February 7th – A bitterly cold morning with temperatures recorded by the GPS as low as minus five degrees centigrade and a very harsh ride to the station.
There was a fair bit of black ice and concentration was intense.
My longed for spring would seem to be on hold a little, but hopefully the daffodils – now forming buds on the verge outside my destination in Telford- won’t be deterred.
February 6th – There I was, welcoming spring, and it looks like we’re in the coldest week of the winter so far.
Riding back to Brownhills it was cold and snowing lightly. I stopped on Anchor Bridge to record it, but you could barely tell. I don’t think this snow will amount to much, and it looks like warming up for the weekend, but I need to watch out for black ice in the morning.
Oh joy.
February 4th – A bitterly cold day. I rode out to Hammerwich to check out a grave for an article on the blog. I came upon these fellows in the churchyard.
They are legion. They are spring.
A nice surprise.
January 22nd – Darkness is on the run.
Sunrise, 8:04 – Sunset 4:33. A month ago it was 8:18 and 3:53. On a decent day, it’s now not properly dark until gone 5pm.
This is making me happy. Every day, I note the tiny increase snatched back from the night, Every day, I’m a little bit closer.
Just shake this cold, get some flowers out, and it’ll be well on the way to spring.
January 3rd – Returning to Brownhills, there was a lovely, low sun at lunchtime so I visited the row of trees that make for such great autumn pictures during the leaf fall.
It’s fair to say they look totally different undressed, but no less beautiful.
Every time I see these, I can’t help but remember the when I was a kid, I remember these saplings being planted.
Oh, how that makes me feel old…
December 29th – Winter is a normalisation process for me. I enter it, kicking and screaming and resistant, headlong into the darkness; I fight my way through the suck, the suck that is the autumn commute, and by the time I emerge blinking and dazed from Christmas, I’m sort of used to it.
I’ve got used to the absence of light – which is OK now as it’s returning; I’ve acclimatised to the cold; and I’ve learned once more to look for oddities and interesting images in low-light urbanity.
Silver Court in Brownhills does Architecture and Morality. Peter Saville has nothing to fear.
Meanwhile, I trundle towards new year still nursing a bad shoulder and dreaming of warmer days…
December 21st – And this is the reason for my sudden optimism. Today is the winter solstice, or shortest day. From here, everything gets better, because the light trickles steadily back into my darkened soul.
The bike GPS tells me the sunrise and sunset times on the main screen, as I love to watch them daily. Today, the sun rose around 8:16am, and set around 3:54. I’ve watched these times all year, and registered the slow acceleration of nightfall from Midsummer, slowly, almost imperceptibly at first, minute by precious minute; then cascading and careering through the midway and the end of British Summer Time. Slowing up again, that last push to before 4pm is crushing when it happens.
By the time I return to work after this, my final commute of 2017, the sunset will already be past 4pm. And no matter what the winter brings, inexorably, unalterably, the GPS will record the gradual steps into the light. And then, at the end of March, I will emerge blinking into the light evenings as British Summer Time commences again.
I have survived the oncoming dark for another year. All I need to dow now is watch the darkness retreat.
December 15th – In Walsall Wood for a takeaway, and the church looked beautiful with the Christmas tree in front like that. I was tired, it was late, and a snatched mobile phone picture.
I was glad of the ice tyres, though: there was black ice everywhere and it was a cold, hard night.
December 14th – The snow was still hanging around, and out on an errand during daylight in Darlsaton, the view of Victoria Park’s mystic bridge was gorgeous.
It wasn’t until I zoomed in that I noticed the two friends having a chat.
A bitterly cold, but beautiful day.
December 13th – The snow, ice and road grit is destroying the brakes on two bikes at the moment. This rear disc is now wearing considerably, and is about 0.3mm thinner than it was new, and the front, 0.7mm. That doesn’t sound much, but once you get to about 1mm worn off, the discs get so thin they buckle and become useless.
One thing about cycling through the winter: It isn’t cheap!
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