Dartmouth Park Restoration - VIII

Well, another 3 weeks on since my last offering, and still the 'Sandwell concrete step' saga meanders on.

By last time, the missing bits of the railing had turned up, and the whole 'construction' stood, forlornly, looking, from a distance, for all the world like scaffolding, as though the thing wasn't finished.

Perish the thought.

But Lo!

Along came a man and painted it. Or, actually, along came a man several times and painted it, or maybe he just missed a few places the first, and second, times.

Now, the railings proudly surmount the concrete steps, splendid in their Public Lavatory High Gloss Green, a tribute to all who have so diligently designed; planned and toiled these many long months in the furtherance of excellence.

Wasn't it someone in Sandwell, or maybe it was Chartwell, who said 'Never in the field of human endeavour has so much time and money been spent, by so many, achieving so little,' - or something like that.

And it isn't over yet.

The architectural inspiration continues to pour forth.

Something is happening on the lefthand side of the concrete steps, just where the elegant stone stairway graced the incline before the Sandwellian intelligentia tore it down.

Great piles of soil have appeared.

Now one of two things is happening here. Either some dipstick of a driver missed what used to be a sunken bowling green in Dartmouth Park until the Restoration brigade converted it to a landfill site, or Sandwell have realised their folly in destroying the stone stairway and have decided, in an attempt to make amends, to give it a decent burial.

We shall have to wait to see what transpires.

Incidentally, and off topic, Sandwell have put up a huge sign on the side of the building which is close to the newly laid out tennis courts/5-a-side football pitch.

It procalims 'The home of Football' - then in somewhat smaller letters - 'Here in Sandwell.'

Doesn't this just prove my often made point, if any further proof were needed, that Sandwell lives in its own little bubble - devoid from reality. Worse still, this sign shows that staff within the MBC live inside their own bubbles, collectively making a sort of heady froth.

How could anyone think that a part-time 5-a-side football pitch and the adjacent King George's football pitches could possibly constitute the home of anything, let alone the national sport.

And, just as a detail, hasn't anyone told the people who thought up this sign, and the other people who approved its production and display, that 1 mile from where the sign is affixed, is a place which stands a slightly better chance of claiming to be the home of football in Sandwell.

It's the football stadium of West Bromwich Albion, Premier Division Football Club.