Tag: nostalgia

#365daysofbiking Greetings from the side street

Monday February 1st 2021 –  The year ticks by, faster than I’d have imagined, given the circumstances. My beloved spring will not be far off now.

On the way home from work I had to drop a letter coffin Brickiln Street, and as I returned to the High Street, I stopped to put my gloves back on, and realised the view was oddly Hopper-ish.

I don’t know what it is, it just appealed to me. These quiet side streets are still very much my Brownhills: I know them as well as I did when I was a kid, I frequently came up here to the long-moved Library, my second home, the site of which is still a vacant plot years from the old library’s demolition.

There was nobody around much on this Monday evening, but Brickiln Street was very much crowded with my memories.

I put the gloves on, had a wistful last look, and rode off, all the time wondering where all the intervening years had gone.

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#365daysofbiking Restoring a light in the darkness

Friday November 6th 2020 – The second lockdown is not so far as bad as I feared: With kids at school, people are going to work and there is life and people around.

I kept up my commitment to fresh air and exercise by riding to Lichfield on an important errand, coming back after darkness fell through the little village of Wall.

Wall phone box is an original Giles Gilbert Scott and had been under refurbishment for some time, but is now thankfully fully and beautifully restored and returned to it’s post-mobile era as a community library.

But the best thing about it? It still has a light. So many lost their illumination when transferred to community ownership, but this one has not. As a cyclist of a certain age, the night-time rural beacons that were isolated phone boxes were almost romantic and welcoming to me, and their disappearance makes me sad. To see one restored is a joy to the heart.

Well done, Wall. Well done.

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January 26th – In the centre of Darlaston, at the other end of the day, one of the last of a breed. Outside Darlaston’s wonderfully imperious Post Office, a classic K6 telephone box, still with the light and a phone.

I’ve never noticed this one before, and the light within them always gives me a warm feeling inside. Years ago, riding through the countryside at night, the sight of that red frame and white light would be reassuring; contact, signs of life and connection in the darkness. I even waited in them for showers and storms to pass.

These days, this classic design is rare, and even rarer with a functioning phone and light.

I’ve just realised this is the second OMD reference on this journal in little over a week…