Monthly Recap October 2023

The far end of my street sits a house with a marvelous, albeit cracked, lintel.

The totals for the month: a most paltry 67 miles running, 8 pubs, 2 kebabs, 1 fish and chips, (sushi, in fact, and I’ve eaten there 3 times since it opened), 1 short review. In order to mock myself into getting back to proper running I started a Couch to 5K schedule. Yeah, I’m exceeding the minimums but it isn’t really having the motivational effects I hoped for.

Tony Husband died (cartoon of the month, above and not necessarily a monthly feature, is one of his as is the lawyer one somewhere else in this post). Big fan of Yobs and his other material which is generally demented. Other obits: My computer’s wake-from-hibernating background has been the Mechanical Shaft photo for the last 11 years. Richard Roundtree died on the 24th (shut you mouf!). Also this month:
Piper Laurie
Dick Butkus
and, a bunch of people who I wasn’t compelled to say to Jackie, “hey, did you see that {insert name here} died?”

Jimi finally got his ‘all clear’ from his surgeon after the whole penis removal debacle. I wish he could learn to relax a bit:

Still catching up on the Post-Per-Day backlog. The most recent pub visit published (yesterday) actually happened on the 20th of August. Kebabs are up to a 02 August lunch run and Fish & Chips 01 August. Everything after those is already in my ‘drafts’ folder and on track to be current by New Years Eve.

Looking at the October photo folder, I have some leftovers from unsuccessful TrigPointing trips but which I rather like nonetheless. This bit of the ruins of the former Grove Primary School, now some flats just behind the Girls and Infants entrance:

And this other from the side of a church’s headquarters a short hike from Wolverhampton Station:

Until next month, same cat time, same cat channel.

Brades Tavern, Oldbury

Pub #2635:

More Grill than Bar, the Brades Tavern is still a gorgeous structure outside. Whole families seemed to spill into the bar area to hang with the family running the joint and one guy came in looking for another of the proprietors and was offered drinks before being sent through a nearby door.

I had been running on one of the warmer and more humid days late summer and my dishevelled appearance prompted less favourable treatment (not exactly hostile but decidedly less than welcoming).

Maybe the food is good.

Pennies

I use pennies because they are the right size for the job.

The one on the left is the one we were using with Debra, the one on the right is the one I started during the Women’s World Cup Final.

Moseley Shawarma & Grill, Balsall Heath

Next door to the left of the Moseley Shawarma & Grill is a peri-peri place I had originally planned to have this kebab from. To the right sits a branch of German Doner Kebab (franchises of which I have been unimpressed with in general).

This one, though, is one of the best piles of meat I’ve had this year. The lamb is really chunks of meat and not just lamb mince formed into a cylinder. The salad was crisp and the tomatoes succulent. The marinated cabbage would be wonderful on its own but with all this other perfection I was nearly reduced to tears. (To be fair, I was especially happy this visit which was on August 2nd bout 16 hours after another of Donald Trumps indictments).

The Prince of Wales, West Bromwich

Pub #2634:

I had hiked the short distance from Trinity Way tram stop to the Prince of Wales to find it empty save for the proprietor and an old Sikh playing video poker listlessly. I settled into my lager and a nature programme featuring some of the weirder members of the marsupials.

The owner seemed bored and started hassling me about what I was doing out. I told him I was hunting Ordnance Survey Bench Marks and rather than any of the more plausible reactions (I expected either, “huh?” or “get the fuck out of my bar!”) he starts telling me where some others are that HE’S spotted. A couple of them I had already logged and some that were, at the time, on my short list.

This world is endlessly strange.

Trig-ity Way

I hopped off at Trinity Way tram stop to walk over to the Prince of Wales for a Friday afternoon pint. A quick consultation with my benchmark database directed me to Holy Trinity church which has a nice one just around the right from the front door:

There is supposed to be a Disc on this building, TP18401, which was the Premier Inn when we moved here but was a BT building sometime in the past. The Disc is almost certainly gone: they look only semi permanent as it is and would probably be removed during some cycle of roofing maintenance. There’s an article about Discs with a photo at this link; essentially, in sites where a bolt would have fucked up the roof they put down a blob of asphalt and stuck the bolt in it. There are only 129 UK-wide, so I’ll keep my eyes peeled.

