Tag: funny

September 30th – These guys crease me up. Often on my way home, I cycle down Four Crosses Road in Shelfield. A garden there backs onto the footpath, and these three tiny little dogs have the run of the yard.

When I go past, they always go bananas. Ferociously yapping, growling and snapping, they appear to loathe my very soul.

I’m convinced that if they could get out, they’d have a really good go at savaging me. But not one of them is larger than your average cat.

I think they imagine they’re actually wolves…

September 25th – I spotted this by change in Butlers Passage, Walsall. A dark, dingy alleyway, it’s not a pleasant place, and I normally scoot the bike through here to get on the road home if I’ve been in the town centre. 

Today, I happened to glance left, and there was a beautifully executed partial stencil of Snow White apparently drinking coffee with a lad in a baseball hat. 

I guess it’s a visual joke based on the Italian cafe a few yards to the right.

It’s beautifully executed, and seems to be by the same hand as the now erased ‘Class War’ stencil that was nearby until very recently. The art is confident yet cursory, and beautifully thought out.

A wonderful thing that brought a real smile to my face. My compliments to the artist.

September 25th – Spotted in darkest Wednesbury whilst nipping out on an errand, a giant, concrete lego brick. 

How long have these been a thing? Why was I not informed?

A world where four-feet wide giant lego exists cannot be all bad. But why just use it as an anti-vehicle barrier and not build something instead?

A wasted opportunity, I feel…

September 9th – As I rode home along the canal through Walsall Wood, I came upon a Mexican standoff. A small, black and white kitten one side of the canal, staring out a Heron on the other who was meeting the stare eye-to-eye.

They’d probably both still be there, but a clumsy cyclist with tea on his mind broke the moment.

August 28th – A bit of a strange day. I wasn’t planning on going to work, but ended up called in anyway. It wasn’t a bad commute as it happened, and the journeys were pleasant. On the way home, I passed over the The Bridge in Walsall town centre. It was while there that I spotted something I pass by loads, that is really part of Walsall’s furniture; the concrete hippo. It occurred to me that I’d never featured it here before.

Derided and loved in equal measure, this 1970s artwork has formed a meeting point for a couple of generations of Walsallians. Up until a decade ago, the hippo basked outside BHS, and teenagers, before mobiles and social media would agree to ‘see you by the hippo at 12 o’clock’ or somesuch.

For a while, the hippo image was even used to advertise the Walsall Show.

The story of how our town came to have this bizarre object is complex and not without some debate, but I think all true Walsall folk love it. There is talk of a renovation, of fixing the broken ear. I hope they go through with it.

Walsall is full of surprises. A concrete hippo – without any apparent rhyme or reason – is just one of them. And it’s lovely.

July 17th – On my return, I was held up by some rather familiar beaked* villains. This is Coulter Lane, Burntwood, just outside the farm where they sell asparagus. It’s a good couple of miles from Chasewater – yet these honking, hissing impediments to cycling progress are clearly the Chasewater geese – domestic birds set free some years ago, that generally hang around the boating lake, grumping at anyone and anything. 

Are they regulars here? Is this actually their home? Do they commute?

So many questions, so little time…

*yes, I know they have bills, not beaks, but it doesn’t scan as well.

July 16th – Working late, stopped off for a Chinese takeaway on the way home.

Just what do bored staff do in such places when it’s slack, then? 

Origami, obviously. 

A variety of animals and flowers, mostly folded from the local newspapers. I loved it. There’s creativity in the oddest places if you look out for it. There’s clearly a talent here.

June 28th – At Waitrose in Lichfield, an intriguing shopping list left on the clipboard of a discarded trolley. ‘Dr. P (Doctor Pepper, I assume), Cream Soda, Flake, Bounty, Marathon, D/eck (Double Decker?).

That’s a wicked chocolate and pop binge, or one hyperactive children’s party.

All these years, and Ye Olde City still can’t bring itself to think of Snickers either…