Tag: light

#365daysofbiking Peace, at last

April 18th – The end of work for a few blessed days, good weather in prospect and time on my hands. Bliss.

This of course meant the last working day was everything busy, at top speed. Finally nearing home as darkness fell, I stopped to look at the canal as I crossed Clayhanger Bridge.

Blossom is out, the trees are that bright, lucid green they only achieve at the very peak of spring, and things were calm and quiet.

It’s only been a few weeks since Christmas, hasn’t it? Yet here, in the light, the green, and warmth again.

And me, myself, at peace, at last.

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#365daysofbiking A lifetime away

March 16th – In Brownhills High Street, it was largely deserted. Not just due to the lateness of the hour, but because of the awful, endless rain and scouring wind.

I don’t mind Brownhills these days: I used to find the High Street problematic, with its reminders of a more prosperous past and failed dreams of regeneration, but of late, despite the derelict scar of Ravens Court it’s actually perceptibly on the up.

New housing has bought short, local footfall, and local convenience services are doing well, I think. Slowly, very slowly, things seem to be improving.

But here and now, in the grey dusk with rain falling steadily, better days seem a whole lifetime away.

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#365daysofbiking Approaching equity

March 7th – Things that happen while you’re not looking.

The darkness is receding fast now – we’re gaining around fifteen minutes more light in the evening now every week, and soon it will be the spring equinox, when the daylight and night time are the same length – 12 hours.

The concept of the equinox fascinates me, and I don’t really know why. But within a fortnight the sunrise and sunset will occur at the same numerical time, but AM and PM.

And after the equinox comes the start of British Summer Time – this year cruelly not until the 31st March.

Still, it’s almost over.

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#365daysofbiking Flowers of the night

March 1st – It had been a dreadful day and I had to nip out late on an errand into Brownhills. As I crossed the Silver Street pedestrian bridge, I was struck by the effect of the sodium lights on the wild plum blossom nearby.

That really cheered me up. Happiness can be found in the oddest of places.

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#365daysofbiking Crossover point

 

February 11th – Riding back from Shenstone Station in the region of 6pm. Still just about light at Fighting Cocks.

this time next week it will be merely twilight here at this time.

On the darkening lane, the trees and farm buildings silhouetted agains the western sky, this was beautiful, but chilly. I loved the effect of the passing cars.

Slowly but surely the daylight’s winning the battle.

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#365daysofbiking Kind of blue

January 30th – I came back to Shenstone to a glass hard dusk: It was well past 5pm and the light hadn’t yet drained away leaving the sky to the west a beautiful deep blue.

It’s so good to see the lengthening day – soon sunset will be well past 5pm – and this means I’ll be entering the season of the commute sunset, which I always enjoy.

It the mean time, Shenstone again reminded me of what a wonderful place it is to come back to.

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#365daysofbiking On the run

January 25th – I noticed not long after I left work that on this wet evening it was a balmy 12 degrees or so, and that sunset now didn’t arrive until 4:40pm – that means it’s pretty much light now until 5pm.

It was a horrid journey home but the improving conditions made me feel better.

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#365daysofbiking Hard surfaces

January 19th – A late run out for exercise on a cold, murky night took me to Chasewater. Unusually, I entered the park from Brownhills West of the spooky, Peter Saville-esque M6 Toll footbridge, the enclosed crossing with the streetlight shining through it.

Init is a hard, hostile, unwelcoming space that makes for remarkable photos.

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#365daysofbiking Gaining fast

January 16th – Although, on the way home I stopped to take a call and noticed that sunset was now over thirty minutes later the at Christmas.

Soon, it will be 5pm. And I will start to see fingers of the day creep into the skies of my journeys home.

Can’t come soon enough…

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#365daysofbiking Getting better every day

January 2nd – Back on the 21st December my heart was lifted, as it always its, by the thought that we’d had the shortest day of the year, and that now the sunset would get later and later and the night and darkness would retreat for another year.

Well, not two weeks later, and the sunset is already 10 minutes later than it was on that day.

Ten minutes may not seem much, but it’s significant. Although the timetable to which the day lengthens is fixed, the rapidity of the change is always impressive to me and the retreat of night, being loosely sinusoidal, accelerates as we escape winter.

That six hundred seconds of gleaned light mean that on a clear day, it’s not really dark until well after 4:30pm. Soon light will leak into my evening commutes, and all will be well again.

I so hate the darkness.

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