December 15th – Passing through Chasewater on the dam road on what was so far a lovely sunny day, I just spotted the dear loafing in the scrub at the foot of the north end of the dam.
Their natural camouflage was working well.
A gorgeous sight to behold that I’d guarantee only a small percentage of those passing by actually noticed.
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December 14th – I stuff to do in Lichfield on a Saturday afternoon, so left it late to catch the gathering night.
I wasn’t disappointed.
It took me ages to work out what’s special about Lichfield City Centre after dark: It’s the lack of normal streetlights. The lights there are – on buildings, mainly – are verbally low press ion, very yellow sodium which combine with the often far more intense shop lighting to give an illusion that the streets are darker and more suffused than they are.
I notice that Ye Olde City has again been invaded by those bloody creepy, sinister nutcracker figures again. Enough to give a man nightmares.
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December 13th – I’m not a superstitious man, but the day really was grim and full of collision, misfortune and trouble.
I came home from work late, in a foul mood. I only took a handful of shots of Clayhanger Bridge of the overflow. When I got in I expected them to be very poor.
At least something went right.
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December 12th – Walsall’s Christmas lights are not ostentatious these days, but Walsall always looks sort of Christmassy at night anyway.
Whether it’s Bridge Street or Leicester Street, the street lighting, vehicles, building lights and architecture combine to make something quite festive and magical.
For all the stick it gets, Walsall isn’t a bad old place.
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December 12th – The Christmas tree in Walsall is usually very nicely done. After a few grim yers in the early 2000s when lighting contractors synthesised something akin to a tree from a lighting column to universal derision, then a year or two without, we now get a pretty decent tree in the square between the bus station, bank and the Crossing at St. Pauls.
This year’s tree is excellent – but following blustery weather, developed an unfortunate tilt. It’s now fixed, but still not quite plum.
I think it adds character.
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December 11th – A fowl night again found me returning home in heavy rain. Really heavy, almost torrential.
Photography was near impossible, so I grabbed a couple of flying shots of the downtown Christmas lights of Brownhills with my phone.
I actually. like these, they’re atmospheric and exactly how the night felt.
I really will need treatment for webbed toes soon, I feel.
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December 10th – Christmas trees in Walsall Borough have to be externally funded and the council won’t pay for them. In the district centres where they are present, someone has either usually been generous individually (like the three councillors who personally pay for Walsall Wood’s tree) or the public have come together to pay for them.
Setting an early example in the public subscription stakes has always been Rushall, whose community work hard every year to raise the money required to pay for a tree to be erected on the square outside the ‘Village Hub’ – the old library – and jolly festive it looks too.
Contrast that with the pitiful string of lights thrown on a random tree every year on the public open space in Shelfield, on the corner of Four Crosses Road and Lichfield Road.
I really don’t know why they bother there, I really don’t.
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December 10th – I spend a lot of time waiting at traffic lights, and of all of them, I think I like the ones on the Arboretum Junction on Walsall’s new ring road least of all.
Ostensibly heuristic and adaptive, the loop sensors here don’t always pick up my bike, and often I watch a whole cycle take place before the lights allow me to go.
Tonight was just such a night – because the controller didn’t find me, my phase of the lights was completely absent first time around.
Nothing to do but shuffle the bike on the loop and swear…
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December 9th – The increasingly poor weather really is taking it’s toll on the bikes. I’m not a fanatical bike cleaner, and prefer my steeds to show the dull patina of constant use: but right now it’s less of a film and more inches of crud picked up from the muddy trails and roads.
I’m working on the basis that this layer of detritus will prevent further ingress, but to be honest I’m not hopeful.
Next spring I’m going to have to do a lot of work on these bikes.
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December 8th – I headed back to Brownhills along the canal back towards Catshill Junction, which on the way passes the beautiful view of Hammerwich across the fields of Newtown and Ogley Hay.
I notice now the fields, trees and hedgerows are very brown and lifeless-looking although there seems to be a crop down of some sort.
It will be some months before the gorgeous green comes around again, which always makes me sad.
But this is a beautiful view, whatever the time of year, it has to be said.
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