Tag: bad

January 21st – On a grey, depressing day, I stopped to check out the new magic bicycle symbols added to the footpath in Pleck just by the motorway Bridge on the Darlaston Road. I guess this is part of the commitment to safer cycling routes with the road improvement scheme here. It’s dismal.

A bit of tactile paving, blacktop some verges and a splurge of magic paint. A grim, shared use path hazardous for pedestrians and cyclists, along the front of a factory gates with little visibility.

The people who design and implement this rubbish aren’t cyclists. They aren’t thinking about cyclists. They’re ticking boxes on a form to satisfy a requirement.

This is why we can’t have nice things, people…

October 1st – Spotted this bike on the train today. It’s a Cannondale, a brand I’m not keen on, mainly for their curious approach to design and resolute defiance of industry standards.

I snatched these images on the phone, as the owner was clearly happy with his new steed. The bike has an interesting feature – ‘Headshok’ suspension. Rather than conventional front systems, where both fork legs travel together and work in tandem,  this system is at the fork crown, and much of the mechanism – dampers etc. – is in the head-tube and between crown and fork.

Initially appealing, it means all the load in work is on one member, rather than two; the system is utterly proprietary, and requires frequent, expensive, short milage interval services. Finally, you only have to look at them funny and they stop working.

There are avid Cannondale fans out there, and many love Headshok. My experience was that it was a whole bag of hurt.

I wish my fellow cyclist all the best of luck with his new bike. I think he’ll need it.

July 6th – Sustrans, the cycling charity who created and ostensibly look after the National Cycle Network are really annoying me locally.

A few weeks ago, I pointed out the baffling signage south of Chasewater on the canal, which appeared to prohibit a good cycling route. Here I noticed similar confusion at the level crossing by Chasewater Heaths station. Face north, and the signage correctly leads you over the crossing, onto the cycleway past the Sportway. Come in the opposite direction, and it shows you’re on Route Five. Or you’re not. 

What the hell?

Get your act together, people; you’re supposed to be promoting cycling, not preventing it.

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.

March 30th – The vehicle entrance to Shire Oak Park – which was formerly the main access to the quarry, and the route used by rangers to get into the lower are of the reserve – had the gate damaged and/or stolen about 12 months ago. It was never replaced by Waslall Council’s Greenspaces team, instead being haphazardly blocked with three light planks nailed between the gateposts.

A couple of weeks ago, the one remaining plank was smashed by a truck reversing through it, which then proceeded to flytip a large quantity of refuse.

This is the state of the ‘repair’, one good tug and those planks will be off. The previous, broken one still lies cast asunder in the ditch by the fence.

I support the Greenspaces team and have fought their corner many times. But come on, this is piss-poor.

This really needs sorting properly. If it had been fixed properly previously, the council probably wouldn’t have had to pay for the rubbish removal of the previous week, either.

March 28th – I stopped at the lights at the Spring Cottage junction in Shelfield this morning, and noticed some poor sod dressed as an animal, dancing whilst wearing an advertising board for a local pet store.

There were more of these characters at other junctions into Walsall, and they were still there, dancing in the rain at 6:30pm when I returned. 

How I felt for them – how desperate do you have to be to do that for money? They ones on my return were soaked to the skin, advertising a pet shop that had shut for the day. 

Welcome to modern Britain. It filled me with sadness at the thought of it. I doubt I’ll shop there again.

February 6th – I’d been in Telford, in a building with no windows. When I came to leave, I realised it was raining fairly heavily. Nothing to do, but don the waterproofs and go for it. The journey was pretty miserable, really; delays at Telford and Birmingham made for a long, damp trudge home, but at least the wind was behind me. 

I don’t think I’ve ever seen a continuously warm, wet winter like this. Last year was bad enough, but at least we had variety with the snow. This is just getting boring now…

January 27th – I was stood on platform 5 waiting for a train at New Street Station. I looked up at the odd, tube-like access bridge hastily added as a second access system here in the early 1990s, in the wake of the Kings Cross Fire; because New Street was classed as a subterranean station, it had to have separate access. So cranes added this monstrosity, now out of use. 

Looking up in my early morning fug, I noted the arrangement of walkways, barriers, rails and safety harness mounting points spanning the top of the structure.

The only purpose to be up there is to clear the skylight windows.

If you design something, and most of the complex steelwork is to ensure the safety of a window cleaner whose job is to clear less than 15 square meters of glass, you’ve failed as a designer.

Sadly this monstrosity looks set to survive the renovations.

July 12th – Crossing Shire Oak with a saddlebag full of food, I was caught by the lights. The junction is quite, quite horrid, and desperately needs resurfacing. Later on that evening, there would be a serious road accident here, blocking the junction for several hours.

It really was about time something was done to improve this junction or all users.