Tag: commute

April 5th – I keep going on about this to the point that readers must be sick to death of it, but Spring seems alternately on my shoulders and miles away.

Stood on Catshill Junction Bridge, looking at the leafless trees, muddy wet towpaths and general lack of green, spring seems delayed.

We need warm weather, clear skies and all this will just bolt into life.

It ain’t too much to ask, is it? A bit of happiness from the sun?

April 5th – There will be a series of muggings on the canal in coming months.

A pair of familiar criminals met me on my way home – gone for the winter, these fair weather foes appear in the spring every year, and raise a local brood, surviving on the abundant local greens – but also on the tidbits and seed they bully out of passers by whom they harass for treats.

If you’re on the canal between Clayhanger Bridge and The Black Cock, take seed or something to shoo them off with…

April 4th – I’d had to call into Aldridge after working late and returned via Streets Corner. I noted that the old wall to the 60s shopping precinct on the corner had gone, and excavations were underway.

This is the preparatory work for the next stage of local junction improvements work which will see this entire junction remodelled with new signals, slip roads and crossings.

Peaceful now in the gathering dusk, but a summer of inconvenience and holdups for motorists seems to be on the cards…

Shire Oak has been massively improved, however, so it’ll be worth it in the end.

April 3rd – The day had been beautiful, but the late afternoon was punctuated by frighteningly intense rain and hail storms, and riding back home tentatively in light drizzle, my tenacity was rewarded with one of the finest rainbows I’ve ever seen.

Wednesbury was a great place to catch it, and it was worth the soaking.

The weather doesn’t have to be good to have a beautiful day…

March 29th – Again returning from Shenstone, again it was raining as as I alighted from the train. My heart was heavy and I didn’t fancy the wet ride home but something caught my eye in the shrub border to the platform.

An ornamental blackcurrant, in flower. It was dripping with rain, but that glorious pinky red was most vivid in the gloom. And for that, it made me happy.

March 28th – Daffodils. We all love them. I don’t think it’s possible to dislike these jolly, bright spring staples; yellow, white and orange, growing in gardens, verges, hedgerows, woodland and wasteland.

I adore them because they symbolise a new year beginning of light, long days, good rides and beautiful nature.

They are stunning in the huge displays they form, but while those are undoubtedly wonderful, I’d like to hear it for the solitary soldiers of spring – the loners, the brave, singular blooms you see dotted about.

Often on verges or poor ground, they may be the tentative start of a new patch in coming years, destined to multiply and impress from a single bulb that got there – who knows how?

They may be the last remnant of a patch decimated by disease (as large daffodil colonies often are) or disturbed by man.

They may not be perfect. They may be tatty, small or distorted. They may be eking out the last scrap of nutrition from a poor clump of soil, or harassed by traffic, animals or the wind, but they’ve done it, the lonely, single flowers. They put on a show for us.

Let’s hear it for the tenacious, bold one-offs!

March 28th – I’d been in Birmingham seeing a client and returned from Shenstone in a gap in the rain, down wet lanes, glistening and dripping in the odd light of a clearing sky.

The wind was against me and I was cold, but there was something captivating about the quiet and the sound of my tyres on the wet tarmac.

Winter seems endless this year. I just want to feel the sun on my face and the warmth to ride without a jacket a little.

Not too much to ask, is it?

March 26th – My goodness I’m having trouble keeping up with this this week, apologies – have no fear, normal service will be resumed forthwith!

Spring is coming to the hedgerows, edgelands and waysides, almost in spite of the lousy weather generally. Although we’re having some good days, mostly the weather is still grey and cold, and Winter is beginning to feel like the unwanted, hated guest that will never leave. 

Nature is doing it’s very best to push winter away – the daffodils are well on the way now, with the large beds on roadsides starting to come out, and to my surprise, ornamental prime blossom on a trading estate in Telford.

There’s brightness, as there always is. But you have to look for it. Hard.