The Taste of Italy (fish and chips), Rednal

In the Taste of Italy right at noon, the ‘mini’ fish and chips had to be cooked to order which had me apprehensive about the amount of fat the portion would soak up. No need, there, as it was crisp and delicious. Very flavourful stuff, this, and the proprietor was conscientious about LIGHTLY salting but generously acidifying the repast. Very satisfying.

Tramvert Explains A Lot

It looks like the tram not only takes an unnecessarily indirect path but the rails are also laid more than twice as wide as the trams themselves. While this might seem to save on expenses and appears to ‘work’ in this tramvert (you can see the reflection of the one approaching on the other track), perhaps the tram line construction would benefit from building it correctly in the first place.

Now I understand why all the extensions so far have taken years longer than originally promised.

Or, maybe this is an example of that famous British Irony that Americans don’t ‘get’.

Scientologists Ruin TrigPointing

I wasn’t angling for another run in with the Scientologists (for photographing their weird little compound) and, since they have obliterated the Cut Mark on the stone wall out by the pavement, no incidents occurred. I don’t know what the rationale was in them destroying the mark, but it is a bit eerie the way their cross is made up of two benchmarks stacked head-to-head.

Like the Dianetics folks, most of the people on this run have more house than any of us needs and nicer ones than most of us can aspire to. My first success of the day came at #6 Serpentine Road after a miss on a bridge (water mains maintenance made it inaccessible) and a wall which had been replaced in recent years.

#6 also had a new, low wall — and the walls at #2, 4, and 8 have been screeded over — but the buttress with the mark was pristine if a bit worn:

Continuing up Serpentine, #21 was unlikely due to it being ON the house itself but was impossible behind the hoarding out on the pavements.

At the top of this hill, Serpentine runs into Selly Park Road, Selly Wick Road, and at least one other in a confusing intersection. I stopped by the sign commemorating an early protective covenant to regroup.

The same wall as this plaque was supposed to have a Cut Mark on it:

Which I found here at the bench:

But, as I confirmed my next stop I spotted another.

I don’t think this one is real but it is an odd bit of graffiti, nonetheless (probably one of the Scientologists contacting the Mother Ship):

Plagued by replaced walls and occupied residences, I found a plaque as I headed down toward Pershore Road. I vaguely remember Councillor Stewart’s obit not long after we moved to West Brom:

The house was at #15 which I found, upon consultation of the map, had this mark on the gatepost:

A zig and a zag toward the park and I had to skip a car dealership with wares all over the most likely locations of its purported mark. At the far end of Second Avenue on the kerb in front of #52 I encountered a rivet (a rare find for me)

Rivets are not the most obvious and the benchmark accompanying it is worn almost completely away.

I exited that park, was screwed by Scientology, and found the lodge to the arboretum nearby occupied (residence rules, y’know?). A few other misses including a long gone gatepost at the Avenue Road side of an adjacent park led me to a railroad bridge with the last one I would try for on this journey.

Success. Cleared Thetan success:

Pandit Valmiki does all the things

There was this guy I worked with in Georgia named Kumar who really wanted to feel like ‘one of the guys’. To that end, he once went on some rambling story about a woman who ‘did ALL the things’ but I was never clear on what those things were although Spiritual Healer Pandit Valmiki seems to do quite a large number of things.

The address on the flyer is for a sari shop across from the 7 Stars pub (which I visited some time ago and which is on my TrigPointing list for a return trip).

Of the problems listed for removal on the back of the flyer like Bad Luck or Children Mistakes, Sexual Problems seems to be the closest to doing ‘all the things’ as far as I can tell. I’ll be sending Kumar the master’s contact details.