April 7th – Damn me, but this squirrel seems happy. Mind, he ought to be; he’s living in the hazel copse just opposite the Watermead in Brownhills. The cheeky little fellow didn’t scarper until I came quite close.
I’d swear he’s laughing there…
If Gradboy is reading this, sorry mate, but it was too good to miss…
April 7th – Yay! The cowslips are here. Heading back to Brownhills from work, I took advantage of a gap in the rain, and spinning up a sodden towpath, I spotted the recurring patches of cowslips on Clayhanger Common near the Pier Street Bridge.
I’m sure I guerrilla seeded these a decade ago, and they’ve spread beautifully. Since then, further bands of these dainty little primroses have appeared all around the common. Seeing them in flower brings me enormous pleasure.
Cowslips are my favourite flower. To me, they symbolise spring; yellow, hardy, and they appear when the worst is passed. This year, they’re a good couple of weeks early.
The snail seemed quite pleased with them too…
April 6th – Bless her, she’s sitting again. For what is the third (or maybe fourth) year, the Catshill swan couple have made a nest in the remnants of the one from the previous year, and they appear to be sitting.
In previous years, the labour has been fruitless; despite laying eggs, the couple have so far been cygnetless.
I’ve felt sorry for them for too many seasons. Let’s hope they get it together this year, eh?
April 6th – Still not feeling too great, and with similarly dismal weather, I took a spin out around Brownhills late afternoon. I noted that despite the grey and blustery weather it was quite warm, and the oilseed rape was coming on in leaps and bounds. At Sandhills looking towards Springhill, the crop was nearly in flower, and the fields towards Hammerwich weren’t too far behind.
They’re going to be gorgeous this year when the sun shines.
This must be the signal that winter was over. I told you that buying new snow tyres would stall a bad winter – and so they did.
April 5th – I’ll never make a wildlife photographer – or indeed, any type of photographer – as long as I have breath in my body. I rode up onto the dam bridge at Chasewater, and passed the time of day with a great friend I happened to meet there by chance. As we chatted, I spotted a crested grebe on the water in front of us. I joked that every time you take a picture, they dive just before you hit the button. I was moderately lucky on two shots out of 11.
I don’t think Simon King will ever have anything to worry about. But I do love these gorgeous little birds.
April 5th – I wasn’t feeling great. I wasn’t down anymore, but I felt achey and muzzy like I had a cold coming, the weather was grey and windy, and I contented myself with a trip to Chasewater. On the way I passed the remarkable shrine to Jamey Coleman, who was tragically killed here in a hit and run incident a week before.
It pulled me up short. Don’t think I’ve ever seen so many tributes.
Please – if you know anything at all about this incident – no matter how inconsequential you think it may be, please do contact the police.
April 4th – Riding a bike is a cyclic antidepressant, and riding one once a day keeps the black dog at bay. I was sad, really sad, but something on the way home cheered me right up. A young heron, fishing by Clayhanger Bridge on the canal. I can’t ever recall seeing one here before, but I love these comical, dishevelled fishers. He was hungry, and young enough not to be skittish. He tolerated me taking photos for ages. He made me remember what I was doing, and what I was about.
I adore herons. Such complex, fascinating birds.
It’s taken me all weekend to pluck up the balls to write this sequence.
April 4th – I’ve been struggling with my relationship with Walsall, and my memories of it, for a very long time now. I think seeing some of the places I loved burnt down, and others displaced by progress started it. I felt it was time I acknowledged it for once and for all.
I still love this surprising green, but ugly town. I love it’s unexpected beauty, I love its corners, twists and turns. I love the people, the frankness. I love the mixed cultures and the frontier mentality of a place thats both within and outside the Black Country.
I hate what time and my memory have done to it. But change is what happens to everyone, and I what I suspect I mourn isn’t Walsall, but the times I spent here.
St. Matthews is a handsome church in a commanding location, atop a hill that I’m convinced was once probably a fortification. A very large, ambitiously designed church, it’s almost too good for the place yet completely appropriate. Resplendent in yellow sandstone, it watches over the town below. For two centuries or more, it was surrounded by a sprawling slum; it’s now sitting in proud isolation with greenery and open space around. Time has been kinder to St. Matthews than one might think.
I used to come up here to think, and dream and wrestle with things that troubled me. I found the benchmark on the side of the church before I knew what it was for, and its image was persistent and perplexing. In those days, someone had written above it in neat chalked script, ‘I can’t come here anymore.’ I never knew what they meant. I do now, but the writing has long since washed away.
As I wandered around, remembering good times and bad, trying to make sense of what I felt. I looked to the skyline, to the towerblocks of Paddock, and at the flowers growing so beautifully wild in the churchyard.
I remembered the words of the great, tortured and lost songwriter Doug Hopkins:
The last horizons I can see are filled with bars and factories
And in them all we fight to stay awake…
Drink enough of anything to make this world look new again
Drunk drunk drunk in the gardens and the graves…
The last horizons I could see are now resigned to memories
I never thought I’d still be here today…
It dawned, gradually, that it’s about going away, and returning. Spiritually, I left this place a long, long time ago. I let Walsall go. It’s right, and natural, and what happens to us all. But I never thought I’d still be here.
And once you’ve left, although you can come back, you can’t go there anymore.
Relieved, but hurting, I got back on my bike, and rode home.
April 4th – I broke free after lunch and had time to kill in Walsall. It wasn’t a particularly bright afternoon, but I headed up to the church and memorial gardens as I hadn’t been up there in a long while. The Memorial Gardens were as I remembered them; quiet, peaceful, solitary and beautiful. Slightly down-at-heel, but no less beautiful for it, the flowers there are just kicking off. I have great memories of this little-known spot, but while I was here, it occurred to me that somewhere in the intervening years between my discovery of this wonderful place and the present here and now, that either Walsall had lost me, or I had lost Walsall.
These places, these streets, used to feel like mine. I used to haunt them. I knew them well, the shops, pubs, cafes. Today, although I pass through regularly, I don’t know any of it anymore. I still get the geography. But I’ve lost the sense of belonging.
The horizon I could see from here today over the dull, overcast town was the same horizon, but changed, I saw three decades ago. But somewhere, inbetween that place and this, I exchanged that whole wide world for other horizons.
I wept a bit. But you can’t go back; I can no longer class this place as mine. But there are other places, and this will always, always be a part of me.
For better, or for worse.
April 3rd – The poor air quality brouhaha at the moment isn’t all hype. As a chap given to a degree of sinus trouble, it’s hell out there at the moment. There’s an appreciable wind, and the air isn’t wet like in normal mist; yet it feels oxygen-less, like being stuck in an unventilated house with the heating on. It makes me feel breathless faster, and stings my eyes, as well as causing a blocked nose.
I’ve never experienced days like these before. I’m used to traffic fumes in the city in high summer, and the effect it has on my hayfever, but I’ve never seen this before.
The New Ring Road in Walsall looked ethereal and grey, even dystopian. But I did notice one thing; that’s a fine weathervane on the roof of the old Workhouse Guardians office, there.
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