BIRMINGHAM'S FISH MARKET - A GREAT PLAICE!

I took Grandson 2 to Birmingham yesterday for a bit of inter-generational bonding. Birmingham is the second largest city in the UK, with 2 million inhabitants, and I find it a really good place to be. Of all the cities I’ve lived in or near, the Birmingham people come across as the most friendly. It will never win you over with its architecture (although even that’s changing), or even its restaurants or its top end culture. We even had an “Eye”, one of those huge Ferris Wheels which transport you slowly round to look down on the city from about 300 feet. It came from Paris, and was set up in the Square outside Symphony Hall. The bright sparks who set it up left the previous commentary on it, so, when it all started, and the visitors climbed slowly above the Birmingham sky-line, they were treated to the history of the Champs Elysee, the Eiffel Tower and the Place de la Concorde. Excellent!

THE BIRMINGHAM EYE

CONTRAST BETWEEN THE OLD 'MOOR STREET STATION' AND THE NEW

SELFRIDGES AT NIGHT

AND AGAIN

In this country, it has always had a reputation as a bit of a dump, a bit second rate. Quite unjustifiably, and possibly with a tinge of jealousy, people from the south think that speaking with a Brummie accent, and being intelligent are mutually exclusive. Thirty years ago, I could perhaps understand that. Twenty years ago, one older comedian used to say that the best thing about the city was its new road system – you could get through the city without stopping. But it’s changed dramatically for the better over the 35 years I’ve known it.

Masses of intelligent regeneration, a world class concert hall with the best acoustics I’ve ever heard, a huge ethnicity which brings both plusses and minuses, more canals than Venice (don’t joke, it’s true), and a heritage which over the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries literally transformed the face of the Industrial world.

If you don’t believe that last one, look up the names Erasmus Darwin (Charles’s Grandfather), Matthew Boulton, James Watt and Josiah Priestley. Look up Abraham Darby at Ironbridge in Shropshire – there are good reasons why it’s a World Heritage Site. Search out a book called “The Lunar Men” (Jenny Uglow) for more information – she brings it all to life tremendously. These men, in 50 years put the world on a new course to Industrialisation, at the same time as the Americans were simultaneously throwing the toys out of their pram and the Tea into Boston harbour. So yes, Birmingham has real character, and so many cities today don’t. I like it.

Where did we go? We’ve been before to the Museums there, so, with a grandson besotted with creatures piscatorial, we ended up in the Fish Market. Now Birmingham is as close as any city gets to being in the geometrical Centre of England. You have to drive about 100 miles, either east or West, if you want to paddle in the sea. Not you’d have thought the best place to set up such a venture.

But the Birmingham markets are quite something, again the result of a bit of history. And given the range of cultures which live in the city, we expected to find a bit more that a couple of boxes of Cod.

Which we did – see below. All the guys serving there were good fun – they joined in and talked to us about the fish. We stroked 2 foot long squids, Conger eels (headless!), found out how to determine the sex of a crab, and got photographed “Godfather like” with a Pig’s head. I’d promised my Grandson some fish to take home and barbeque, so we spent a while scurrying around the stalls there making the final selection (think women and shoes here!). The final selection was a rather effeminate looking Strawberry Grouper, which filleted down to something the size of a couple of Sea bass fillets. Reports from home late last night were that the fish got 10 out of 10.

Mind you, what with the travel, the breakfasts, the doughnuts, and everything else we bought, it turned out these two miniscule 6 inch long fillets cost around £25 each. Who said education was free?

On Monday, it’s the turn of Grandson 1, and we’re off up North to Manchester to the Imperial War Museum there, so if the blog suddenly stops you will know that one of the extremely Realistic exhibits in the Museum has claimed its first Friendly Fire Victim.

