Hooray!! A new Morrisons !!

These aren't very good photos because the sun was in the wrong place. That's my excuse anyway.

But that doesn't take the shine of the wonderful reality that a new Morrisons has opened to-day, 31st January, 2011, very close to the West Bromwich Albion football ground.

To be honest, I don't know whether it's in Birmingham or Sandwell - the boundary is there somewhere close. If I had to guess, I'd say it was Birmingham because the traffic light controlled junction there never was very good, and now the Morisson's entry/exit has been incorporated, it has become a nightmare. And this is based only on a late morning observation. Tonight's rush hour, and the first football match will show just how awful this junction is going to be.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again, one of Sandwell's redeeming features is its traffic lights. They are so responsive to traffic, and, more importantly, to the absence of traffic, and they operate as though someone has actually thought about traffic flows before they installed them.

Anyway, all that aside, to those of us whose nearest Morrison's were Wednesbury or somewhere down the Coventry Road, this is a wonderful day and one which should be spent purchasing some of Morrison's excellent meat. They have other good things too, of course, but their meat is absolutely first class.

RIP Dartmouth Park - IX

Well, as forecast earlier this week, all of the willows, on one side of the Dartmouth Park main lake, have been rased to the ground.

This means that there is nothing on that side of the lake now so it looks fairly similar to one of its adjacent sides where all of the oaks were cut down last year - leaving nothing.

The other adjacent side was, historically, a sunken bowling green. Whilst no bowls have, I think, been played there for many a long year, the groundsmen had maintained the green to what appeared to be a very high standard. It provided a cool, safe place for youngsters to play in the summer

But this must have posed something of a problem to the expert park restorers at Sandwell.

Here was something, obviously oldish, if not original, and kept in good, if not excellent, order. How could such a desirable amenity possibly be allowed to stay unless it was properly; lovingly and expertly restored? And how could it be restored because as it wasn't a tree, it couldn't be chopped down.

Well, tax payers of Sandwell, and everywhere else, and National Lottery players everywhere, just go down on your knees and give thanks for the cumulative experience and wisdom of the Sandwell intelligentia and their manifold consultants.

'Of course you can't chop a sunken bowling green down,' they reasoned, 'but you can fill it in. Eureka!!!!'

So that's what they've done - almost.

It looks a bit like a landfill site (which, I suppose, is exactly what it now is) with much rubbish and debris in evidence. But credit where credit's due. By this simple, but effective means, Sandwell and the National Lottery have wrecked the third side of the main Dartmouth Park lake.

This means that there is only 1 side of the lake as yet untouched by the restorers, and believe me, there are some really tasty willows along it. They should keep Sandwell's arboreal reduction consultants busy for at least a couple of weeks.

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PS There's some exciting news tomorrow .............

RIP Dartmouth Park - VIII

Anyone remember these three massive trees?

They were the three on the bank between the main pool in Dartmouth Park and the tennis courts.

Did you note the tense?

Yes, that's right. 'Were'

To-day at about 1.00pm the furthest had been cut to the ground. The centre one had all of its branches removed and a team of experts working on removing the main trunk.

No doubt by this time tomorrow the third will also have become history.

To those of us who marvel at trees that have stood for generations and generations, it seems wicked that, on a whim, a handful of faceless people, buried deep somewhere in Sandwell, can remove all trace of them.

It also seems absurd in the extreme that such destruction is taking place in an area designated as parkland. And, of course, if this continues, it will cease to be parkland, and simply become, land.

Well, maybe, in due course, I will be able to bring you photos of featureless land at Sandwell.

Wasteland in a land of waste.

Dartmouth Park Restoration - II

Well the hopes that I expressed in my post dated 28th September, 2010, are completely dashed.

The nascent construction then referred to appears to be neither a waterfall nor a kiddies slide, but, almost, a set of concrete steps. I say 'almost' because they seem to stop about 90% of the way up the bank.

It's not clear to me whether the constructors have to add a few more steps on, or whether they will scoop a dip out of the path at the top so that it comes down to meet the top of the steps.

Only time will tell, and it is only 6 weeks since the last photo so there's got to be a good 3 or 4 of months left in this yet. Oh! I forgot the Winter. Let's call it next August then.

So when it's finished, Sandwell, and the National Lottery, will have destroyed a perfectly good and appealing stone stairway and replaced it, 3 yards away, with a set of concrete steps which, given the time it's taking to construct them, must be going to cost the earth.

I would love to know the logic, if there is any, behind this.

One other thing.

I think that the architect who brought his flair, and lifetime's creative experience and artistry, to the design of these concrete steps, may have forgotten something.

I could be wrong - I am not always right - but watch this space .........

I'll let you know next August - unless they have an overrun.

Is this a metaphor for Sandwell MDC?

Here is a securely padlocked gate.

