Archives // Autumn



An Afternoon at Winterbourne

08.12.2019

A Sunday afternoon visit to Winterbourne. We’re lucky as there are two botanical gardens in Birmingham, and both are walking distance from home. Each of the gardens has a different character, and Winterbourne is the quieter of the two. I love visiting Winterbourne year round, but especially in late autumn and winter as the glasshouses are a peaceful, bright and warm place to sit and watch the world go by. All that’s missing is a resident cat. A couple of summers ago the caretaker at the private school next door to Winterbourne had a cat, and they would frequent the terraces on busy days, but I haven’t seen them in a long time.

Read more…

Light & Adventures |

Dappled Light & French Fries

03.12.2019

A woman in her sixties angles her phone camera up at the brick wall of the sports centre as students dressed in an array of pastel hued, skintight sportswear come and go around her. At first I can’t see what’s caught her eye, but then I follow her gaze and spot the patch of dappled sunlight illuminating the brickwork two floors up, and smile. I’m not the only dreamer out today.

Outside the Guild, a group of students gather around a trestle table collecting signatures to petition the Vice Chancellor to declare a climate emergency. All earnest nods and youthful self-belief, they manage to draw a small crowd. In stone washed denim and an oversized Jurassic Park themed Christmas jumper, a floppy haired teenager passes by on his way back to halls from afternoon lectures, phone in hand, eyes glued to the screen.

On the corner of Carpenter and Church as the sun begins to set, a white van eases out into the nose to tail traffic of the school run. In the passenger seat a young boy of eleven or twelve reaches his fingers into a packet of fries, the red of the cardboard matching the shade of his school blazer.

Writing |

Fun Snaps and the Ninth Floor

09.11.2019

With rain hammering on the corrugated roof covering the vegetable market, two little girls run between stalls, coat pockets stuffed with handfuls of fun snaps. The fruit trader on the end by the bus stop jumps as the girls detonate a snap by his neat greengrocer’s display of apples, oranges and nectarines. Between half-stifled giggles, the girls insist “it wasn’t us” before scurrying away to play the same trick on another trader at the other end of the market.

Framed by plastic sheeting torn away from the unglazed windows on the ninth floor of a block of flats, a lone construction worker watches Saturday morning unfold at the market on Upper Dean Street.

Writing |

Fishing for Metal & Fireworks Night

05.11.2019

The canal towpath is lined with rusty hunks of metal, abandoned after someone’s uninspiring game of canal lucky dip. I’ve seen him a few times recently, swinging his blue rope out into the murky water, sometimes on his own, other times accompanied by friends with cans of beer on the go who help him haul his treasures to dry land. A broken, twisted bicycle frame, minus the wheels, road signs, and other sharp pieces of metal line the banks of the canal, presenting an obstacle course and puncture threat to my bike as I cycle to the pool.


Fireworks night on the evening parliament is dissolved. The Jack Russell brothers downstairs can’t stop barking as the city skies are transformed by an enthusiastic display of light and sound put on by every amateur pyromaniac within a 5km radius. Launched from rooftops, alleyways, and the canal towpath, the rockets are so close they make the building shake and windows rattle.

Writing |