Mar 18 2009
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“ the most popular object of the precinct, beloved of almost everyone in the town, a concrete hippo. Everyone speaks of it with bewildering affection, and it has a Facebook page with nearly 2,000 fans. So I walked through the precinct with a tinge of expectation, the way you might head out of Cairo for your first glimpse of the pyramids. But instead of the awesome structure I was imagining, the thing’s about 4ft long and from a few yards away could be mistaken for a bin. It is loved – it’s the town’s most famous meeting point, and there was an outcry recently simply because it was moved. The reason is because it is now, defiantly, a feature of Walsall and the battle to retain a distinct identity in the face of the local authority’s efforts to wipe it out.
