Tag: sad

October 13th – My town, for better or worse.

I have a strange relationship with Walsall these days. Pass through it regularly, love almost all of it, but bits I used to know like the back of my hand are now alien to me. Certainly, shopping there is a grim experience these days. I was in town anyway, and wanted to see the Damien Hirst exhibition at the New Art Gallery. I like Hirst a lot, but the exhibition left me cold – I really wanted to see stuff like Mother and Child Divided again, yet what was here seemed to be the odds and ends of the artist’s work. The way it had been mixed in with the Garman Ryan collection was clever, though, and I did admire the guile of the people responsible for doing that, particularly the placement of the wallpaper.

I hadn’t been in the Gallery for a long while, and not on the roof terrace since the building opened a decade before, as when I’d visited, it had always been shut. Today, it was open, and I took photographs of my town – the place I once haunted like a skinny, music-obsessed ghost. I knew every shop, every bar, every alleyway, every cafe. Yet getting older dragged me away, and Walsall befell the same fate as other such post-industrial towns; ravaged by the inexorable rise of out-of-town and fringe retail developments, atrocious town planning and the encroachment of internet shopping,  it now holds little for me. The independent shops have gone, replaced by nail-bars, hairdressers, pound shops and money lenders. Many of the heritage buildings I could see from this view ten years ago are gone, lost to the arsonists that seem intent on depriving us of a cultural past. The bad planning goes on, the retail sheds obscuring or wrecking formerly decent vistas.

I still love this place with all my heart – as Bill Caddick put it, ‘Sore abused, but not yet dead’, but I fear I’m losing it forever. What’s gone, cannot be put pack, and there just doesn’t seem to be the breadth of vision, or cast of hand to build something new. Stuck in a kind of decay-limbo. I could cry.

I did what I always do at times when Walsall, and my past, makes me feel like this: I got back on my bike, cycled up to Caldmore, and reminded myself what community was about.

That’s my Walsall, right there.

October 10th – At Acocks Green, I noticed this memorial bouquet of flowers has appeared. It’s sad, and bears no card; I suspect it’s in memory of a young man who committed suicide here a couple of years ago. I felt it’s poignancy today particularly, as it was World Mental Heath Day. Anyone can suffer, we’re all susceptible. Please, if you know someone who’s suffering, do your best to help. Every day is a good day to walk up to someone, take their hand and say ‘Hello, chum.’ Sometimes, we all need a friend to listen.

September 20th – On my return from Shenstone, tired and feeling down, I noticed that the trees along Lynn Lane were turning colour, and everything, including the surrounding, freely ploughed fields, was looking very autumnal. The colder, shorter days are coming now, and it’s hard to feel positive. I hate the nights closing in.

July 9th – To be quite frank, I find this depressing. Finding myself in Tyseley again, I keep thinking about this sign. British Steel ceased to exist in 1999. I know Allen Rowland still exist in some form, but to me, this just symbolises the death of British industry. A fading sign for a long gone brand stood at the entrance to a half-derelict train yard, viewed from a decaying station. How very symbolic.