September 13th – Elderberries seem a bit thin on the ground this year. Along the canal from Walsall Wood to Brownhills, there are usually clumps of the dark fruit hanging heavy on the bushes during autumn. I guess this is another symptom of a poor summer with few insects to pollinate the flowers. Local home-brew specialists may well have to find other wild fruit for their wines this year.
September 9th – Returning to Brownhills via Green Lane on the Walsall Wood/Shelfield border, I noted flytipping here was on the increase. After a relatively quiet summer with few incidents, the arseholes are back. Sadly, I can’t report these dumped window frames to the council as they’re on private land. It’s clear the idiots who did this just smashed the gate open with their truck. The same gateway has the remnants of other’s flytipping also.
Please think before you employ a very cheap workman. One of the ways they can be so cheap is to flytip, like this. Think on.
August 31st – Here’s another one I can’t identify. I noticed it today growing up along the palisade fencing along the canal access steps of Walsall Wood High Street: some kind of creeper, the leaves are almost ivy-like, yet this isn’t evergreen or leathery in appearance. The single red berries are rather odd. Can’t ever recall seeing anything like this before.
August 29th – The honeysuckle I noted growing wild alongside the road near the Black Cock Bridge, in Walsall Wood is still in bloom, as it is in many places I’ve noted it. Just another symbol of the weird season, flowers seem to be almost everlasting at the moment. I notice the same bush has also grown handsome, deep crimson berries, which must be good for the birds, but not humans as they’re poisonous. A pleasant reminder of the joys of summer, even if we didm’t get one…
August 23rd – Those who think I’m being negative about the sculptures in The Wood should think about this. This miners trust, a true social relic of the coal era hereabouts created this, the original Oak Park for the village and community. When I was a kid, there were ground staff on site in a depot behind the then recently built recreation centre, and the old park was pleasant and well maintained. Paid for initially, and now held in trust by those who worked away from the fresh air and light, it had flowerbeds, paths, well-tended lawns, a bowling green and tennis courts. Slowly, it has been allowed to decay. The tennis courts lie locked out of use, and are slowly being reclaimed by nature, the paths and flowerbeds overgrown and lost. The neatly manicured lawns are now hastily mown scrub. The only thing to survive is a bowling green, operated by a club, a true social asset.
The miners left this for us, because they understood the value of light and air. We let it rot, and instead erect rusty metal – of the kind they were all too ready to escape from – in their memory, while our next generation grow more and more obese.
There’s something very wrong in all this.
August 23rd – Rust never sleeps. A couple of years after installation, Walsall Wood’s iron cutout people look dreadful, in my opinion. Had they been coated, or made from stainless steel, they would have worked a whole lot better, but the rusted, corroding versions just look like visually confusing scrap these days. The text milled into every figure is very hard to read now, as there’s no contrast due to the oxide.
A wasted opportunity. Walsall Council paid thousands of pounds in development funds for this. Surely a more enduring use of the cash could have been found.
August 6th – Back in Walsall Wood, near Jockey Meadows, the crop of beans I noticed a month or so ago have grown tall in the wet summer. There seems to be a decent crop of what appear to be broad beans, but the crop is sadly afflicted by blackfly and some kind of leaf blight.
I guess these will be for animal fodder, although they seemed tender and sweet in the unripe pod I cracked open.
August 2nd – Walsall Wood’s branch of Fitness First, a national gym chain, used to be a nightclub. It has always had insufficient parking in the daytime, most of it being shared with the small group of shops on Streets Corner. The problem peaks around 6-7pm, when punters, desperate to park as close to the entrance as possible – after all, you wouldn’t want to get inadvertent exercise – leave cars on the pavement, blocking pedestrian access. Oddly, the local councillors and traffic enforcement folk appear to condone this, but get very uptight about parking in the High Street.
All that effort to drive to the gym, getting caught in traffic and then the hassle of parking as close as you can. All in order to ride a stationary bicycle.
July 18th – Everything is all to cock. Normally in summer, you have sunny days, and dull, rainy days. This summer you get dull, rainy weeks and sunny hours. It was in one such sunny hour I found myself in on the way back from work. It wasn’t terribly warm, but the countryside around Jockey Meadows and Bullings Heath at Walsall Wood looked superb. We’d hat a lot of rain, and Green Lane had again flooded, prompting the usual displays of lousy driving. The still-wet greenery, however, made it all seem worthwhile.
Hopefully, the weather is now limbering up for one whole sunny morning…
July 17th – Working late again. I returned from Walsall, crawling wearily up through Rushall and Shelfield towards Brownhills in the last of the daylight. At the Black Cock Bridge, I hopped on the canal and headed homewards. It was grey, but oddly enough, not raining. The air felt warm, and the evening seemed oddly close. I stopped on the bend where the old Walsall Wood Colliery basins would have been. The water was clear, apart from lilies and the odd patch of algae. Everywhere was green, verdant and beautiful. Summer is sort of happening while we’re not watching. One thing I will say for it; it’s been a great year for foliage.
The area clumps bothered me; I don’t know if they’re blue-green or some other variety and the net isn’t much help. Probably best to watch your dog if they’re fond of a dip. If it is blue-green, it can be quite toxic to hounds.
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