November 21st – At the other end of the day, it was even colder. But the air had developed that hard, glassy-clear quality that it only really develops in winter; when even sounds seem sharper. I noticed as I hopped between stations that the view of the mid-renovation New Street Station, Bullring and Smallbrook from the access bridge was quite stunning, so I stopped to photograph it a while.
Quite surprised I wasn’t collared by the ever-present security as I took these, to be honest…
November 20th – Just the one picture today, as the commutes were horrid and wet, ad the images I took in the morning were spoiled by rain on the lens. I grabbed this as I left the station at Walsall in the early evening. The rain had stopped, but everything was wet and cold. The traffic seemed tetchy and aggressive tonight, too, but nothing really matches the glisten of a wet urban night scene. There wasn’t much business for the taxis tonight, but it’s nice to see Station Street undergoing a bit of a revival.
Even on a cold wet Wednesday in Walsall, there’s beauty to be had.
November 19th – Yesterday’s sunset was clearly unfinished business. Sorry for the repetition, but I do love this view. Tonight, there was less cloud, and more smog, which sat as a band over the distant city centre. I love the gradual colour transitions and trains, like a Hornby set in the dusk.
November 18th – I came out of work, and just caught the tail end of an incredible sunset over Tyseley station. I hurried caught these shots in the four or five minutes before my train arrived. It ws gorgeous, and I was glad I caught it.
November 17th – Today was a carbon copy of yesterday, but warmer, and so the mist had risen a little. By the time I got out – again, as dusk fell – the air was clearing and a very quiet darkness settled upon Brownhills. I spun around, enjoying the unusual quiet; up the canal to the old cement works, then up the old railway line to Engine Lane, and back into Brownhills via the Hussey Estate and Holland Park. It’s taken a long time this year, but tonight, I was aware of being in love with the darkness again, or at the least, in love with the things it brings. Solitude, quiet, a new aspect to familiar places.
There’s the dark town, the darkness itself, and the fear of the darkness. At some point in the last 24hours, seasonal lines recrossed and I stopped fighting it. The fear is real: it’s not the menace, or the ghostliness as found here at Coppice Lane, but the fear of never seeing the summer again. I can’t hold on to the year passed,the warm days, long grass and flowers have withered and now, it’s winter. Come Christmas, everything will open out again.
And in the meantime, evenings like this: quiet, dark and beautiful.
November 16th – I went up to Chasewater just to spin around the park. I haven’t done that for ages, but in the shorter, colder days of winter I’ll return to it more and more. Although it’s nice to see the lake busy in summer, like Cannock Chase, the magic comes when it’s deserted and few venture out. Apart from the odd dog walker and twitchers there to catch the Great Northern Diver that had been exciting local birders all week, I saw few folk, and as dark fell, I felt the familiar haunting feeling I get here… A mixture of enjoyment, desolation and sense of smallness in the great dark.
The lake seems to hover these days about a foot off full, and is functioning normally, with Fly Creek flowing well to keep it topped up. As I folded back over the causeway, the last bit of the sunset over Norton and Jeffrey’s Swag was quite nice, and in the dark from the Balcony Shore, it seemed the resurgent Water Sports Centre was getting ready for a party.
One of the few joys of the off season is returning to old haunts.
November 15th – While capturing Morris, the lights of the former Brownhills Council House – The Parkview Centre – caught my eye. It was an interesting original building – not handsome or beautiful, but a tour-de-force of civic pride in a growing town made prosperous by coal and bricks. The brick legacy is reflected in the light terracotta masonry, and engaging detail around the windows, doors and eaves.
Sadly, up until recently, the hundred year old clock has neither been accurate nor reliable, and is affectionately known as the ‘three-faced liar’ to locals.
Recently, the timepiece has been refurbished following welcome work instigated by the Brownhills Local Committee, with new mechanisms and seems to be holding time well; it was a mere minute fast in this picture.
Unfortunately, the civic pride the building and clock conferred has been utterly destroyed by the hideous, architecturally lazy and cheap extensions added in the last decade to make this landmark suitable as a health centre and library.
A more botched, unsuitable conversion would be hard to find.
November 15th – It had been a long day, the energy was low, and I didn’t have much time. I spun up the High Street at teatime and rode the backstreets for a bit. Returning, I looked at something thats so familiar, I rarely pay it much attention: Morris, the Brownhills Miner. Much as I feel uncomfortable with the extravagance in a faltering town, I do love him. John McKenna’s work in drafting all those fragments, then welding them together in a finite-element model like this is stunning, and always has been. So much better than the laser cut by numbers tat in Walsall Wood, this took a really skilled artist a huge amount of time to design, facilitate and build. I just wish the blue lights didn’t make it look so cheap.
Morris is such an obvious and cliched subject, I’ve only rarely featured him here, but it’s worth it, once in a while, just to share him. The politics and cost aside, it’s a terrific thing.
November 14th – Now winter darkness is upon me, that Late Night Feelings thing is haunting me once again. I pitched up at Tyseley station this evening on the threshold between day and night, and all it took between the two was the journey downstairs to the platform.
The lights, the skyline, the signals. Bright, warming, steady, reassuring, control. The glistening, ever-crossing parabolas of the rails; the ever present shadow of the incinerator, innocuously operating unnoticed in the dry warm air of summer, but now with it’s dirty secrets revealed into the chill air in the form of a plume of steam.
Cityscape, geometry, light. Can’t stop the fascination, I really can’t.
December 13th – Further along the canal,I played again with night photography. Interesting that the lack of moonlight tonight made for such grainy images, but I like them, all the same. I hated it at first, but I’m quite getting to like the ghost-flats in Brownhills. The colour comes alive at night.
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