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Two wanders
Jun. 2nd, 2021 11:04 pmTuesday I went walking barefoot in a field I don't often explore. I'd just meant to take off my trainers and bury my feet in cool deep grass while reading under a tree, but the decision felt right. I've written about someone else doing this recently, so I wanted to follow that person. let the breeze blow the cobwebs out of my head. It's been a very webby mind of late. There was a buzzard wheeling overhead - I heard its peeiouing few times. Then a pair of crows (presumably new parents) came up from the birches to drive it off. The field was newly cut, speedwell and vetch brightening the margins and under the oaks: you could hear them creakspeaking when the breeze got up. Another field beyond which would have taken me quite close to the airport but by then my feet were itching like hell. There's a corridor of woodland - mostly silver birch - that I can get into at one place where the fence is down. That's an adventure for another day, and probably with a friend. I've been in a little way before but wouldn't trust my own sense of direction much further than that.
Saturday I walked around the Jewellery Quarter with JH (in trainers). We hadn't been there since winter. I've found it hard to navigate, and at least here there's a good reason - a lot of the old factories and workshops are either being converted or demolished, baring doorways or the silhouettes of banisters to the air. We found a building that looked like a nineteenth century townhouse; the plastic sheeting blowing from the glassless windows looked like curtains, an exposed wall a Harlequin in shades of brick. I was looking for (and didn't find any) ghost signs, but there were plenty of little architectural details: a verdrigris'd nightsafe, a stained-glass roundel with a compass and cameo head high above the street, claret-and-sky Victorian tiling. I'd brought J some 1920s German hyperinflationary stamps to complete his collection and a copy of Simon Dewes' Soho I'd found that morning. We had lunch (cheese-and-potato pie and a couple of pints of Salopian's Golden Thread) at the Jeweller's Arms and talked about urban ghosts, postcards, pipes, pince-nez and other ephemera. I've missed the city, the stories it tells me.
Saturday I walked around the Jewellery Quarter with JH (in trainers). We hadn't been there since winter. I've found it hard to navigate, and at least here there's a good reason - a lot of the old factories and workshops are either being converted or demolished, baring doorways or the silhouettes of banisters to the air. We found a building that looked like a nineteenth century townhouse; the plastic sheeting blowing from the glassless windows looked like curtains, an exposed wall a Harlequin in shades of brick. I was looking for (and didn't find any) ghost signs, but there were plenty of little architectural details: a verdrigris'd nightsafe, a stained-glass roundel with a compass and cameo head high above the street, claret-and-sky Victorian tiling. I'd brought J some 1920s German hyperinflationary stamps to complete his collection and a copy of Simon Dewes' Soho I'd found that morning. We had lunch (cheese-and-potato pie and a couple of pints of Salopian's Golden Thread) at the Jeweller's Arms and talked about urban ghosts, postcards, pipes, pince-nez and other ephemera. I've missed the city, the stories it tells me.