Day 48 Part 1 - Cold rice pudding

Walsall is probably one of the least regarded towns of the West Midlands conurbation. Perhaps known chiefly as the place where traffic on Europe's most congested stretch of motorway grinds to a crawl, it's a place that many people want to get past as quickly as possible. It also suffers in the mind of outsiders from the vagueness of its location. "Is that in Birmingham?", they ask. For many visitors, the Black Country towns merge uncertainly into one agglomeration of factories, housing estates, roads and canals. But get to know the area and different textures appear, changes in mood and feel.

And I love Walsall. It has the loveliness of a town that's not trying hard to please, and mostly seems to be not trying at all.

At the top of the main shopping street, the newest shop was Woolworths. It was natural that Woolies would build a thriving new store in Walsall. But now Woolworths is a credit-crunch victim and its doors stay closed.

A crowd was drawn however, by the "Muller Rice" promotional double-decker bus. Plenty of people were keen to pick up giveaway chilled rice puddings, some to be gulped al-fresco outside Greggs the bakers.

If I found Wolverhampton more prosperous than I remembered then Walsall balanced things up. There were too many empty shops on the main road, too few bags of shopping being carried. Economically at least, things felt tougher.

Yet Walsall is good, honestly. Its people are chirpy and chatty, more likely to be laughing at troubles than moaning about them.

I turned into Darwall Street and retraced my steps of another familiar walk home. For three years I served as curate at St Paul's Church at The Crossing, so every step brought back memories of a very happy period.

(continues in Part Two)