I wish it would either get really cold and snow, or warm up a bit. This current cold and damp is the worst of both worlds.

February 1st – Just on the rough side of Brownhills Common, a handful of yards from Coppice Lane, there’s a deep void in the land through the trees It may be the remnant of early surface mining, or the later evidence of hamfisted mineral exploration (the coal here was evident on the surface, so it was said; the grey clay also highly prized by potters), but it’s been here for decades; the spoil is piled up around it in mounds with fairly mature trees growing from them, which must date from around 1977, as the year previously, the whole of this side of the common had been flatted by a grassfire.

Every landscape tells a story This one tells of an industrial, blighted past, which we now sort of revere.

Brownhills holds some of it’s oldest secrets closest, but in plain sight.

February 1st – Crikey, are we a 12th through the year already? How did that happen?

I passed through Ryders Mere in the morning, and expected it to be busy with twitchers for the latest rarity – a Great Northern Diver has been here for a few weeks now – but curiously, I was alone. This place is lovely, but I still find it a little barren. 20 years ago this was an opencast, and now, a peaceful haven for wildfowl.

One day, I might bump into the man of the marsh himself, Chaz Mason. That would be lovely. In the meantime, the gulls and grebes carried on as normal.

January 31st – A sunset return on a very cold evening, with little energy. I came from Burntwood with leaden limbs, but the wind behind me; the combination of sunset, street lights and traffic made me think of the cover of Green on Red’s ‘Killer inside Me’ – beautiful, but hard.

I found it so hard, I hopped onto the canal, and wound my way on that back to Brownhills. I couldn’t deal with my tiredness and the traffic.