Month: August 2023

Monthly Recap August 2023

The totals for the month: another light one with 103 miles running, 20 new pubs, 4 kebabs, 5 “fish and chips,” 3 short reviews. Here’s the cartoon of the month (not necessarily a monthly feature):

It was colder than it should be most of the month, rarely breaking 70F (21C). Throughout the same time, Tucson (our last US residence) temps exceeded 104F daily (40C). To paraphrase the trope from there, ours is a damp cold.

I got out quite a bit at lunch or just after work and explored some new areas for me. On one journey around Rubery, I spotted the culvert just beyond the shopping trolley, above, and immediately thought what a good hash trail I could put together if hashing was something I did, anymore.

Probably thirty years ago, now, we gave Debra the iguana pipe in this photo, which she sent captioned, “Iguanaman Lives!” She doesn’t use it for dope, anymore, but this story does seem to suggest she has another pipe to hand not far out of the frame.

Attending some training at the Med School, I encountered an old school toilet. Love the overhead tank which, should you need to flush a small dog down the pipes, provides an excess of removal pressure. In a cramped little box, this photo of it is comprised of a three shot panorama. (I am officially Britain’s most boring man but definitely not Ireland’s most romantic one.)

The Station, Sutton Coldfield

Pub #2605:

“Sorry, we don’t have any fish.” Of course not. I said no thanks and headed toward the door. “We have fish finger sandwiches!” I shuddered as much from this pitch as from the chemo side effects. “Are you okay?”

“Just a cider, please.” No fish, but several choices for cider. And, fish fingers if you are still in primary school.

The actual station is right there. This place probably does better than it should do as a result.

The Yenton, Wylde Green for Fish and Chips

At the Yenton, the kitchen is at least as slow as the bar. Very hungry when I arrived, I glanced at my watch and thought that — with a 5 minute brisk walk after wolfing down my food in my normal 5 minute dash — if I got served in the next 20 minutes I could make the 13:04 train to University. I wound up on the 13:56.

The batter is light and crisp and delicious as is the fish. The chips and the peas came from the freeze (as I’m sure the fish did but it was actually good).

Dudley Hill Trigging

I’d been working on the shed patio and the front garden paving all day Saturday and some of Sunday but, before showering the quarry tile dust and paving sand away, I had a 6 miler scheduled. I reckoned I still felt pretty good despite the chemo so I headed out toward Bunn’s Lane in Dudley to do some hill work and to map out some trigPoints, like the Cut Mark on the Ivy House pub which may still be open but never has been anytime I’ve been by the last 4 years.

Dead reckoning, I was trying to scout my path to the town centre when at the top of one hill I spied Dudley Castle on another, lined up with a side street.

After my wee adventure in the Shrewsbury Arms, I was just going to jog over to the bus station but noticed a Cut Mark notation on my online map. It is on the side of the fountain at the market which was largely unpopulated late Sunday.

I found the spot braced myself to squat by holding onto the rim of the dry fountain. I was setting up this photo when two scruffy ass youfs come up and asked, “Yow awwrite, bruv?” I looked at them with a slight frown.

“I’m squatting by a monument taking a photo of an Ordnance Survey bench mark. NOTHING about this is alright. Hobbies…am I right?” By this time I was slipping the back pack on and trotting toward the depot.

Shrewsbury Arms, Dudley

Pub #2604:

I had been running the hills of Dudley — slowly and with stops for sight seeing but continuously for the most part — when I found myself in town. I slowed even more to get oriented and almost walked head on into the fetching lass under the sign to the Shrewsbury Arms.

Safely inside the small pub, I ordered a Guinness to give myself a moment to scout a safe harbour in this crowded port. There were 5 or 6 oversized parents in their late 20s with about 10 kids from toddler to about 12 years old. I saw a small, two seater table unoccupied far away from them and sped over to it with my fuel just as I realised this is where the adults from the 1960s were sitting.

So, I’m sweaty and dishevelled from a day doing some quarry tile paving and not at all a local and I’m dressed as a derelict in a ragged Chicago Cubs cap and a Bernie for president shirt that was threadbare-to-nonexistent 10 washings ago. The guy directly across from me except when he stepped out for a smoke looked for all the world like a thin, drawn, and quite stern fundamentalist minister or maybe someone who used to dispose of bodies for the Irish nationalists in the area. He stared disapprovingly at me for a while.

Then, he turns to this large fellow sitting to my left with (I presume) his wife. The frightening preacher asks the massive bloke to his right something to the effect of “how nice it must be for you to be living off the money you got for that arm.” Ahhh…he’s not a demon, he’s just an asshole and a very drunk one.

I’ll definitely be back.

Wet Wolverhampton Walkabout

Travelling from the rail station to a pet supply store could be shit, but in Wolverhampton there are nice surprises everywhere you look.

As is becoming habit, I took the route I did because of TrigPointing. The spire of the Church of St John in the Square is an intersectional point (TP14193).

A local stensil artist’s work (SKORE?) kept appearing around town:

Over by the Desi Yew Tree, I searched in vain for a mark (probably fell to repointing or brick replacement). After the cat food and litter stop at the Sunbeam strip mall, I headed toward The Royal tram stop past some lovely old factories.

It had a very crisp Cut Bench Mark toward the back/junction with another warehouse:

Skore continued to way mark my path:

And, with such attention to detail! The boombox is painted behind the junction box.

2023 Post Per Day Experiment is Finished

Early in the year I had some ‘filler’ posts but realised that if I just soldiered on until I caught up with my regular postings I would easily meet my New Year Resolution to put up One Post Per Day, every day of 2023.

By February, I had Rail Run posts that were delayed by a few days as a backlog of other posts trundled through. I also had a lot of record, book, and movie short reviews in my pocket from Dry January. A sub-rule to the post-per-day rule was to have one kebab post every odd-numbered week and one fish and chips post every even numbered week until I had at least 26 of each.

Now that the remaining days on the 2023 calendar is filled with pending publications, I’ll squidge posts together so that, by 31 December, the events described will be back to within a day or two of when they happened. Every new one written will push one forward so I expect a lot of two-and-more posting days as the year concludes with a single Monthly Recap on 31 December.

For reference, the current last post of the year in several categories are (although these are all likely to move forward, now):

Category: Date Visited, Pending Till
Pub: 24 August, 23 December (120 days delay)
Fish: 24 August, 28 December (125 days)
Kebab: 23 August, 24 December (122 days)
TrigPointing: 24 August, 27 December (124 days)

By the way, I wrote this text, the 366th post of the year, the first week of February when it became obvious this would be easier than I initially thought. It is really effortless to dunk a 6 foot high rim.

Shawarma Station, Wolverhampton

{visit: 19 April 2023}

They have doner shawarma on the menu but they also have a lamb shawarma which is divine: actual pieces of flesh make up the giant leg your meal is sliced from (as opposed to the minced mystery contents of doner). The chilli sauce is homemade and he really wanted me to try the garlic sauce, too, but I’ll be back.