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February 14th – Today was spring-like again. When I went to bed the night before, there was still snow on the ground. When I awoke, the snow had gone and we’d rebooted into spring again. An odd season, this.

As I dashed late from work, I noticed the sun over the city, and a decent sunset. Snatching a couple of quick shots, I dashed for my train. 

The season’s wheel is really turning now; when I got back to Walsall, it was just about still light. I think there’s hope awhile yet…

February 13th – oops, I forgot my gorilla pod. Sadly, I only discovered this unfortunate fact in the dark, in Walsall Wood on my comment home. It was raining, and the air had suddenly become quite warm. My planned shots for the two sets of today were therefore lost, and I had to improvise. I don’t have steady hands, and the shake correction on the camera is vicious in it’s manipulation of images. These shots were all ⅛ or ¼ exposure, hand held. Quite pleased, really, although they are quite poor. Time was I couldn’t do 1/60 exposure without blurring the shot, so something is improving, I’m not sure what.

Walsall Wood itself looks great at night, and always has; the pubs and shopfronts cast a great light, and in the wet, the vehicle lights sparkled. Amazing that after so much change, and so much expansion, this place still retains a village atmosphere.

February 12th – After a protracted and tortuous journey to Telord to undertake a five minute task, I needed to be in Tyseley that afternoon. The snow remained, and it was really quite cold and grey. A succession of delayed trains, grim light and relentless chilliness darkened my mood all day, so much so that when the time came to go home, I was glad.

I’ve been away from Tyseley for just over a week. I’ve really missed it. Looking from the Wharfdale Road bridge, I liked the snow on the terrace roofs stretching out beyond the railway to Camp Hill, whilst down on the platform, the railway signals twinkled in the mist.

Hopefully, tomorrow will be a better day.

February 11th – I was expecting quite a bit of snow, but we only really had a dusting. I was again in Telford, and the transport, mercifully, ran to time and I got to my destination without hassles. Telford looked great with it’s white jacket. Normally quite dismal, the urban scenery looked great today.

Funny how snow can bring the dullest landscapes to life.

OK, this is a bit odd, but it’s memories, and stuff like this has a huge influence on the things I create here. Last Wednesday, I noted that I had a love of railway stations at night and that I wasn’t sure where I got it from. I mentioned that in the late 70s there was a record label called ‘Late Night Feelings’, one logo for which featured a drawing of two children on a deserted station at night as an Intercity 125 went past.

This recovered memory has bothered me ever since, so I went searching.

Late Night Feelings was a label peculiar to Geno-era Dexy’s Midnight Runners, an Oldbury band who were hugely influential to me as a youth. The drawing of the station at night was actually on the flip side of the seminal ‘Searching for the Young Soul Rebels’ album, and is as beautiful as I remember; the train is actually an APT or Advanced Passenger Train, a tilting design that was never a success. I think it’s gorgeous and thoroughly encapsulates the period. I spent ages looking at that. I still have no idea why. Sadly, I couldn’t find a better image online.

There were three other crayon draw lables, two of which I’ve never seen before. They all seem to feature the same two blonde children. I’d seen the children in bed, as that was on the 45 of Geno, the massive hit. The other two are new to me, but I adore them, particularly the children looking at the city at night.

It occurs to me that in three of the four images, the children have a suitcase. Why? There’s a story there someone was telling. I find that sad, and a bit tortuous.

I have no idea who drew them, or if this has ever been commented on before, but this artwork was prominent enough to stay in my memory for over three decades, and I do think it’s an odd, curious little influence.

They were certainly a very odd feature for records made by the then infants-terrible of soul-pop.

To the artist: I don’t know who you were, or even if you remember, but I did. Thank you.

Funny how things stay with you.

February 10th – Oh my, it was wet. Snow was on it’s way in, and it was cold with the darkness bearing down. I headed to Chasewater for the last of the light. I was intrigued to see how a week’s rain had increased levels. Last Saturday (2nd February), the water stood at 44cm from the top of the scale, today, it was around 33cm. That’s an 11cm rise in a week, or about four and a half inches. It now occurs to me that the top of the metre scale now being submerged may well correspond to the full point of the lake, which is, of course, the top of the exit weir on the Nine Foot pool. Jeffreys Swag, the main lake and the Nine Foot are all one unified body of water, now, joined through their common overspill culverts.

Even in the headache-grey half light of a bad Sunday evening, this was encouraging news.

February 9th – A grim day. Grim all round, really; not feeling in the best of health, and the weather was overcast, wet and miserable. I’d had a thoroughly depressing couple of hours unsuccessfully fiddling with bikes, and had to nip up to Walsall  Wood. In such murky, unphotogenic conditions, it’s difficult to find subject matter, but as I got to Bullings Heath and the Black Cock Bridge, I thought how quant and villagey the area looked. It’s true that riding a bike can lift your mood. From a feeling of darkness and a depression that didn’t seem to want to go, I suddenly felt happier.

Bicyclic antidepressant: cycle one, twice a day.

February 8th – At the other end of the architectural spectrum is Silver Court. An odd, split level building, it’s one of the last untouched remnants of sixties-era Wimpey system construction that were so ubiquitous here, although this isn’t a full system build. At the lowest level are garages, at the rear; split level, above are a parade of shops. Split level again, at the rear, there’s an access pathway over the garage roofs to maisonette-style houses above the shops. It’s one of the oddest, most quirky designs I’ve ever seen, and in many ways is deserves recording as an exemplar of what happened when system build was expanded beyond it’s narrow confines. On the other hand, it’s harsh, dark and badly constructed.

On a damp winter’s night, the sodium lighting, hard suffices and dark corners make for very atmospheric photos.

February 6th – At the other end of the day, at Walsall, delightfully in the half-light at 5:30pm, the sunset was beautiful, and it was dry. I loved the lights, and the sky, and yet again, the exaggerated vanishing point the elongated geometry formed.

I don’t know where my love of railways at night comes from. It’s not about trains, or the experience of travel. But the light, the signals, the dark and the interaction of machinery and landscape. The windy sweep of trains passing through, and often the solitude. I think it’s from my childhood but can’t place why, exactly.

Back in the 1970s there was a record label called Late Night Feelings. One of it’s logos was a beautiful, childlike crayon drawing of the then new Intercity 125 speeding through a darkened station at night, with a pair of children watching on the platform. That’s exactly how I feel.

A mystery.