Tag: commute

October 19th – A day marked by a ludicrously early start and thoroughly wet, rain-sodden homeward darkness commute. The weather really isn’t being kind to me this week.

The riding wasn’t bad, really – they do say drowning is quite pleasurable once you stop fighting it, and I flowed like the rainwater through the streets from Darlaston with an occasionally startling crosswind. Reaching the town centre, I took a short cut past the civic centre. With nobody about and beautifully glistening surfaces, it made for a good night shot.

If the weather-gods are reading this, can I please have some dry, non-windy weather for a short while please? I’d be ever so grateful…

October 18th – And here’s the problem. The clocks haven’t gone back yet – we’re still on British Summer Time – and look at those sunset and sunrise times, as shown by my bike computer. Both my commutes are now mostly in darkness.

This is profoundly sad to me. I love the light, the summer, the green. And for the next four months, I will be deprived of these things. 

But then again, the hunger makes them more special when they’re present.

And so the season’s wheel turns onward.

October 18th – A week or so, I posted a video ‘Welcome to the suck’ pointing out the dark winter commutes were upon us, and every year I note that when the dark nights come, the traffic behaves oddly until around Christmas, when drivers finally get used to the dark.

Tonight was a grim commute. All the way in not quite rain, a penetrating mist-drizzle soaked me; it was cold, and the traffic was awful. But seeing this was astounding. Sorry it’s so blurry with rain on the camera lens but I’ll explain.

I’m stopped at the cross roads of the Pleck Road (Ring Road) with Bridgman Street in Walsall, near the Manor Hospital. I’m at the front of my queue heading northbound straight on. The lights are red. 

Heading south in the opposite direction, pushing through the traffic which is moving aside are two fire appliances on blues and twos. I can smell smoke. Their shout is local.

The engines get to the the lights opposite me, attempting to turn down Bridgman Street to my right, their left – but are blocked by two cars, just resolutely unmoving. Eventually a small movement is made, one appliance takes the outside line, the other the inside line.

It’s not rocket science, and it’s in the Highway Code. Get out of the way of emergency vehicles when safe to do so. After all it might be your family, house or business these people are rushing to the aid of.

There’s a word for these obstructive people: arseholes. But totally symptomatic of the madness of the first dark evenings of winter.

(Source: https://player.vimeo.com/)

October 17th – My deer magnet hasn’t been great lately, so returning from a Birmingham train at Sandhils, I was surprised and pleased to note this pair browsing the healthy-looking winter crop at Home Farm, Sandhills.

Terrible long range images in very poor light, nonetheless they amused and pleased me, rightening an otherwise dull commute.

Of course, the farmer won’t be so pleased, these animals – breeding well and expanding in numbers rapidly – are beginning to cause appreciable dame to crops and fences.

October 16th – With the sun more or less returned to normal and a ferocious tailwind, I hammered back to Brownhills late afternoon for an appointment. Watching me from the far side of the canal near Silver Street, a familiar character who clearly doesn’t care for my sort much, but that’s a huge bruiser of a cat. A real character.

At the old market place by the Pier Street Bridge, I’m happy to see the housing development is using forward with footings already in for the first houses.

It’ll be so nice to see this place inhabited and alive again.

October 11th – Again returning as darkness fell, I caught sight of the Walsall skyline from North Street Bridge, and gave it a shot in a different mode.

The TZ90 is streets ahead of the TZ80 for night shots – and it needed to be; the last decent poor light performance from this range of camera was two generations back in the TZ70. This seems a lot better.

And Walsall, with the modernist buildings of the risibly named Gigaport, was a good subject.

October 11th – Spotted on the way to work, again on the rich, undisturbed grass of an industrial estate verge, some kind of tricholomo – probably dingy. These medium sized, grey and almost downy toadstools were really pretty in their way and I’ve not seen them before.

Every year seems to throw up new fungi to me. I love to find them and puzzle over what they might be.

October 10th – I returned to Shenstone on a horribly overcrowded, delayed train feeling flustered and weary, but then discovered something else I’d lost in recent months; that view of Shenstone Church across the village rooftops.

Shenstone Church is almost unique in British architecture – it’s a church which is improved when you can only see the elegant, foursquare tower and not the hideous, dark gothic edifice attached to it. 

I used to pass through here a lot when working in Birmingham, Telford and Redditch, but these days with others now doing those jobs, I’m more based in Darlaston so don’t see the seasonal changes of this place as much as I used to, which is sad.

The treat of a gathering dusk over Lynn and Stonnall as I return home is still a wonderfully life affirming thing, though.