Keep taking the tablet

Scotland is a mighty fine country, with splendid scenery, friendly inhabitants and fabulous food. And amongst the finest of its epicurean delights is tablet, a kind of grainy, soft, vanilla-y fudge that tastes like heaven. Knowing that I find it hard to resist, m' dear friend and colleague Claire, fresh from a short break in the north, has put a not-insubstantial package of tablet on my desk. By this I know that she is indeed a creature from the darkest nether regions of hell and has absolutely no respect for my girlish figure.

Guess I'd better just eat it then and give over moaning.

Mmmmm - tablet!

Josef Stawinoga, the Wolverhampton ring road tramp

In our old home town of Wolverhampton, on the central reservation of the busy ring road, a man called Josef Stawinoga (but answering to the name Fred) used to live. To have called him homeless, or a tramp, or a vagrant, wouid have been something of a misnomer, for all of these terms suggest degrees of rootlessness and Josef was not rootless. He had a home. His home was the central reservation of the Wolverhampton Ring Road.

The way I heard it (and therefore none of what follows may be true) Fred was a Polish airman whose traumatic wartime experiemces had left him with a phobia of being indoors. Afraid that the Nazis, or the Communists, might drag him off to some hideous imprisonment, he preferred the uncertain sanctuary of the roadside.

He was subjected of course to the violence that is visited upon all outcasts. But there was kindness too, and even reverence. An article about him in The Guardian stated:

Some of Wolverhampton's Asians revere him as a holy man who has shunned all worldly possessions. Several regularly pay their respects. Every morning for the past 13 years, a Sikh woman has travelled six miles to leave a flask of hot tea and a sandwich outside the tent. Another Indian woman appeared one afternoon asking the hermit to pray for her family, who had vetoed her choice of husband.

Like Ormskirk's Rollerblading Grandad (though totally unlike in personal circumstances) Fred is an iconic figure, even after death - a symbol of the dauntlessness of the human spirit. And though I would not wish Fred's mental anguish on anyone, I like to think that Wolverhampton (and the world) was the richer because he was in it.

Rest In Peace, Josef Stawinoga.

The ring-road tramp who's become a cult hero thanks to Facebook
Ring road tramp Fred dies
Fans mourn ring road tramp


Technorati Tags: ring road tramp, wolverhampton, josef stawinoga, wolverhampton ring road tramp

The drain now standing ...

"In the middle of all this [in Jeddah] I chance upon the nostalgic sight of a manhole cover made by Brickhouse of Dudley, impressively inscribed 'The Pennine Drain Cover'." from Around the World in 80 Days by Michael Palin

Of all the spoor of the industrial West Midlands that litters our planet, none is more immediately visible and instantly recognisible to me than the Brickhouse Dudley drain cover. These sturdy and unhandsome lumps of iron are embedded into the surface of streets and pavements in almost every village, town and city in the UK, a permanent reminder to me of my beloved Black Country, the home where my heart is.

As I said in a previous post, The Black Country, according to Wikkipedia, is "a loosely-defined area of the English West Midlands conurbation, to the north and west of Birmingham, and to the south and east of Wolverhampton, around the South Staffordshire coalfield". But them's just words. For me, it's a huge part of my identity. Being from the Black Country is more important to me than being a woman or being white or being British. I have a very definite Black Country accent, sometime weak, sometimes very broad, depending on who I'm with, and I wouldn't lose it for the world. It's just bostin, mate.

So, to honour my roots and celebrate the 'iron in my soul' that is the Brickhouse Dudley drain cover, I have started a photoblog called Democracy and Proper Drains - tracking the spoor of the industrial West Midlands across the UK (and beyond?).