Galleries

March 5th – I met these two interesting characters whilst returning in the morning from a trip into Walsall on an errand. I had planned to go to the annual bike jumble at Eddington, but my health was still not great and the weather – windy, with periodic showers – was so damned unpleasant, I just couldn’t be doing with it. Which is sad, but we usually get a better day for it.

Tacking into the wind, I decided to try the cycleway down the Goscote Valley on the way back, which was a bit of a mistake. Nipping down Cartridge lane to join the cycleway, both the donkey and horse were stood by the fence, so I said hello. The donkey was grumpy and walked away, but the horse happily had his nose stroked and seems sad when I made to go. 

That donkey is a lovely animal, but I don’t think it likes me very much!

March 4th – A horrid, horrid day: a very cold, icy commute to work, a bad day when I got there, and then caught in the rain without waterproof trousers on the way home. I got in cold, tired and soaking wet.

Walsall is hard to love in such bad weather. I was glad to be going home.

March 3rd – Birmingham, late afternoon. I’d finished for the day and needed to get a few errands done, and while I was about it, check out the slow death of Birmingham’s affair with architectural Brutalism.

This grey, colourless day was the perfect day to survey the wounds being inflicted on the skyline by the cranes, breakers and cutters currently removing Madin’s Central Library and 103, Colmore Row. The demolitions are fascinating, dramatic, conflicting. On the side of the library, soon to disappear, the mural proclaims ‘Todos eat posible’ – all is possible. Survival for that mural isn’t, but change is a certainty.

Until dusk, colour only existed in bright demolition machinery and the hi-vis of the wonderfully nonchalant crane driver; but dusk brought the lights and glimpses of the other Birmingham.

I don’t know what I feel. Uneasy probably applies best.

March 2nd – Two very poor photos of Walsall Wood in a downpour. I was late back from work. It had rained most of the way home. It was cold, and the wind was brutal. I was dry under the waterproofs, though, and I just made a place I had to visit on the way back, so it wasn’t all bad.

Walsall Wood has a sort of soft, beautiful quality in the rain of a dark night. Villagey, yet urban. Energy and motion in the traffic, unstoppable, relentless, with somewhere to be, that isn’t here; yet it’s contrasted with the static streetlights, shop and pub glow and the son sheen of wet tarmac. 

I’d rather be at home. I’m still troubled by low energy, short breath and sinus hassle, but that’s improving; but the night was hostile and I’d rather be in the warm and dry.

So I ploughed home.

March 1st – Aargh, that frustration – a great sunset and nowhere to get a good shot of it. Returning home tired and aching, dusk found me passing through Shelfield. Sadly, Shelfield is pretty flat and has no great viewpoints, sadly, and these images don’t really do it justice.

I bet it was a good one at Chasewater or up on the Beacon…

February 29th – I know this journal is becoming somewhat old when I realise this is the second leap year it’s passed. I still find that peculiar, really.

Today was not so sunny, although there were patches of brightness in the morning. On the way to work I noticed flowers – primroses amongst a stack of cut logs in Kings Hill Park and marigolds in a roadside garden flowerbed. I still can’t believe this is happening in February – but given the coldness of the day, and keenest of the wind, it was welcome colour.

February 28th – Over the road at St. Anne’s Church, the architecture fascinates me. This is a building with a fantastic history, being the first church to be lit by electric light in the UK, powered by the coalmine down the hill, presumably in the interests of a mine owner’s place in heaven. But there is so much more to this industrial, engineering brick church, that looks so unassuming from the road.

Oh, the brickwork! I have never seen a church so obsessed with geometry in it’s design. Bright, bold, almost childlike… zigzags, mirror curves, crosses, diamonds, bands and profiles dance and decorate. It’s a constant delight and I spot something new every time I look.

If you can, please go see this wonderful building for yourself.

February 28th – A much nicer day, and I was getting over the cold at last. Still bunged up and with a mouth full of ulcers, but I had energy and the sun was out. I needed to pop to Chasetown, and called in at the wonderful St. Anne’s cemetery on the way back, currently a riot of crocuses. This spot is delightful and well worth the visit, and today, I was accompanied by a huge bumblebee, already busy in the flowers.

Can spring, light days and warm sun really be so close?

February 27th – A grey, murky day with little merit, which was OK really as I was so unwell I could barely make it out until late afternoon. I potter in the usual canal loop from Pier Street up to Wharf Lane and back down the Parade. I barely saw a soul. It was very cold, and the light terrible.

I’m so unused to typical February weather this year, when it happens, it’s an unpleasant shock…