Tag: signs

February16th – I passed St. Johns Church, in Walsall Wood, early afternoon, and a bright flash caught my eye as I passed. Doubling back, I saw the sign was a QR code.

For goodness sakes.

I’m not a fan of QR codes; by the time you’ve downloaded an app, fiddled around scanning the code and waited for it to decode, you could just go to the site from a printed, simple web address.

Predictably, this piece of obfuscating technological flapdoodle leads to this website, so there’s no need to scan it yourselves…

February 14th – A day spent sleeping, relaxing, and catching up. I had business in Stonnall in the evening, so nipped down there. Progress was slow. I was still tired.

On the Chester Road just past the houses – at the spot once colloquially referred to as ‘death mile’ or ‘mad mile’ after so many accidents – new speed restriction signs have appeared. ‘Please drive carefully’. I’ve never understood this rubbish, personally. 

(Death Mile became much, much safer after the road was modified in the 1990s.)

For starters, much of the traffic passing will be too fast to read anything other than the restriction; and secondly, who the hell decides to drive with wicked abandon only to later correct their behaviour because some quango or councillor decided to ask them to drive nicely in 180-point Helvetica Black?

There is something interesting here, though. That sign didn’t originally say Shire Oak; that legend has been added on a foil applied over other text, which could possibly say ‘Brownhills’, but I can’t decide. 

Are the folk on the Hill too posh and are now pushing for independence? In these straitened days, does anyone really care that much? And before the whinging starts, Shire Oak is indeed in the parish of Brownhills. 

December 12th – Tesco, the retail giant, are in trouble. Beset by falling sales, a very competitive market and seemingly mired in financial scandal, they abandoned plans to redevelop Brownhills which left us with a rotting, decaying, derelict shopping centre and no regeneration plan.

Yet still their store operates, raking the money in…

Never mind, it’s Christmas and they’ve put a green paper hat on the sign.

Dear god, why? What an utter, utter waste by a company that can ill afford it. Are we all supposed to cheer? Perhaps Tesco could organise community carolling in Ravens Court.

One things for sure: the directors of Tesco came from the west, because wise men come from the east.

May 4th – This is, as they say, boiling my piss. 

Pardon my language, but these signs have been put up recently by Sustrans rangers (who are volunteers) maintaing the cycle route through Brownhills. The aim is innocent enough, I guess.

The cycleway runs along Wharf Lane, onto the canal at the old bridge, then as far as Anglesey Wharf (fifty yards or so), then alongside the new bypass on the embankment, and on to Pool Road at the top of the dam. As a route, it’s crap, frankly.

Far better is to ride straight up the canal, past the basin and up the slope to the dam. It’s a fifth of the distance, on wide, well made tracks, and makes perfect sense. 

Likewise one can head to Brownhills along the very good towpaths and find a much better route than the Sustrans National Cycle Network one.

These signs only indicate that the route beyond this point is not part of the National Cycle Network, but they look like – and people are reading them as – cycling prohibition notices.

Why bother with them at all? The routes have functioned for 15 years without them. These are just a waste of time, money and effort.

Sustrans are supposed to be supporting and promoting cycling. This is a whole bag of fail.

Rant over.

April 20th – An odd day, really. I had a family thing to do most of the day over in Lichfield, but the weather was terrible anyway, blustery and wet. Spinning around Brownhills and Burntwood in the evening, I passed Chase Terrace Technology College.

They have a couple of signs like this. I find them offensive, not only in terms of accepted English, but graphically and syntactically.

Whoever approved them should be dragged out on the street, and slapped with a copy of a The Typography Manual until they publicly repent.

For an educational establishment, this is piss-poor. 

December 30th – Up the road in Pelsall, I slipped into the village unnoticed by the border guards, who were clearly either slumbering, or skiving the night off. I like Pelsall. It’s villagey, and semi rural, but a bit up itself sometimes. I noticed a new cafe here I must try out.

I’m wondering if the letter ‘I’ went missing from the Kandu Hair salon sign as an act of sublime urban mischief or just happenstance; maybe the owners are planning to convert to an Afghan restaurant and wanted to save on a new sign.

Yes, I know it’s not quite the right spelling, but it’s close enough for Pelsall…