Images

March 25th – As it happened, I never got to a place where the sunset was that good today, which was probably just as well as I was reduced to the phone camera with the main one flat. As I rode down the canal to central Brownhills, I saw a large dog fox run up the bank onto Clayhanger Common. Grabbing the phone, I crested the bank looking for a fox picture to go with yesterday’s heron.

Sadly, he disappeared into the thicket. 

The sky wasn’t too bad though, so I took a quick picture, and headed home.

March 24th – The plague of pink postboxes has spread to Wednesbury!

Fear not, people: there’s been a buzz on social media about these (and a surprising amount of people have asked me) over the past few weeks. The postboxes are pink because they’re being repainted, and the pink is an undercoat for the more traditional pillar-box red they normally wear.

Pink sort of does suit them, though…

March 22nd – Minutes later, in the same ethereal half light, waiting at the Arboretum junction for a green light. I spend a lot of time waiting here, as the induction loop isn’t great at picking up bicycles. 

Still, it gives me time to appreciate the victorian gatehouse clocktower at the Arboretum…

March 19th – In a dark, unlit tunnel under Spaghetti Junction, in the exact spot where, a year ago, Bill Drummond placed thousands of daffodils in jam jars under the skylight, he (or someone acting in his spirit) has left an important message Birmingham (and indeed all of us) should heed.

Brilliant. Just brilliant

March 18th – Gone 6:30pm, and still not dark. I stopped on Catshill Junction Bridge, and took a throwaway shot of the Humphries House flats, looking ghostly in the half-light. 

The more I use it, the happier I am with this camera. There’s clearly a lot more fiddling to be had yet, and I must sit down and read the manual. But for a point and shoot operated by a monkey, it doesn’t do bad.

March 11th – It’s nice to see history preserved well. In Walsall, at the top of the old Bradford Street, there used to stand Walsall’s old, dingy general hospital. When that was replace in the 1990s, part of the building that was most historic – the Victorian Outpatients Department – was preserved. New flats were built on the rest of the side, and adjoined to the older, converted building.

Dark, foursquare and made of very, very red brick, it’s a imposing but wonderful edifice.

March 9th – Early, Jockey Meadows. Still grey and dormant, with no hints of spring yet. The last place to wake up in these parts, it has its own desolate beauty in winter. 

The cows that were here last summer are long gone, but their work – the removal of some of the most invasive species, and trimming back the long grass – remains.

It’ll be interesting to see the difference they’ve made when the meadow comes to life in a few weeks.

March 3rd – I was quite lucky with this, too; also handheld. The moon was my companion tonight as I rode through Sheffield and Walsall Wood, I noticed how bright it was. I love how if you can photograph it, detail you can’t see with the naked eye becomes evident.

All those miles of nothing between me and the moon. And yet, man has been there, and landed on that glowing ball. 

Such a wonderful, enchanting thought.