Tag: hippo

March 11th – Quick photos grabbed in passing on a desperately murky evening, but there’s no mistaking the recently relocated, civically vandalised Walsall hippo. Now outside the library, publicity wonks working at the council decided it would be a bit of free and easy publicity to paint the concrete kiboko in a Walsall football strip to cash in on – sorry, celebrate – the recent success of Walsall Football Team, a sporting enterprise that in former, less successful times, was untroubled by civic attention.

The wonks this post prandial brainwave surely was – whose previous contact with paint technology is probably limited to spare rooms and nails – assure all and sundry the paint will wash off (presumably when sporting fortunes return to normal and disassociation is necessary) and that the stunt – sponsored by an unholy amalgam of tattoo parlour and home insurance company – is all in good taste.

Of course, seeing a football fan on the streets of Walsall, resplendent girth barely contained by team shirt is not unusual, and the footballing hippo is very representative, even more at home like this. But cast from cheap concrete worn porous with age, it’ll take some effort to expunge him from the red peril he finds himself in.

Of course, the duality of the civic position that graffiti is wrong has gone unnoticed, and it’s odd to see the insurance people back off the naughty step, but hey, this is Walsall.

And no, this sculpture has never been called ‘hoppy’ by anyone I’ve met, despite apparent attempts by the burghers to convince us otherwise.

Good luck to The Saddlers, though…

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.