The Endless British Pub Crawl Goes Fourth
Pubs (2678 so far), runs, and personal obsessions of an aging scientist
As a teenager — I am not proud of this fact but at least it is now many decades ago — I’m sure I used the argument that a reasonable cure for this syndrome would be to just pop them in your mouth for a bit. Apparently, someone in marketing had a similar idea:
It takes 2 to Tango. Note, despite the outward appearance this is a snack package and not a condom wrapper.
“Ce n’est pas une banque du soutiens-gorge.”
This powerful work of surrealism was not the only art on display, yesterday. There was also this nice sculpture of a nurse by Steve Yeates:
Have a nicer weekend than the Defendant in Chief is going to.
It’s our Jim’s birthday today. I went searching for a feather and also bought him a new duck to stomp, both seen here in my work locker. Happy birthday, buddy.
In 1973-74, I went to a boarding school in Darwin with a student body made up of about 70% Australian, 30% British, and me. The Aussies were hostile and violent toward the Brits and decided that I was due the same until they found out that I was born in South Georgia where prisoners were sent in the years before the Brits started sending them to Australia. “You’re alright, then. You’re one of us!” one kid told me.
Jackie likes the 19 Crimes brand of wines. Each cork has one of the 19 Crimes that would result in punishment by transportation. Here’s my Trading Cork collection, so far (first 10, I’ll add the others as I accumulate them):
2. Petty Larceny, Theft Under One Shilling (10 March 2024)
3. later
4. later
5. later
6. Stealing from Furnished Lodgings (Christmas -New Year binge)
7. later
8. Stealing Letters, Advancing the Postage, and Secreting the Money
9. Assault With An Intent To Rob
10. later
11. Stealing Roots, Trees, or Plants, or Destroying Them. (Christmas -New Year binge)
12. Bigamy (13 January 2024)…bigamy? No, that’s big of you. Let’s be big together.
13. later
14. Counterfeiting the Copper Coin
15. later
16. Stealing a Shroud out of a Grave (12 January 2024)
17. later
18. Incorrigible Rogue who Broke out of Prison and Persons Reprieved from Capital Punishment (17 March 2024)
19. later
Wise move, you fat pervert:
We hiked over to a discount store near The Hawthorns to pick up some picture frames and gardening implements and storage containers and shit. Or, rather, Jackie went for that and I went to see if the graffito of DaLizz, above, survived the round of maintenance going on related to the tram closure for the Dudley Street bridge rebuild and connecting the line to the new, westward branch.
I spotted the new artwork the last day the trams ran (22 March) and was excited but confused over where this had come from. Cheech Wizard, which featured the Lizard Apprentice, was a comic strip in National Lampoon in the 70s — before most of our local spray painters (or, indeed, their parents) were born. Like the Berberis darwinii we identified along the way (mistaken at a distance for some native gorse), it is an invader from the New World. (As Dorothy Parker pointed out, you can lead a horticulture but you can’t make her think.)
A lot of the graffiti between Wednesbury and Kenrick Park has been obliterated during the maintenance. Monday on my way home from the Coach and Horses after a bit of tramway recon north of our buurt, I was reminded of the urgency to document the tag by the little amphibian which confronted me in the swampy bit of Oakwood Park:
It’s alright. You should listen to it.
Bonus joke: How many pickers does it take to change a light bulb? Four: one to change the bulb, one to suck his teeth dismissively, another to stare at the floor shaking his head, and one more to say, “it ain’t the way Earl woulda done it.”
The map documenting the completion of Route 48 from West Bromwich to the QE Hospital near work is an Ordnance Survey ‘New Popular Edition’ which dates to about 1953 (used here in honour of the Coronation of this meat shop’s namesake). The new QEH opened some 57 years after this map.
The seven runs used to cover the full length are shown in bright blue while Route 48, itself, is in lemon yellow to vibrate against the runs.
There was a train strike today so I had to commute at least some of the day by bus and opted to hop off this one for the final 4 mile segment and race down to catch the next one (they are spaced by 30 minutes so I had about 2 minutes to spare on completion). That’s another full route down with various bits of the 12/12A, 13/13A, 20, 21, 48A, 49, 54/54A, and 89 covered today.
As described in the inaugural post, the Bus Run Project only requires me to make a good faith effort to stay on the routes. All the bus stops are passed but there are occasions that the buses use roadways on which pedestrians are forbidden. The 74 (and a lot of other buses) that come out of the Dudley Bus Station — which is undergoing a massive rebuild — necessitates another concession to reality with the route now considered complete as I passed the construction site on my penultimate run over part of it:
It is a long route with a lot of interesting sights/sites but I managed to avoid documenting most of those.
However, the “Do 1, Cancer” graffito in the Hockley Circus pedestrian subway was too compelling to pass up.
While the camera was out of the backpack, I snapped some others ahead of their inevitable defacement hours later.
Soho Road is also covered with grand but derelict architecture and Jackie, who has been forced to use the 74 during the current tram downtime, wants to go explore one weekend morning and maybe try out some of the dining options on the heavily Asian populated thoroughfare. So, my last photo from this route is a Red Lion converted to street vendor shop (my goodness, the contrast):
The Endless British Pub Crawl Goes Fourth 