May 10th – Nipping into Aldridge on a Sunday afternoon on another wolfish day.
For the past few years I thought one of the major qualifications required to run a bar or cafe was to be a great chalkboard artist and songwriter – often in preference to keeping good beer or making decent coffee.
They probably missed the memo. Unfortunate.
April 23rd – Stopped at the lights in Darlaston, I realised a happy face was watching me from the tailgate of the van in front.
I whipped out the camera and snatched a picture before the lights changed. I love found faces.
April 6th – Spotted in Shuttington. Curious.
Do you think there’s a connection?
April 3rd – This is a crime warning.
The canal towpaths and waterside footpaths are, as is usual at this time of year, inhabited by attackers, muggers and aggressive beggars. Hormonally aggressive, the Canada geese and swans really aren’t messing around at the moment and will go after anything – walkers, cyclists, dogs.
This pair at Walsall Wood have been hanging about all week, and I now carry tidbits for the male to stop him pecking my ankles as I pass.
I’ll be glad when mating is over and they go back to their usual grumpy but relatively nervous state.
March 26th – I escaped work early, and despite a fearsome wind, headed down to Kings Norton on the train and cycled back up the canal, and through the Sandwell Valley.
At Kings Norton station, this poster and one of the worst photo editing failures I’ve seen in ages.
Just what is going on with the spokes in that wheel, and are images of bicycle wheels so sparse that you have to badly photoshop your own?
March 24th – The plague of pink postboxes has spread to Wednesbury!
Fear not, people: there’s been a buzz on social media about these (and a surprising amount of people have asked me) over the past few weeks. The postboxes are pink because they’re being repainted, and the pink is an undercoat for the more traditional pillar-box red they normally wear.
Pink sort of does suit them, though…
March 17th – Maybe it’s some chemical in the water, or the heavy urban atmosphere, but a strain of really huge swans have started breeding in Walsall Arboretum pool.
It’s been a long time since we had boating on Hatherton Lake; tragedies and expense seemed to finish it for good – but a private operator has tendered to operate these cute pedaloes – and why not?
Users will have life jackets, and a whale of a time I’m sure. A great idea. Just watch out for Brer Alligator, and of course, the famous Plastic Hippo who dwells grumpily in the deep.
I could actually be persuaded off my bike if someone could fit one of these things with an engine. I could cruise about town, in a flying hat and goggles.
Stately, indeed.
Perhaps they should try it with the Mayor first – I can really see it suiting Smithy’s style – and we could flog the new jag. Win-win.
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…
March 14th – Where do you leave a pair of bikes when you’re exploring a lost Mall? Well, loads of railings and street furniture nearby…
Cue rant.
Birmingham is a lousy city to cycle around at street level. For decades, the City Council have paid lip service to cycling, with a road system that routinely ignores the needs of more vulnerable road users, like Moor Street Queensway. They were given millions in cycle funding, which they used to resurface miles of perfectly good canal towpath.
And then, there’s aresehattery of this calibre. No cyclist would ever have managed this. I guaran-damn-tee the person responsible for this act of civic idiocy last rode a bike in school.
What am I upset about?
Cyclehoops are the round fittings bolted to these railings. They are great items of cheap street furniture designed to be fixed to existing street furniture to provide anchor points for bike parking. We have some in Walsall on lampposts. They’re brilliant because they stop your steed flopping around the post, and provide a secure lock rail that’s hard to remove.
Oddly enough, railings already provide that feature.
Birmingham City Council bought a bunch of Cyclehoops and instead of fitting them in places where they would be useful, bolted them to railings that already perform the purpose Cyclehoops fulfil.
You normally have to make an appointment for this kind of idiocy.
Stick a fork in the Council’s backside and turn it over, it’s done.
March 2nd – Spotted in Darlaston in Victoria Park – is that a hint of Olympic Rings in spring flowers? Must have been a 2012 project…
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