Tag: funny

January 8th – Off to work on a miserable, grey and cold morning. I hit the canal in Walsall to avoid the morning crush hour and was accosted in Pleck by a very cross character demanding food. Sadly, my supply of corn was in another jacket, and the swan who was so aggressively begging showed it’s displeasure by repeatedly pecking my feet.

Of course, the swan was not starving, but urban swans are very lazy and accustomed to the high life, and when loafing in ice-free swim holes near bridges on cold days, they have little better to do that harass passers by for tidbits. I suspect the policy works best on passing mothers and fathers with children, whose guilt twanged, will come back with food.

The ice itself wasn’t severe. Moorhens and coots skittered about on it, but I doubt it would have supported the portly resplendent girth of your average drake mallard. 

On the wonderful Dru Marland Canal Ice scale, I guess it was somewhere between IC2 and IC3. Check Dru out here: she’s wonderful.

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January 6th – Meeting this fellow in Pier Street was a shock. Of course, I’m assuming it was a fellow, but this large puss  had a very male disdain for my very existence and was clearly wishing I’d go away.

In the winter months it’s a joy to meet a cat out and about rather than curled up in the warmth and this one, despite the face, obliged me by tolerating it’s picture being taken.

I do hope we meet again on friendlier terms.

December 26th – I headed to Chasewater, which was brooding and quiet. 

Quiet that is, apart from the bickering, squabbling flock of waterfowl of every shape and size gathering around the boardwalk balcony as someone fed them seed.

The water boiled with desperate pecks and defensive wing flaps. There were fights, squabbles, pecked heads and nipped tails.

We all love these lakeside clowns. But man alive, they have no manners…

December 14th – Some things you see while out and about just make you smile. 

As I was taking a call on my way through Darlaston on a sunny but cold day, two young ladies passed me, one pushing a child in a buggy, the other carrying a huge dog soft toy, one of the largest I’ve ever seen.

All the time chattering in Polish like there was nothing unusual about this at all.

December 9th – Lichfield has a little secret that I’d love to share: Melbourne Coffee.

In a passageway between Market Street and the central car park, there’s a kiosk run by a lovely Australian lady who, to put it frankly, can caffeinate me anytime. Here espressos are toe-curlingly good, and made with expert care, dedication, and the happiest, loveliest customer service you could wish for. 

On this cold day, the bar-seats at the kiosk counter had hot water bottles for customer comfort, and the brew slid down well, as no doubt would have the lovely looking cake were I not digesting my own bodyweight in marinaded goat.

The lady running this fantastic venture is the same lady behind the frankly bonkers Leomansley Snail thing, and I think she’s ace.

November 20th – I’ve seen herons do many odd things in my time cycling the canals. They are distinctly eccentric birds, who clearly operate to their own rules and desires.

But I’ve never had one so determinedly turn it’s back on me before. It is absolutely, unquestionably giving me the shoulder.

I presume it’s annoyed because I disturbed a fishing session.

Well, pardon me, fishbreath…

November 6th – The shrooms are multiplying!

A few weeks ago I spotted a single toadstool, chainsaw-carved from a log near the old Charles Richard Imperial works in Darlaston Green, where that interesting ex-military truck is always parked. There is a trestle there, and logs, so it seems the trucker is cutting winter fuel there (although there’s no sawdust, oddly).

I presume the artist is carving the toadstools at the same time – and they are beautifully executed. Now multiplying, I wonder if there will be a clump form?

October 12th – In Darlaston Green on a sunny day, outside the old Charles Richards works, I spot a small but amusing bit of whimsy. The owner of the land rover that parks here – which has an ingenious and wide range of interchangeable rear bodies for different tasks – clearly has a log burner and is preparing for winter with some good logs and a cutting trestle. But also here is a chainsaw-cut carving of a large toadstool from what looks like an ash log.

It’s well executed and mad me smile.

October 6th – For all my (uncharacteristic) shoe-gazing, there was brightness; in the nasturtiums growing from a pavement fissure near a cellar hatch; in the flowers of the River Gardens and it’s rather cheeky robin, and in the swans and their goose-pal napping where once rowing boats were hired. 

The love-lock restriction amused, as you’d need a seriously large one to clamp on the Jubilee Bridge, and the cleverly named coffeeshop made me double take. 

It was an afternoon as English as tuppence, really, and I did rather enjoy the self-indulgent introspection of it.