Walking around Wolverhampton on a rainy Friday looking for something else I spotted these fantastic plaques on the side of the Garden Centre.
The Sunbeam Tiger was Maxwell Smart’s (Agent 86’s) car. The company was from Wolverhampton, originally.
These fence decorations are better than the strip mall deserves.
But, spectacular.
US Independence Day I ran into work from Soho/Benson Road tram stop with a lot of Cut Marks, pins, and bolts on my map. I didn’t find any of those but managed to spot some interesting items along the way (it has been 6 months since I was last down this way).
Finding the canal across the park adjacent to the Prison, I was confronted with the back side of Black British History IS British History.
And, some of the legacy of the 2022 Commonwealth Games — I call this one, “The Showoff.”
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.
I regularly mock Brits for their abject terror of warm weather. Anything approaching 30 degrees C and they freak the fuck out (especially when they see me and Jackie head out for runs in that same ‘heat wave’). But, with the forecast warning of 38-40C — and being out of subtropical practice — I made arrangements to have changes of clothing stashed at the labs so I could do some commute runs in the mornings before the dangerous weather set in for the day. I’ve logged a lot of miles in worse heat but not in the last 14 years.
Emerging from the tunnel on the upper branch of the canal I caught a glimpse of a new sculpture added to the canal furniture. I’m guessing this wolf is from the same source as the owl spotted at the end of May.
The heat will break Tuesday night and the highs will once again be in the teens centigrade. I look forward to the return of moaning about the cold.
231.4 miles, 8 Commutes, 12 Rail Runs, 1 Fish&Chips (3 if you count repeat trips to the chippy on campus), 2 Kebabs, and 7 pubs.
Town Hall is installing a statue of a fetish gimp (above). This city makes me smile. And, yet there is even more art to discuss this month.
Trying to get decor up in the compound, we’ve resorted to chasing frames at charity shops. Can’t decide if we’ll keep the print that came with this one (the colours work with most of our walls) or to insert a travel poster:
Passed this monument to the Industrial Revolution on a run near Dudley. No idea why the gents are all wearing bike helmets:
After a couple of pleasantly warm weeks, the final one this month has been miserably cold again and I backed off running partly due to that and partly because of symptoms of over training. Still, on the 31st I managed the 10th commute of the year into a 25 mph headwind with snow and sleet. Christ.
It’s unfair to call it a shit run. It was hilly, yes, and the GPS crapped out along the way to be sure; but, it was hilly and brisk and the winds were with me and except for there being no pub at my planned finishing spot (rectified, don’t you worry) everything was pretty copacetic.
But, I forgot to note anything on the statue’s plaque and, as the GPS went down, I am not really sure where this is. Surrealist, to be sure, I dub it “Gym Dog Taking A Shit On The World-In-Chains.”
9.1 miles, overall, after reconstruction of the blind segments.
We headed home after the Billy Bragg gig via St Chad’s tram stop. These photos of the Perspex walls are perplexing.
What is this chemical? Why is it here? Why isn’t there any information on the West Midlands Metro site (or anywhere, for that matter, on the interwebs)? Why has the attention to structural detail extended to shadow images to enhance the three dimensional effect? This has been bothering me for nearly three years, now.
This is the fourth in the mammoth set of photo-dumps related to yesterday’s run home. This is a heavily vetted documentation of the graffiti along the way, the bits I found interesting at the time AND which stood up to later scrutiny. The text is even more spare than normal but there are some pretty pictures. You can find links to the other posts in the less-photo-intensive original post.
The Heart of the Brum Canals is at the north side of the Old Snow Hill Bridge.
My heart is always here, though, with electric blue Acid:
Although I do find Mize with a Spliff compelling:
The Rasta Cress Bridge Sign was covered in the Bridges post, but here it is on the map.
As was Open Your Mind:
Dead Inside? Right there with you, brother:
I’m guessing Athens, GA band REM is not the inspiration for this one in The Gallery:
Likewise, Hunter S Thompson would have a ciggy in a filter holder:
The vent above “Life is too short to be wasted on the pursuit of happiness” acts as a punctuation light:
Long out of The Gallery you finally emerge, also, from the shelter of the M6 flyover. Angry Mushrooms bid you a fine fuck off:
My mother-in-law used to butcher language. One of my favourites was the bone weakening ailment she called osteo cirrhosis. This person has my sentiment but her vocabulary:
This can be taken several ways, as, I suppose, can her or his man:
Popeye puts a zen koan out there:
A nine mile Wednesday run conflicted with a Proteomics conference in Sheffield so I caught the early train up and did the run first. With a half hour remaining at the end of the run, I popped into a Wetherspoons (write up soon) to change clothes, get a pint, and have a bit of breakfast.
The outward journey was along the scenic and muddy Sheffield and Tinsley Canal past tons of old factories.
On the return, some of the path is under repair.
And, all along the way there was interesting graffiti:
The conference was in a meeting hall in the Millenium Museum, so I also got to see some older paintings. This one, in the Ruskin Collection, is called Madonna of the Goldfinch; a close-up of the bird in the kids’ hands featured in a series of questions on this week’s University Challenge so was a bit of a surprise.
Back to the run…this creepy lump was across from a mall at the top end of the path as I turned to head back.
Since we’ve moved on from paintings to sculpture, these ladies appeared at the end of the run a block or so from the Wetherspoons:
And, on the way to the conference I found the juxtaposition of the Freak Out ride with the war memorial something less than solemn…poignant, maybe.
Oh yeah, the run. Driven off course from the River Don I passed between dozens of old factories and steel mills with really nice features. I am fairly proud to say that I didn’t think of “The Full Monty” until this leg of the trip.
All indications are that Sheffield was flattened in The War. The old architecture is outstanding but interspersed with atrocities:
But, when they get modern right, they really knock it out of the ball park:
The conference was very good. At lunch and after, I managed to hit four more pubs, too (write ups soon).
Endless British Pub Crawl (Part 3) 