April 9th – I passed this tiled mural late this afternoon, and finally recorded it as I’ve been intending to do since starting this journal all those years ago. It’s a simple, tiled inset in an otherwise blank shopfront wall next to AE Poxon Butchers, High Street, Brownhills. It shows, obviously, a bucolic scene of the kind of livestock the proprietor purveys – set in rolling, beautiful countryside.

Curiously, no chickens.

This is old. Really old. Poxon’s is an old company and a very old shop. This has been here certainly as long as I can remember, and much longer than that. I know nothing of who painted it or if it’s significant in anything more than as a local curiosity.

It’s a lovely thing, for sure, and a bit of Brownhills heritage.

June 5th – While wandering through Lichfield on a grey afternoon, I spotted these lovely cows gracing the shopfront of the former Savers store in Dam Street. I guess that, judging by the subject and various hooks on the frontage, that this was one a butcher. Nice that the cows were retained.