The first and second photos were taken this week - the third, 3 months ago on 14th July, 2010 when the gate was a newly installed entrance to a field at Sandwell Valley.

Can anyone spot the logic problem here?

That's right. There's no fence between the righthand side of the gate and the corner of the field.

That's how it's been since the gate was installed.

So, we have something which is quite secure in itself; an unnecessary expense, and quite useless.

Need I say more?

Dartmouth Park Restoration

Earlier this year (2010) I published the first photograph above as the stairway seemed to be in imminent danger.

It wasn't clear to me whether this rather grand stairway (can I call it that?) was about to be 'restored' or just knocked down. Who knows what the original looked like that Sandwell are so keen to spend its £6.5 million on 'restoring.'

Well, it's abundantly clear now, 6 months on, which of those two it was.

I am glad that I have that photograph because I think there is something very dignified about the construction - somehow graceful and peaceful. Straight up and down -- no frills -- but the right width for its height and a proportionate size overall to its context.

Altogether a very pleasing stairway, and one which I should think has stood the test of quite a long time.

It certainly took some demolishing.

That photograph was taken in April, 2010, and it has taken 6 months on and off, for Sandwell to destroy it. I say 'on and off' because, days, sometimes weeks, passed by without anybody seemingly doing anything in the furtherence of its demolition.

It was made of strong stuff, by close descendants of the Romans I shouldn't wonder, but it eventually capitulated to a mechanical breaker which seemed to be the only way, short of an atom bomb, that its foundations were going to be removed.

So farewell to this splendid piece of architecture - such a pity that the 'restoration' doesn't call for a stairway there.

But wait!!!

What is that that I see barely 3 yards from the foot of this once great edifice?

Surely it can't be.

No. Not even Sandwell could do what I trying not to think. OK OK I know it's not Sandwell's money they're spending (good old lottery) but evenso, didn't they hear that the UK has been in the financial doldrums for a couple of years now? Didn't they hear that we all are having to tighten our belts? Don't they know that all government departments and local authorities are supposed to be cutting out wasteful activities and unnecessary expenditure?

Can it really be that Sandwell has destroyed a perfectly usable and entirely aesthetic stairway, at no doubt considerable expense, only to build another one THREE YARDS away from it???????????

I really hope that I am wrong.

I hope it turns out to be a waterfall or kiddies slide or something.

If it doesn't, and if Sandwell really have indulged themselves in a wicked and ridiculous orgy of expense by destroying one stairway and building another right next to it, then when Mr Cameron rewrites the parliamentary electoral boundaries, maybe he can wipe Sandwell MDC off the face of the map as well.

By the way, when I wrote earlier this year about the massive trees that Sandwell had felled as part of the Dartmouth Park 'restoration,' I was unable even to speculate on the reasoning behind such civic vandalism. However, during my summer recess I happened to engage in conversation with a 'well placed source' at Sandwell, and he said he was amazed when he saw the size of some of the trees that had been axed. He said that he asked the person in charge why such huge trees were being cut down and he was informed, much to his amusement (but not mine) that they were being cut down because 'they were in the wrong place.' !!

I ask you - how could trees, which had (note the tense) probably been there several times longer than the park itself, possibly be in the wrong place?

Could it not have been, as an alternative to cutting down trees which are hundreds of years old, that the Sandwell experts move their pencil line on the plan, of whatever it is, by half an inch?

No. Of course not.

Bear in mind that they have £6.5 million to spend on something, and there's precious little to show for it so far considering that they have been at it since early 2010.

They've knocked a wall down and rebuilt it a few feet away from where it was; they've repointed most of the rest; destroyed a fine stairway and nearly built something next to it, and chopped down a number of mature and very mature trees.

That's probably taken care of £0.5 million.

I wonder what Sandwell is going to spend the other £6 million on?

And when?

...........shades of The Public all over again............

Maybe this is Sandwell's contribution to the 2012 Olympic Games, although they'll have to get a move on if they are going to complete less than 2 years.

Sandwell Valley - Health and Safety ?? What ??

Well, after my long summer recess, I'm back again, and what an auspicious start to the new season.

Sandwell, having needlessly chopped down mature hedgerows lining the approach to one of the motorway bridges at Sandwell Valley earlier in the 2010, and having needessly replaced them with some very amateurish 'layered' fencing, have to-day, needlessly strimmed the grass/wild flower verges at the base of said fencing.

The result, as you can see, is grass; nettles and other plants scattered across both sides of the approach.

It rained in Sandwell for part of to-day so the scattered plants, on the gently sloping bridge approach, quite apart from being a mess, are nicely wet and slipperey. I think the H & E parlance is 'hazardous'!

If any of my readers happens to break an ankle there and requires more photographic evidence in their pursuit of Sandwell Council, I shall be happy to oblige.