July 1st – Spotted near Norton Canes, on the edge of a building site, a sign of the season’s advance: Hornbeam seeds growing and ripening in the evening sun.
These are lovely trees with beautiful leaves I used to mistake for beech, and the seeds are beautiful too, hanging in cascades from the branches.
Always worth looking out for.
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February 24th – Darlaston is changing right now. In its parks – Victoria and Kings Hill – spring his here, and the first signs of a green summer are just seeping into the landscape. Daffodils, crocuses, primroses and snowdrops dapple the lawns and beds, and everything seems just a shade more alive.
I actually saw a honeybee today. It’s not yet March.
In the parks though, the peace is uneasy; a susurration of labouring diesel engines, the whine of hydraulics and the rupturing of concrete as nearby, the land the old Servis factory stood on is reclaimed for new housing. So much concrete on site to be pulverised, an army of fascinating machinery is working away at it.
Change is good. Chase is interesting. But the change for the greener lifts me the most.
May 10th – Just in the Walsall Wood border country, a new leisure centre is being built at Oak Park, on the playing field of the earlier 1970s one.
In the middle of a huge building site, I realise that now the election is over, that must be what they did with Ed Miliband’s block of stone.
Curious, but nice to know it’s not going to waste…
January 26th – Passing through Kings Hill in Darlaston whilst nipping into Wednesbury, I noted that the former Servis factory site – nothing but a pile of rubble for a few years now – was subject of a planning application for 250 homes.
Which is good, really, because we need them. But…
Servis was a big employer in Darlaston for many years, and was originally part of Wilkins & Mitchell, who made power presses and other machines. Servis stuff wasn’t great quality, and they didn’t modernise, despite pioneering electronically controlled washing machines. In the 1990s the company ran into trouble, and was bought by Italian white-goods giant Merloni, themselves crashing in 2008. Since then, the brand has re-emerged under a Turkish badge-engineering parent company.
The factory was razed, and lay pulverised as a testament to the economic rough seas Darlaston was enduring; as the factory was carried to dust, Councillors and regeneration wonks pronounced this site would very soon see a retail and leisure renaissance.
There was soon to be an election, and one must suspect this was the usual electorate-buttering bullshit; the rebirth never came, and like the Exidor factory up the road, it’ll now become homes.
Kings Hill – once the beating industrial heart between Darlaston and Wednesbury – is slowly becoming reclaimed by housing.
April 30th – I returned from work late, in the evening, just before dark. I stopped at the Co-op in Walsall Wood for some groceries, and then noticed that the land where the derelict terraces was, opposite Walsall Wood School, has now been sold.
Planning permission was obtained for a new development here a couple of years ago, the eyesore abandoned homes here demolished, and then, surprisingly, the site was put up for sale again.
Hopefully, this might see the end of a long period of dereliction for this site – which would be ideal for housing, it has to be said. I think this could be one to watch in coming weeks.
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