January 13th – I was grumbling uphill in Bradford Street, Walsall, and a piece of fresh graffiti art caught my eye. In light of the recent grumbles I’ve been having about the weather, it seemed like a message from fate.
In the last couple of days I had a message from a good friend and reader of this journal ‘Stop moaning about the rain!’
I shall try, promise. There’s always hope, after all.
January 13th – And there you go, it can’t even manage 24 hours dry at the moment. Another soaking on the way home – and it was cold too, with the temperature hovering just above zero degrees.
I stopped to adjust my scarf at Maybrook Road and took two quick shots. They look wet, cold and desolate and that’s just how it was.
January 11th – Another reason I wasn’t feeling too chipper was I’d forgotten my camera, but felt like I might have lost it. I hadn’t, thankfully, just in the general cloud of roughness that morning I’d left it behind.
Returning to Shenstone tired, I chanced my hand at a couple of night shots of my beloved station, and have been genuinely surprised at how decent the phone camera is in low light.
A bit grainy, but I don’t think it did too bad. Surprising.
January 10th – Passing through Chasewater on the kind of bright, chilly winter day I’d been hoping for. Sadly no frost, and horrendously muddy, but I saw some deer, and on my return, a great sunset over the dam.
I noted that the water level had been boosted by the recent rain – and the sense of keeping the reservoir at a middling level became clear: the water held her now isn’t being fed into the canal system and is being stored. Were it to overflow, the surplus would go directly into the River Tame via the Crane Brook and canal overflows. This way the pressure on the river is relieved a little.
Not a bad day at all.
January 9th – Out for a spin around Stonnall before the rains came again, I spotted another sign of the odd season. The sign announcing one’s entry to Stonnall out by the church has a planter at its base; in the planter, a variety of flowers are in bloom, including heather, ornamental daisies and primroses. I have no idea what the plant is with the orange, marble-sized fruits, but it looks familiar and is very attractive.
A nice dash of colour on a grey day – my compliments to the folk who tend these lovely village features.
January 8th – A rushed day in which I went to work, came back mid afternoon, did a couple of jobs at home, then had to dash here, there and everywhere on errands.
Sadly, in all the hubbub I failed to notice the camera was accidentally set in some awful scene mode and all my pictures came out horrid, except these.
I had to zip to Walsall Wood, then over to Shenstone, calling at Stonnall on the way back. The sunset was beautiful, and it felt like the air was warming up again.
The water, though: everywhere. Everything is saturated from all the rain. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a winter like this. I thought Christmas 2013 was wet, but it was nothing in comparison.
January 7th – The canal is still chewy, to say the least, particularly after another day’s heavy rain. But the overflow at Clayhanger was flowing well and made a reasonable photo, again in the bike light.
Also, at Catshill Junction, now the leaves are off the scrub, the lights of the new Courtyard development compliment Humphries House well.
Let’s hope there’s some real winter rolling in now…
January 7th – Passing through Pleck on the way home, on the first winter night of the season. It was cold, so very cold after all the unseasonal warmth and I was hungry. What better way to warm up than a quick snack of samosa and shashlik?
Place is like that other glowing night-suburb, Caldmore. It seems busier at night than in the day, and a constant hubbub of traffic, people, shops and lights.
There’s also some great architecture.
I love these places and the snacks really filled the gap.
January 6th – Then there was this fellow. Just look at the unbridled smugness.This is a cat whose self-belief defies his probable hatred of water.
Perched casually on a tree trunk sticking out of the canal bank in Pleck, puss is about 2-3 feet over the water. If he fell off, he’d be very wet and there’s no easy escape; but this cat is unconcerned.
He just sat there, looking pleased with himself.
January 5th – My experiments with the night-time view of Wednesbury’s twin sisters from Kings Hill continue. This is the third camera I’ve had a go with, and the best so far and more what I was after, but the limitations of the Nikon S9900 – lack of manual focus and noise – were very apparent.
I know what I want, and this is almost it, but I need to learn more about the craft to get it, I think.
It’s still beautiful, though, and one of the best views in the Black Country.
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