March 25th – Lee Marston settling lakes continue to fascinate me. Created from old gravel pits in the early 80s, they are now more or less redundant as heavy industry is no longer polluting the Tame in Birmingham, and Minworth sewage works is a lot cleaner than it was; the dredging of the settled out toxic silt has now stopped and the site is becoming a haven for wildlife. 

It really is quite beautiful.

It’s still a live river, though, and where the weir carries the water downhill a notch, the plastic bottles and detritus still circle in the vortex here, a sign of our huge problem with plastic waste.

April 16th – Running an errand to Chasetown, near St. Anne’s Church I spotted this fake owl, someone had mounted high in a roadside tree.

I have no idea, really I don’t: that took serious effort to get up there (and I’m still not sure how it was done) and from the bird poo splashed on it, it’s not really scaring birds.

An oddity, for sure…

December 2nd – High above Town Wharf in Walsall, a curiosity.

On the flat roof of one of the new apartment blocks, a plastic goat. I’d heard it talked about by Dan Slee a couple of years ago, but never got around to looking for it until I saw someone talking about it on Facebook last weekend.

The question is ‘why?’ but probably should more be ‘why not?’

Walsall still has the capacity to surprise and delight…