October 23rd – I was riding to work when I met a gorgeous little lady with a happy, proud brush of a tail. Trotting though The Butts, she meowed at me as I was answering a text and then hurried towards me, greedily accepting chin and ear tickles and nose boops.
Circling me and begging for more fuss, she was hard to photograph, but happily pottered off when she could see I needed to continue my journey.
A little bit of furry, tiny tabbyness on a damp Monday morning.
October 22nd – A very decent, dark sunset descended on Brownhills. The day was still very windy, an rather wolfish so not really great for riding, really. But I can live with clear skies, a little sun and strong wind.
Sunsets like this, now hovering around 6pm before the end of British Summer Time next weekend, remind me that winter will soon be upon us.
October 22nd – A quick run up to Aldridge in the early afternoon reqarded me with great autumnal views and a surprise – almost submerged in dense thicket by the old railway bridge at Stubbers Green, what I think is an evening primrose, in strident yellow bloom.
I don’t know if this is normal at this time of year or an aberration, but it is rather beautiful and a lovely autumn find.
October 21st – Following the winds of the last few weeks, my favourite tree at Home Farm, Sandhills is now bare for winter, which I find profoundly sad.
There’s hope though, in the gloom. Greening up beautifully in a sheet of emerald green are new winter crops sprouting well which will provide some colour in the dark months.
Despite the gloom, life marches on.
October 21st – A blustery, showery day, so I restricted myself to a short ride around the patch, washing through the leaves shaken free by the storm. At the new pond at Clayhanger, I noticed a healthy, beautiful holly bush with a dense crop of berries growing in the marsh at the back of the pool. That’s a sign Christmas is coming, for sure.
Autumn has been strange this year. It’s like we fell out of summer with a bump and kept bouncing off winter with no transition…
October 20th – And in the green heaven of Kings Hill Park, where clearly busy people tend the flowers unseen to me, a bright, colourful reminder that the beauty isn’t over yet.
Spotted with raindrops, battered by the wind, these planters are still absolutely gorgeous and remind me of why I love the outdoors and why I appreciate this town and it’s hidden, lovely spaces.
I’m BrownhillsBob, not DarloDave. But for a twist of fate, I could have been – and would have been proud to be so.
October 20th – In to work early, and on a morning of patchy rain and light, fast sunny spells, two pauses in my hurried journey at Victoria Park and Kings Hill Park, both looking absolutely gorgeous in their autumn jackets.
Darlaston is a grubby, grimy industrial Black Country town – and is everything the Black Country is; busy, historic, full of hidden beauty under an ostensibly ugly exterior, charming, real and a great place to be. And like the wider Black Country, it’s full of green parks and open spaces where the hurried traveller can catch a breath, sip his tea and think about the day to come.
October 19th – A day marked by a ludicrously early start and thoroughly wet, rain-sodden homeward darkness commute. The weather really isn’t being kind to me this week.
The riding wasn’t bad, really – they do say drowning is quite pleasurable once you stop fighting it, and I flowed like the rainwater through the streets from Darlaston with an occasionally startling crosswind. Reaching the town centre, I took a short cut past the civic centre. With nobody about and beautifully glistening surfaces, it made for a good night shot.
If the weather-gods are reading this, can I please have some dry, non-windy weather for a short while please? I’d be ever so grateful…
October 18th – And here’s the problem. The clocks haven’t gone back yet – we’re still on British Summer Time – and look at those sunset and sunrise times, as shown by my bike computer. Both my commutes are now mostly in darkness.
This is profoundly sad to me. I love the light, the summer, the green. And for the next four months, I will be deprived of these things.
But then again, the hunger makes them more special when they’re present.
And so the season’s wheel turns onward.
October 18th – A week or so, I posted a video ‘Welcome to the suck’ pointing out the dark winter commutes were upon us, and every year I note that when the dark nights come, the traffic behaves oddly until around Christmas, when drivers finally get used to the dark.
Tonight was a grim commute. All the way in not quite rain, a penetrating mist-drizzle soaked me; it was cold, and the traffic was awful. But seeing this was astounding. Sorry it’s so blurry with rain on the camera lens but I’ll explain.
I’m stopped at the cross roads of the Pleck Road (Ring Road) with Bridgman Street in Walsall, near the Manor Hospital. I’m at the front of my queue heading northbound straight on. The lights are red.
Heading south in the opposite direction, pushing through the traffic which is moving aside are two fire appliances on blues and twos. I can smell smoke. Their shout is local.
The engines get to the the lights opposite me, attempting to turn down Bridgman Street to my right, their left – but are blocked by two cars, just resolutely unmoving. Eventually a small movement is made, one appliance takes the outside line, the other the inside line.
It’s not rocket science, and it’s in the Highway Code. Get out of the way of emergency vehicles when safe to do so. After all it might be your family, house or business these people are rushing to the aid of.
There’s a word for these obstructive people: arseholes. But totally symptomatic of the madness of the first dark evenings of winter.
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