Stumped on Sunday? Start a series!

Stumped on Sunday? Start a series!

I’d been having one of those empty mind moments, aware that I need to write a blog, but without a subject as I set out to go round the block before breakfast. And it came to me on the way round, as it so often does. I paused to send myself an email, because my memory is rubbish for bright ideas.

Wherever you live, if you go out at all – and most people seem to, if only to potter round the block – there will be subjects to photograph. I’m lucky – I live in a very mixed area, with a canal less than 400 yards away, and open-ish country within a mile or two, as well as the M6 (non-British readers: it’s one of the busiest motorways in Europe, feeding traffic into Birmingham (Britain’s second largest city) and linking the South-East and South-West to both the West Midlands and the North-West of the country.



When the M6 gets blocked, a lot of the traffic diverts past my front door… This will make my basic, anytime, get out for a few minutes’ walk round the block chokingly atmospheric next time it happens.
Anyway, on the way round, I found a metal post (my main gallery post today) that I’ve been wondering about a good deal since I found it three months ago. (No matter that it’s a hundred yards from where I’ve lived for 35 years, I just didn’t see it before, OK?)

A series of signposts and tablets is possible. And – having photographed the cover over my water stoptap for you a week or two back. Glad I did: after they replaced the stoptap, they put a new cover over it, with a generic ‘Water’ label, instead of the proud ‘S.S.W.C.’ the old one had (for the South Staffordshire Water Company, which still exists, in fact).

Or – moving on round – how about a series of tree and bush stumps? Or the currently popular one round here, the home improvements changes – loads of piles of bricks, skips, bags of sand, gravel, and who knows what else…



A short walk along the canal would give me an assortment of lock gates and canal ‘furniture’ – a flight of locks down towards Birmingham begins quite close by, though there’s a bigger and better flight a few miles away, either by road or by canal-side towpath.

Even if you are stuck indoors, self-isolating, how about the varied shadows on the wall through the day, or light fittings, or electrical switches?

Myself, I’m going to edit a few more images for my ‘Differently Beautiful’ project – which may, quite shortly, have to go on hold again for the duration of Lockdown II – The Revenge on Cummings.