belonging | BrownhillsBob's #365daysofbiking

Posts tagged ‘belonging’

#365daysofbiking All conkering

Saturday, September 26th 2020 – As I mentioned at my recommencement last week, there are some subjects that are staples of this journal, and I can’t believe I’m a week overdue mentioning my favourite tree: The handsome, gorgeous horse chestnut at Home Farm, Sandhills, visible from the canal at Catshill.

This noble bearing of my life is an integral part of that fine view, and has just started to get on its autumn jacket.

I tell the seasons by this tree, and I judge the weather. I’ve photographed it dawn and dusk, rain, snow, hail and shine. It’s one constant, lovely thing I rely on and feel a great sense of topophilia for – yet I don’t think I’ve ever been closer than a few hundred yards to it.

In a chaotic world, we need anchors. This tree is one of mine, and long may it remain so.

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#365daysofbiking Life’s better by water

May 15th – As I get older and older, I find it much harder to explain to those younger, or newcomers to this town just how much things have improved here since I was a kid.

This is not trivial, or frivolous: The town I grew up in was poor, suffered terrible pollution from industry and and refuse tip at it’s heart, the waterways were rubbish filled ditches and there were very few of the trees here there are today.

I grew up in a smelly, wildlife-free post industrial wasteland.

Now, the waterways are limpid, but full of life; the smells and pollution have all but gone. Everywhere is green with trees and hedgerows. I regularly see deer, foxes and all manner of birds and bugs.

On a sunny, beautiful Friday evening in the golden hour, quiet in lockdown, it was hard to believe what this place once was.

But the memory will never fade.

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#365daysofbiking Monumental

May 5th – Looping back into town, I caught sight of Morris, the Brownhills Miner, a statue and work of art I hold dear.

Morris is not particularly accurate, or even a true representation of our history, as such, with Brownhills actually maturing as a town long after the immediately local mining had all but ceased. But he captures the spirit of our town, and our collective history, reflecting that many Brownhillian lads were miners, but working in pits in adjacent towns and villages.

Morris is also uncomfortably Soviet, to anyone who’s any experience of Eastern Bloc public art; he’s exactly the sort of thing many soviet states would have willingly erected.

But this lad, pick and lamp aloft, is ours. And it’s always good to see him silhouetted in the dusk.

It’s how I know I’m home.

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#365daysofbiking Cut both ways

May 5th – The art of the daily exercise ride is quite weird. Used to normally commuting for my daily bike fix, the ride for the sake of it is, I’m ashamed to say, usually short and local.

It has, however, enabled me to get a grip back on what’s wonderful about the place I love and call home.

Here at Ogley Junction, standing on the cast iron footbridge as I have many, many times, on this warm evening it was hard not to be filled with pleasure at the sight of the peaceful canal, the only movement being languid waterfowl and birds swooping for bugs.

Such rides are measured by weight, not distance.

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#365daysofbiking Country roads, taken me home

March 15th – The first real ride out for the hell of it in a few weeks proved to be a real tonic. Not far: Just up over to Walsall Wood, Lazy Hill then around the lanes of Lower Stonnall, Hilton and Warrenhouse, but a delight all the same.

I hadn’t been in these lanes for the devil of it for so long. It felt like coming home – and the flowers, views and rain-sodden landscape made me feel at once refreshed and home again.

Whatever happens in coming months, I’ll always have this, my spiritual home.

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#365daysofbiking Crosstown traffic

September 20th – That evening, coming up from Stonnall as dusk fell I was, as I usually am, held at the lights.

There are few homecomings more significant to me that this small, triumphant wait – having climbed a large hill, all that’s left between me, a mug of tea, home and family – and often, the food in the pannier – is a long, pleasurable freewheel down the hill, over Anchor Bridge and into Brownhills.

Just got to wait for the lights, and I’m nearly there…

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#365daysofbiking These streets

September 1st – Hopping off the canal at Anchor Bridge before heading back into town, the sunset was plain in a cloud free sky but beautiful all the same. Looking up past Knaves Court, this part of High Street has been greatly changed in recent years, but is still broad and open and looks terrific with a good sunset.

This is my town, these are my streets and I never feel a greater sense of belonging than when it looks gorgeous in a good sunset.

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September 15th – A bad day in many ways, when not much seemed to go to plan. It wasn’t very bad, just loads of minor irritations – and the weather; occasionally sunny and deceptively warm, but at other times almost painfully chilly, as if winter’s fingers were starting to get their grip on things.

The first tinges of the oncoming cold and dark are always the hardest, and this year they’ve come a lot sooner that I expected – but we have kind of got used to Indian summers in recent years, so perhaps this is a return to normal.

I came back from work in heavy, intemperate traffic having to make a call near Streets Corner, and all the while the skies to the south were showing evil intent.

When I got home, mercifully before the rain came – I realised how glad I was to be back.

Some days, home is the best place to be.