November 15th – Autumn – season of mists and mellow fruitfulness. Well, we got the mists. Cycling on foggy days like this is unpleasant. in a short, 20 minute journey to Blake Street, 6 cars and 1 cyclist without lights at all. The usual selfish, aggressive driving. The discomfort of water condensing over your clothes and face.
It does, however, add a pleasantly enjoyable air of mystery to otherwise unremarkable scenes. A challenging day for riding, and photography too.
November 14th – Further on, I stopped to take a photo and ponder. I’m a grown bloke, and nothing much scares me. Heavy traffic? No problem. Speed? Not at all. Heights? Maybe a little. Darkness? Not at all, love cycling in the dark, especially in rural places. Green Lane, between Shelfield and Walsall Wood at night? Hell yeah. I’ve no idea why, it’s the only place I ever feel nervous out at night, and I’ve cycled in some grim places. Something about the darkness, the woods and the traffic combine to really make me feel queasy down here after dark.
I think it’s to do with finding a car accident down here a few years back. The imagery of that stays with me.
I must be turning into a right wuss in my old age.
November 14th – Commuting in the darkness hours. For the first few weeks after the autumn clock change, drivers go a bit loopy. I don’t know if stats back this up, but it feels like everything gets a bit unhinged until normality returns at around the beginning of December. In the last few weeks on my way home I’ve been pulled out on, undertaken, cut up and lefthooked. This is with huge bright lights and hi-viz.
This collective madness is heightened when I hear the spine-chilling siren and see the blue flashes. When emergency vehicles appear, I always make sure I’m well out of the way, as folk never seem quite sure what to do. Tonight, in the queue at Shelfield, I was safe as the paramedic shot past in the other direction. On their way to someone desperately in need, no doubt. Maybe a traffic accident. My blood ran cold.
I hate this time of year.
November 13th – Later, in Acocks Green, I was surprised to note some old and rather wonderful architecture I hadn’t noticed previously. I was so busy looking for old cottages last week, that I never spotted some rather wonderful examples of civic buildings in Alexander Road. The Baptist Church Hall is a classic Birmingham terracotta brick building, and puts me very much in mind of the Magistrates Court in Corporation Street in the city centre. It seems to have an attached caretakers house, and next door appears to be an attractive former schoolhouse. I must look into the history of these buildings – they’re very grand for a small suburb. There must have been a fair bit of money here once…
November 13th – As I waited for yet another late train at Blake Street this morning, I gazed at the rails. The train service has been lousy of late – continual staff shortages and equipment failures have made the system terribly unreliable. This particular service hasn’t been on time for a fortnight at least. Normally at this time of year, London Midland, the local train operator, would institute a ‘Leaf fall timetable’. This is a much derided, but little understood thing. Falling leaves lie on the rails and get pulped by the train wheels, creating a slippery, sappy lubricant the causes wheels to slip and brakes to become ineffective. The pulp also forms an insulator which prevents signal detection functioning.
A leaf-fall timetable allows drivers to go more slowly and allows rail cleaning trains to operate in-between passenger services. The cleaning trains spray gelatinous substance on the rails called Sandite, which as it’s name suggests, contains sand to counter the grease. The rails I was looking at had clearly just been treated, and the residue could be seen. This is a huge problem for trains worldwide and not unique to the UK.
I’m unclear why there’s no leaf fall timetable this year, and the services on the Cross City line are woeful. Combined with cancellations due to staff shortages, bad signals and train breakdowns, I bet they’re losing punters hand over fist.
November 12th – It was on my return that afternoon that I spotted a relic of times past, fitted high up on the gable wall of a house on the Walsall Road in Darlaston. It’s an Ionica antenna. You don’t see many of those about now.
Ionica were a pre-internet age telephone company that promised much, yet failed in the dot com boom. Launched in the early nineties, they offered cheap telephone line packages. What was unique was that the technology they offered was based on microwave transmission, rather than the copper wires BT used. If you signed up, engineers came out and installed one of these octagonal 3.5GHz microwave antennas, which pointed at a base station in the locality. The idea was fine, but never covered it’s costs, and as they were narrowband, would have been useless for the internet connections that were to come later. The company value was inflated to over a billion pounds in 1997, but collapsed in 1998. The network was wound down by BT, and only a few remnants like this antenna survive.
Like the Rabbit zone phone, a curious idea in a time of great change.
November 12th – Well, nearly all of it. Victoria Park was still impressive, even in the driving rain. There’s always something beautiful to lighten the darkest ride.
November 12th – Monday morning. Darlaston, in the rain. There’s no dark side to the Black Country in winter. It’s all bloody dark.
November 11th – Returning via a rather dark and cold Rugeley bypass, at least I had the wind behind me. I stopped at the Bridge in Rugeley and checked out the view before me. I love Rugeley Power Station by night. This is one of the most advanced coal burning generation facilities in Europe, and the fume scrubbing plant, covered in lights, is futuristic and fascinating at night. Built as one of the postwar River Trent behemoths, most of it’s companion facilities have long since gone, like Drakelow and Willington. A stunning, and dare I say it, beautiful thing.
November 11th – An afternoon on Cannock Chase, with mixed results. It was chilly, but clear, and I was looking for badgers. I found the sett I was after, but approached with the wind the wrong side of me and they stayed resolutely hidden. No such shyness, however, from the Penkridge Bank fallow deer who were loafing in their usual spot. The handsome young stag – too young for the recent rutting, I suspect – was drawn by my offerings of carrot and flapjack. These animals are usually here, but usually very skittish. I think the recent chillier weather has drawn them a shade closer to humans. beautiful creatures. Shame the light was so bad.
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