Tag: sadness

August 8th – I came to the top of Shire Oak Hill in light rain, and stopped at the quarry entrance to look at my beloved view to Lichfield. Rain was sweeping in along the Trent Valley, and the hills to the west were obscured by low rain clouds.

It had been another tough week,and I was glad to crest the hill and be nearly home. I love my job, but sometimes it’s tough to keep everything going.

But knowing home was downhill from here, the promise of good company, the family and a decent mug of tea was strong, and cheering. 

Home is where the teapot is.

As it happened, the rain never really reached here. 

April 4th – I broke free after lunch and had time to kill in Walsall. It wasn’t a particularly bright afternoon, but I headed up to the church and memorial gardens as I hadn’t been up there in a long while. The Memorial Gardens were as I remembered them; quiet, peaceful, solitary and beautiful. Slightly down-at-heel, but no less beautiful for it, the flowers there are just kicking off. I have great memories of this little-known spot, but while I was here, it occurred to me that somewhere in the intervening years between my discovery of this wonderful place and the present here and now, that either Walsall had lost me, or I had lost Walsall.

These places, these streets, used to feel like mine. I used to haunt them. I knew them well, the shops, pubs, cafes. Today, although I pass through regularly, I don’t know any of it anymore. I still get the geography. But I’ve lost the sense of belonging. 

The horizon I could see from here today over the dull, overcast town was the same horizon, but changed, I saw three decades ago. But somewhere, inbetween that place and this, I exchanged that whole wide world for other horizons.

I wept a bit. But you can’t go back; I can no longer class this place as mine. But there are other places, and this will always, always be a part of me.

For better, or for worse.

February 7th – It had been a hard, long day. For the third time this week, I hit the canal back into Brownhills, but not before I’d stopped to reflect at Jockey Meadows in Walsall Wood. The heath there is sodden, and the meadow is still in winter clothing, but the daffodils here too are sprouting. No sign of snowdrops, though, which was sad.

The canal overflow is working to high capacity at Clayhanger Common, and I was interested to note the trash screen was clear of debris – either someone is cleaning it out or the canal isn’t that polluted these days. Think it’s probably the latter.

I paused on Catshill Junction bridge to look over to the wasteland where Bayley House once stood. One of the two high rise blocks demolished here just shy of a decade ago, permission has finally been granted for a new canalside development here.

Things change – the seasons, the weather, the skyline. But sometimes, the constancy of just loving where you are is enough after a tough day. Standing there in the weak February sun this afternoon, I really felt that attachment deeply. 

I absorbed the space, the sun, the smell of the damp earth, the canal.

I got back on my bike, and rode home.

February 24 – Flowers have again appeared on the miner railings in Brownhills, and I have no idea why. There is no note. They are attached firmly with cable ties, and there are three separate bunches, bundled together. I can’t think of any fatalities here. The wreaths tied here at Christmas were soon cut down and taken away, which I though was rather sad.

Does anyone have any idea what this is all about?

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.