Galleries

February 4th – The restoration of Ogley Junction footbridge continues apace, and now encased in a plastic tent, a noses through the screen shows the rails have been shot basted of old paint and a coat of primer has been dusted over.

The stripping has revealed the old, construction-time repair to the north side in all it’s glory with handmade nuts and washers, and this seems like a thorough job.

The bridge isn’t passable with a bike, but is on foot if you’re prepared to hop on the work pontoon. It’s a bit bouncy, and you need to watch for ropes and trip hazards, but it is possible to cross if you’re bold.

I was hoping they’d sort out a diversion, but it doesn’t seem that they have. Mind, the rate they’re cracking on, it won’t be long until they work is complete.

February 2nd – It had been a busy day where I’d headed everywhere at top speed (well, as top as I get at the moment, which is still less than my normal average) and it was fairly late when I came home, then headed to Stonnall on an errand.

The weather was cold again, the woman on the train had been right. The moon was hidden behind cloud and is was quite dark for this point in the moon’s cycle. Coming back up Main Street in Stonnall, I couldn’t resist a quite shot of the old swan, but it didn’t turn out how I hoped, the shot of the Shire Oak and junction, currently operating on temporary traffic lights came out much better.

I’m loving this Canon camera – I really am – but I must make time to read the manual. Something I don’t yet understand is making taking night shots a bit of a lottery…

February 1st – On my way back, the weather was more patchy, but changing trains at Aston midday, I thought of the great genius that was Nuala Hussey’s Stranded in Stechford (she lived for a while near the station) and of the incongruity of the Britannia Hotel, still with the great lady resplendent, enthroned on the roof, but no longer atop a hotel with dreams of majesty but a backstreet cafe.

Aston has changed since I was a teenager, exploring this place and the love I found near here. We drank in pubs long closed, and laughed and dreamed and made friends and argued and loved. We still do most of those things, of course, but Aston, like many places of my youth, is lost to me now. All of the faces I knew here except one have gone as I grow old, either lost, separated or drifted apart, but whenever I stand on these platforms, high above the sprawling morass below, I remember those days and it makes me sad.

Although I’m sad for the people I no longer see, I’m most sad for lost sense of belonging, and for my youth. But all through my life I’ve passed through places like this, made them mine for a while, then life took me to other places, with different horizons, and life moved on.

Aston is just a wind-blown, suburban and somewhat desolate railway station; two platforms and a junction. But there are ghosts here. And they haunt me so.

I felt old. But like my ghost, my spirit remains. 

The train came, I hauled my bike onto it and I sat down.

‘Are you OK?’ asked a lady in the opposite seat.

Caught unaware, I wiped my eyes. ‘Just the wind I think’ I said, ineffectually.

‘It’s getting colder’ she replied. And offered me a tissue.

February 1st – I’d say February already? But it doesn’t seem like that. It’s been a hard, difficult, intemperate month I’m glad to see the back of it. But it is a shock we’re already a twelfth through 2018. But then, the first months of the year always go like that; a twelfth, a sixth, a quarter, a third. Such is the elegance of modulo 12.

Passing through Tyseley in the morning, with a surprisingly warm sun on my back, it was almost spring, with Easter primroses in the planters and a lovely feel to the city air.

Sadly, my joy is a little premature, but good while it lasts…

January 31st – Oh my days, or nights rather. We never get a normal moon anymore. All we get are ‘super moons’, or for some reason our already lovely satellite is pronounced unique by the media at any given time around on it’s 28 day appearance cycle. 

I have to admit, this time it was impressive; a blue moon true enough – it’s second fullness in the month, but it was large and bright and shone out in the sky of an urban Walsall, guiding me as I cycled home. 

It was beautiful, but then, it always has been. It is special every time, because it’s distant and mystical and humans went there once. And sometimes, on cold nights in late January, the thought that if humans can go all that way and return is very reassuring. If we can do that amazing feat, perhaps we can do anything, and life is not so bad after all.

I was not the only soul the moon was clearly guiding on; as I crossed the Black Cock bridge in Walsall Wood, I startled a small, brisk, nervous cat who was clearly up to important cat things, and had no wish to share them with a human on a strange mechanical contraption.

January 30th – Visiting Telford in the morning, the work on the new footbridge there is very serious now. A large continuous flight auger piling rig is drilling very deep piles to support the new structure, and concrete trucks line up to supply it as it works.

In front of the rig, the first pile is standing clear of the ground bounded by the blue sleeve, and on these solid foundations, the new bridge will stand.

Earth is being moved, surveyors measure the ground and excavators are busy. This is a project well underway know and will be worth keeping an eye on.

January 29th – Kings Hill, my workaday home. 

Light is just edging into my evening commute again. I am nearing the season of the early spring sunset. Tonight, I caught the dying light on the twin sisters, and saw the Kings Hill communication tower trading it’s secrets with a glowing, clear ether.

It’s been a cold, grey, horrible month: With the shoulder injury and that awful bug, coupled with atrocious weather riding a bike has been a battle since before Christmas. But tonight, I was fluid again. Speed, like the light, is returning.

I hope this darkness has reached it’s end.

January 29th – I got to work, then it rained. It had not been a great morning – then I realised I needed to pop down to the retail park at Junction 9. I took a short cut through a glistening, dripping Kings Hill Park.

Jack in the Green has tapped his cane upon the ground, and you can almost hear the shoots and buds straining to get up and into bloom.

Watching over it all, the resplendent, shining converted chapel, looking splendid in it’s temporary shiny jacket.

Despite the rain, I was filled with joy and optimism for a new season just starting.

January 28th – Remarkably, there is a trace of spring in the air. I noted the odd nascent crocus in the week, so decided to check out CHasetown cemetery and St. Annes now I was feeling better.

On a grey, overcast but very warm afternoon, I found a single snowdrop, hundreds of crocuses, aconites and primroses, and as an added bonus, deer on the verge of the Chasetown bypass, which although lovely to see, was quite worrying with their proximity to fast traffic.

Be careful out there folks.

There was quite a decent sunset too, and a punishing wind. It’s quite clear that bad weather is coming in, but I don’t think anything can stop the spring now. The flowers are here – it’s starting.

Welcome, my green and beautiful friend.

January 28th – The work on Ogley Junction Footbridge in Brownhills looks to be more than just a quick coat of paint. On the pontoon built a week ago, scaffold has now been built and looks set to encase the whole structure – possibly to screen it off fo shotblasting.

Crossing the bridge was still possible but tricky with a bike due to the bracing poles across the footpath, and I think this week the bridge will become impassible. 

I do hope they create a decent diversion, but at the moment, I’m not optimistic about that, as none was in force when I passed through.

The work carried out on this ageing bridge – one of only three listed structures in Brownhills – will be fascinating to watch.