Images

August 20th – A late afternoon ride to keep the legs moving after a tiring morning at work. I spun around Chasewater, then headed down through Burntwood to get some stuff from Waitrose in Lichfield. On the way, I passed the former old people’s home Greenwood House, near Swan Island. Empty and decaying, this modern, well loved facility was closed by Lichfield Council as part of their hated ‘Changing Lives’ project, created solely to farm social responsibility onto the third sector and offload all those expensive vulnerable people into the community. This building has been empty for over two years now. An utter waste. Welcome to the social state in the UK in 2011. Utterly bankrupt, both financially and morally.

August 19th – there are lots of hidden architectural gems if you take time to look around you. That’s one of the reasons I love to ride a bike: it gives you the time, space and connection to spot these things. This lovely, noble row of handsome, four-square terraces is in Green Lane, Shelfield, and I love them. Gorgeous houses.

August 18th – Continuing this week’s Darlaton exploration (I’m working near here), I’m determined to show that this is a beautiful, complex and historic place. It’s easy to dismiss the Black Country as grimy, dirty and without aesthetic or cultural merit. That is wrong, very wrong. This is the top end of town, near the church and the beautiful and haunting war memorial. If you showed anyone from outside our area this picture, they’d never guess where it was taken. We don’t appreciate our area enough.

August 17th – as I returned home that evening, I noticed that Green Lane in Walsall Wood was blocked by the farmer moving large trailers of fresh, sweet-scented bales of hay. This activity must have been going on here at this time of year for several centuries, only the automation and vehicles have changed. It reminded me of the advancing of the season, and of the fact that although I live in an urban area, I’m never far from the countryside.

August 16th – Darlaston has some fantastic architecture. This industrial town between Wednesbury, Willenhall and Walsall was built in the heat of the industrial revolution on it’s drop forging and fastener trades. Both have now all but gone, with huge swathes of wasteland left behind, but hidden in nondescript rows of terraces and in quiet suburban streets are examples of buildings so wonderful they’d grace the likes of Cheltenham. This fine example is on the Walsall Road, just outside the town centre. I just love the circular tower and complex roofline. The ornamentation in the stonework is also gorgeous.

August 15th – I passed the sad, rotting hulk of The Wheel In, on Lindon Road, Brownhills this evening. Closed for several years now, this formerly buzzing community local is now quietly rotting, prospective buyers no doubt put off by the rumour spread locally that the building is suffering severe structural problems. I’m not sure if it is or not, but the rumour spread remarkably quickly. Curious.

I doubt this house will ever reopen. A tradgedy.

August 15th – The digital traffic signs, recently installed on the edges of Walsall town centre have been controversial, costly, and rather pointless. Since installation, they’ve either been blank, or displaying such crucial messages as ‘Tiredness kills – Take a break’. Today, with a major fire in central Walsall, they got chance to display vital road closure information, which made no difference whatsoever to the traffic, which was gridlocked at rush hour. It doesn’t help that several of the message displays – like this one on the edge of The Butts – are situated at a point where it’s virtually impossible to take any preventative measures to avoid the problem. Design in action.

August 14th – This bizarrely happy-looking former church, at Bodymoor Heath, near Kingsbury has now been converted into a house. It has a very striking, slightly mad appearance. I must have passed this building more than forty times, but I’ve never noticed it’s unsettling, almost human expression before. Well weird, not sure I could live in a place that odd.

August 13th – Bracket fungus, in this case Birch Polypore, are a common sight in woodlands and scrub around the common at this time of year. They don’t seem to die as quickly as other fungi and often acquire a sheen of algae and detritus as they age. They regenerate by scattering spores from their undersides as animals and the wind come into contact with them. I think there’s three generations here.