Tag: Kings Hill

November 2nd – I was lucky to pass through Darlaston tonight as the sun set, and the view over the landscape – today, a genuinely black Black Country – was beautiful; once, this view would have been marked by chimneys, stacks and furnaces; this evening, house lights, clear air and the glow of sodium discharge made the urban sprawl look like glowing embers of a fire that caught the clouds alight.

Watching on, like a sentry, the cellphone tower; constant, contracted, monitoring, trading it’s hundreds of concurrent conversations with the ether.

And there I stood, camera in hand, caught for a moment in ideas of technological progress and the beauty of the place I love.

November 1st – Also in Kings Hill, a character I see a fair bit, this elderly black and white puss with no teeth. Gummy and grumpy, he’s actually a charming chap when you catch him in a good mood. Today, he was startled by workmen on the Chapel renovation and their grinder, so he wasn’t feeling accommodating, and yowled at me to stop it.

It’s totally unacceptable when your daytime activities are disturbed by workmen.

November 1st – My gosh, November already? Where has the year gone?

Continuing a recurring yearly theme of discarded pumpkins I noted this sad, post-Halloween sight as I passed through King’s Hill mid day: a beautifully carved, huge pumpkin left out for rubbish by the Black Horse pub.

Someone worked hard on that, it’s very well done. Big pumpkin, too.

Bet that made a lot of soup…

October 19th – Darlaston is at it’s best in autumn, and with the leaves turning, this is a great time to visit this humming little town and take in it’s unexpectedly great architecture and scenery.

Some of the best of Darlaston can be seen in it’s two parks – Victoria and King’s Hill, from which the glorious twin sisters of Wednesbury can be appreciated in all their glory.

It would be hard not to love this place.

September 19th – Yet another abundance this year of bright orange-red cotoneasters, so beloved of blackbirds, who upon finding a bush, will fight off challengers, usually while another steals the sugary berries.

These bright fruits – another clear sign of autumn – line hedgerows, cycleways and towpaths, and seem a very popular bush to plant on industrial estate verges, which is good for birds and bees alike.

September 9th – Found in Kings Hill Park in Darlaston, a sign of the oncoming autumn. Glistening ink caps, shooting up after a night’s rain; tiny spores waiting in the ground until exactly the right combination of light, temperature and moisture. Then – ping! – instant toadstool forest.

Isn’t fungus incredible?

September 8th – People keep grumbling about all the cats. Sorry, but I adore them.

The characters that appear in the warmer days of summer – loafing, watching, patrolling and generally taking the air include in their number the more elderly of the local feline population, and I find them quite charming.

Usually dozing, washing or lazing, these characters have done all their rushing around, and are generally too comfortable to run off when you stop to say hello.

There’s often a world of experience in their manner, features and battle scars.

I’m never too busy to stop and offer an ear-tickle.

June 10th – I slipped out of work for the day near lunchtime, and pottered through the Black Country down the canals into Brum, then back home on the waterways to Aldridge. Unlike Brownhills, I had a mostly dry, temperate afternoon, and life is everywhere, from the lounging cat to the aggressive geese. Flowers and greenery are everywhere, and as ever, the landscape was the star.

It wasn’t a long ride at 35 miles, but the stop at a favourite Jamaican cafe for curried mutton, rice and peas and a good mooch around the architecture was good for my soul.

A lovely afternoon.

April 5th – It was quite clear from the view over to Wednesbury from where I pulled over to answer a call in Kings Hill that Bill’s Mother now lived that way on – it was looking mighty black over there. 

The sunlight that remained, though, caught the twin sisters a mile away and reminded me why I love this most urban of views.

A real Black Country vista.