#365daysofbiking Golden:
October 18th – A lovely still evening, again with a beautiful sky it was a joy to cycle home in. At Stonnall, the last dying light over Sandhills was precious and suffused with gold.
I’d better make the most of it as the clocks go back in a week’s time, and that’ll end my sunset commutes for another year…
#365daysofbiking Going down:
September 26th – Crossing Cathshill Junction and heading up to Anchor Bridge, I caught it on the cusp of day and night, and realised that soon, I would be doing this once more in darkness.
I don’t know where summer went this year; it seems barely days since I was riding the roaches, eating ice-cream at Blithfield or riding in short sleeves around North Warwickshire.
Time passes so fast these days. It was a good summer – I doubt I’ll ever see one with such consistently fine weather again.
#365daysofbiking The dying of the light:
September 25th – Darkness has begun to impinge on my evening commute. Often finding I need lights nearing home, the golden hour is quickly shifting back towards 5pm. Soon the clocks will dog back, and the darkness will again be upon me. I hate that.
The harvest moon this year has been wonderful, though, so actually coming home in the dark had a reward – particularly with the thin cloud haunting the view.
Winter is coming.
#365daysofbiking Tinges:
September 15th – Nipping top Shenstone and Aldridge on errands, I stopped on the railway bridge to survey the classic view over the rooftops of the village, to note that autumn was coming here now – and not just the accelerated leaf drop of the leaf-miner affected horse chestnuts, either – but tinges of red and brown in most of the trees.
Soon this will be a riot of colour, and then bare trees again to close out the year.
Where has 2018 gone?
July 1st – Half the year gone already. Where on earth did that go?
I was unwell after eating something I shouldn’t (Life with IBS often means interrogating people who cook for you about what ingredients they use, but sometimes, you feel embarrassed and eat anyway). The pumpkin seeds in a casserole from a friend the night before were really causing me hell, and I didn’t get out until early evening.
I met family at a country pub in Longdon for a lazy, louche, sunny Sunday evening social, riding there and back. The countryside is showing well at the moment with ripening crops and the greens going dark and maturing.
I particularly liked the lithe, stripy puss I saw in Hammerwich. – he was definitely the neighbourhood watch!
June 14th – Changing places.
On the left stood Brownhills Market for near enough 25 years. where the low block facing me is was the site of Silver Court Gardens, once the 5th most deprived housing estate in the country.
Not now; a row of new build gables, a block of modern apartments. Silver Street has been transformed. There is life and activity here in what was for several years a barren, windswept wasteland.
I’m glad to see this change, and I welcome the people that will live in these places. New builds, new starts and new people.
Not all change is bad.
March 19th – Things that happen when you’re not looking….
Sunday must have been the mathematical vernal equinox: When day and night are equal in length at 12 hours. Today, with sunrise at 6:13 and sunset at 6:17, the day was longer than night by four minutes.
Of course, the equinox isn’t as simple as that; there’s a full explanation on Wikipedia here and the true astronomical equinox, when the earth’s equator passes the centreline of the sun, occurs on Tuesday 20th March this year (2018).
This is another little milestone to longer, better days; with the coming of British Summer Time on Sunday next weekend, it will feel like summer is just around the corner.
Hopefully, the weather will oblige too.
March 15th – I was on the canal near the new pool at Clayhanger as night fell.
The sky was impressively foreboding and conditions fairly still. I love the fluid, elastic quality to dusk at this time of year. It really is beautiful.
I love how my variably-timed evening commute changes subtly from mostly dark to mostly in the light about now; I’m already looking forward to the start of British Summer Time in a week’s time and all we need now is some clearer, finer weather.
Despite the velvet, descending dark, it feels good to be emerging into the light.
February 5th – Recovery continues. I’m still not right yet – I still have a slight but productive cough, glands have been randomly swelling and returning to normal in my neck, and I have a lot of cold sores. But as my chest improves, so does my speed. My homecoming over just over 9 miles against a mild headwind was 39 minutes. That’s a real improvement.
Of course, I arrived home sweaty and breathless, but at least it was achievable.Things are getting better.
February 1st – On my way back, the weather was more patchy, but changing trains at Aston midday, I thought of the great genius that was Nuala Hussey’s Stranded in Stechford (she lived for a while near the station) and of the incongruity of the Britannia Hotel, still with the great lady resplendent, enthroned on the roof, but no longer atop a hotel with dreams of majesty but a backstreet cafe.
Aston has changed since I was a teenager, exploring this place and the love I found near here. We drank in pubs long closed, and laughed and dreamed and made friends and argued and loved. We still do most of those things, of course, but Aston, like many places of my youth, is lost to me now. All of the faces I knew here except one have gone as I grow old, either lost, separated or drifted apart, but whenever I stand on these platforms, high above the sprawling morass below, I remember those days and it makes me sad.
Although I’m sad for the people I no longer see, I’m most sad for lost sense of belonging, and for my youth. But all through my life I’ve passed through places like this, made them mine for a while, then life took me to other places, with different horizons, and life moved on.
Aston is just a wind-blown, suburban and somewhat desolate railway station; two platforms and a junction. But there are ghosts here. And they haunt me so.
I felt old. But like my ghost, my spirit remains.
The train came, I hauled my bike onto it and I sat down.
‘Are you OK?’ asked a lady in the opposite seat.
Caught unaware, I wiped my eyes. ‘Just the wind I think’ I said, ineffectually.
‘It’s getting colder’ she replied. And offered me a tissue.
BrownhillsBob's #365daysofbiking 