Wednesday February 10th 2021 – Still very cold, I had to call in to Walsall on my return from work.
This is at a shade before 6pm on a regular weekday.
Normally this would be busy with commuters, people grabbing a drink or groceries on the way home.
This is pandemic Britain. Haunting, beautiful, but utterly incomprehensible.
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March 22nd – Working very late, a 14 hour day. I returned through a somnambulant Park Street in Walsall, the pavers shining in the electric light.
Walsall gets an awful lot of stick in some quarters, but looking tonight at the clean street and welcoming light, I was reminded that this isn’t a bad place, for all it’s detractors.
It certainly felt like home tonight.
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January 26th – Ah, hello rain, you’re back.
Passing through Walsall to make a call on my commute home, the heavens opened. For what seemed like the thousandth time this year, I got wet. But the rain was warm and the wind was behind me, and it didn’t last too long.
However, I did catch it whilst in Park Street, in the town centre. Something about the light and surfaces combined. I though it was rather beautiful.
Monday 13th – A horrid commute, in both directions. Autumn is sitting heavily on my shoulders at the moment; the nights are closing in, and the rainy days more and more frequent.
But then, what should I expect? Half way through October. Just where has this year gone?
February 28th – I mentioned last week (at least, I think it was last week…) that Walsall has some really interesting architecture above street level. Making it back to Walsall in the daylight, I took a quick scoot around. Chineys, on Park Street – when did they last see smoke? The mosaics, still on the front of the former Priory Hotel. Crests, cupolas and cornices. The Edwars Moore building is beautiful from the front, in Leicester Street (look at the upstairs windows), but equally so from the rear. There’s fantastic detail in those chimneys. Yet the building is scarcely noticed.
Walsall still has some gems.
February 15th – One of the last vestiges of ‘old’ Park Street in Walsall isn’t actually to be found in Park Street at all – it’s in St. Pauls Street, just behind the old Bus Station Offices, themselves sited in what was built as the Victorian Blue Coat School. On a loading bay door, normally propped open with stillages, there’s a sign indicating that this is the correct entry to the bar of The Priory Hotel, which, as far as I recall, closed in the 1980’s. The access way now forms the loading bay to MacDonalds, but it is the clothes shop next to it that was the pub. Probably better closed, in my day it had a fearsome reputation. Now all that remain are this sign, classically 70’s Ansell’s brewery style, and the two odd mosaic artworks on the front.
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