December 11th – After getting one or two bits of shopping in, it was dark so I went up onto Pier Street Bridge to take in one of my favourite views with an added snowy flavour.
What’s interesting about these images is one is taken with an iPhone, and the other with a pretty decent camera. Apart from the dirty lens on the phone camera, you’d barely tell the two images apart for quality.
How technology marches on…
November 24th – Returning to Brownhills after a long day at work, ice was forming on the towpath puddles and it felt like the hard, dry cold of winter was setting in. But it was very clear and there was a lovely moon to boot.
I had a saddlebag full of fish and chips for tea for me and those at home, and it felt, despite the cold, like a decent night.
First time I’ve had me tail up for weeks, as my father might have said.
September 9th – Change is happening fast at the site of the old market in Brownhills. At the start of the week the earthmovers and excavators were just moving on site, and a mere five days later the groundworks are well underway with new sewers and the like being dug.
I’m sad to see the marketplace gone in some ways – like most Brownhillians I remember the good days of the market here as being excellent – but we have to move on, and the days of prosperity for the traditional market generally in the UK have long since passed, their job being replaced by online retailers and everyone’s favourite tat bazaar, eBay.
But it will also be nice to see life here again once more.
September 8th – Returning to Brownhills and home, the skies were threatening and it didn’t look like it was going to be a good evening. Looking distinctly black over Bill’s Mother’s, I surveyed the still green canal and banks from near the canoe centre, and unusual angle if I’m honest that I always overlook.
It was good to be near home – the week had been long and trying.
August 5th – Looping back, still with a heavy heart, I stopped on the Pier Street bridge and noticed that more exploratory groundworks had been taking place on the old market site off Silver Street, clearly in preparation for new housing given permission there.
I’m all for that and hope work starts soon – anything that makes this area look less open and bleak is welcome to me.
That thought, at least, made me somewhat brighter.
June 24th – A terrible, terrible day; bad news locally made social media and managing the main blog fraught with difficulty, and in the evening, I just had to switch off everything and walk away.
I found solace in spannering the bike and taking a ride around a late-night, somnambulant Brownhills to get some shopping from Tesco, which doesn’t close until midnight, and late hours Tesco is always an otherworldly, odd experience.
The TZ90 I’m currently using – having returned the Canon deeply unimpressed – is much better in low light that the TZ80 and I’m much happier with it as a camera than I thought I would be. There’s hope for the Lumix superzoom compacts yet, it would seem.
At points this day, I could quite happily have taken a torch to my entire online existence, as if it never happened; sometimes running the kind of local blog I do gets more serious than one would ever imagine.
But a run out on the bike and some healthy distance made me feel better, and I started Sunday refreshed.
May 27th – I was busy all day and escaped after nightfall for a spin around Brownhills in the dark; it had been squally all day with a strong wind, and the weather was finally calming.
It’s new camera time again and I’ve been loaned a new Canon SX730 to try out – for a brand new model 40x zoom compact I’m not terribly impressed. It loves bright sunlight, but as these images show, the night performance on automatic is woeful. There are not many helpful scene modes either like the Panasonics or Nikons I’m used to. For a £400 camera I’m not terrifically impressed, if I’m honest. The user interface is horrific, too.
Build quality is decent, though, it has to be said, but again, I think I find myself leaning to the new Lumix even though it has less zoom.
Cameras, like bicycles, are never quite just what you want.
May 10th – I pottered into Brownhills for a mid-afternoon recovery ride to do so errands, and with the warm afternoon sun, everything was beautiful and felt right: the canal at Silver Street is wearing it’s summer jacket of green and blue, the boats and waterfowl were quietly busying themselves and all was right with the world for a change.
Also busy, but probably busy doing nothing, a black and white resident of the canalside who took up a better vantage point to observe me, observing him.
The canal cats really are wonderful at the moment.
May 7th – I went to see the swans down at the Watermead, and found them at Silver Street, enjoying the sun and learning from mum and dad how to forage.
They are still very much grey balls of fluff and adorable, and I spent a lovely ten minutes watching their antics as they splashed, bickered and tried to copy their parents.
So good to see this young family grow and develop.
April 29th – I couldn’t resist hopping over to Silver Street and checking out the canal view at night, also a familiar winter haunt. I adore this spot at night, and things are changing here now; soon, houses will be built on the old market place, and much of the empty feeling here at night will disappear.
I love the urbanity of this place at night; the combination of steel, water, hard surfaces and sodium and LED light. This spot confirms to me continuously that there is indeed beauty in the most mundane of situations, not matter how plain we might consider them.
You just need the right time, the right angle, and an open mind.
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