SHELL FISH FOR SALE

DISPLAYING THE SQUID

FLYING FISH FROM VIETNAM - I BET ITS WINGS ACHE

HO-HO-HO

HIS COLLEAGUES THOUGHT IT WAS AN IMPROVEMENT

DEVON AND CORNWALL CRABS

THIS IS A STRAWBERRY GROUPER, OR BUTTERFISH

EVERYONE'S A COMIC HERE

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birmingham,
fish market,
fish

M6 - THE LONG AND WINDING ROADWORKS

On my journey to work this morning, I slipped gently down the slip road off the M6 Motorway at Spaghetti Junction, in the centre of Birmingham. Greeting me at the roundabout at the end of the slip-road was one of those delightful yellow metal signs which gave advanced warning of impending Road Works. It said that as from May 23rd, Roadworks would gum the place up (funnily enough, they didn't use those words) for the next 71 weeks. 71 weeks – that's a year and a half.

What, in heaven's name, can they possibly do that will take 71 weeks. They've just built a brand new shopping centre costing around £200 million, in the centre of Birmingham, during which it was the biggest building site, using the largest number of cranes, in the whole of Europe, and that didn't take 71 weeks. And all this is, is a pesky roundabout.

And anyway, the idea of anyone being able to say that, whatever it is they are going to do, will take 71 weeks simply beggars belief. The precision is astounding. However, the one thing you can absolutely guarantee is that it will not take 71 weeks – it may be 56 or 93, but it won't be 71. As a sop to spurious accuracy, this is a World Class example, presumably designed to make you think they know what they’re doing. Prime numbers (apart from 1, and I seem to recall, through a glass, very darkly, that 1 isn't actually a prime number anyway) play no part in roadwork durations.

All we need now is the Cones Telephone Hot-line number to appear (has anyone ever actually rung it?), and another notice advising us that there may be "Delays Possible". Of course there "may well" be delays possible – they're stopping the use of the roundabout on the most used exit on the most used motorway in Europe. Do they think we're cretins or something?

And I was quite enjoying my drive into Birmingham up until that point.

Tags:

roadworks,
birmingham,
m6

HELL'S GRANNIES - BRUMMIE STYLE

A rather bizarre little vignette played itself out this morning.

Just outside where I work, in the suburbs of Birmingham, the road is straight with a pedestrian pathway on each side. Normally, the cars tear along the road at speeds which bear no resemblance to the 30mph Speed limit.

Today was different. Around lunchtime, I was greeted, on the opposite pavement, by the sight of two disabled carriages, charging along the road, at what seemed to me to be a highly inappropriate speed. They were the sort which seem to be about a foot wide, and six feet high, with the plastic side covers which act as combined sails and water collectors, depositing their catch on the luckless internees. The sort of vehicle where you wondered how they ever kept upright, going at sane speeds, let alone what we were witnessing here.

BLASTING DOWN THE MAIN STRAIGHT TOWARDS THE CHICANE

It was very much a double take, and the drivers turned out to be a couple of quite mature ladies, wearing what for all the world could have been Fireproof Macs. You could certainly describe them both, to use Billy Connolly’s very descriptive phrase, as “No Stranger to a Fish Supper”. They really did look as if both should have known better.

There was no doubt in my mind – they were racing. A few other guys from work were also standing outside watching this Pythonesque snippet, one of whom decided that an encouraging “Go on, My Son” was warranted.

The fun started when they came up to a lamp-post, which was mounted in one of the slabs on the pavement. We saw a very Grand Prix style of Late Braking, Take the Racing Line and carve the loser up to get through the gap at minimum loss of speed. The loser, clearly with a slight but real Power to Weight Ratio benefit (actually, I suspect it was all to do with the weight rather than the power!), managed to pull alongside, and stayed there until 50 or so yards further on, when the next Lamp-Post chicane came into play. We were then treated to the same Schumacher-like driving style, and a very unladylike scrabble for leadership through the gap, seemed to overcome them again. They came to a left hand side-road, and blasted, or so it seemed, around the corner, and disappeared.

Most entertaining.

Tags:

humour,
birmingham,
hells grannies

ROBERT PARKER - BRB'S BEST DANCER

ROBERT PARKER

News reached the far flung outpost of Shrewsbury today that Robert Parker, Principal Dancer at the Birmingham Royal Ballet, is retiring this year at the grand old age of 30.

The film “Billy Eliot” caught the still prevalent attitude that has your male listener, probably involuntarily, starting to talk in a slightly lower register when you profess a liking for Ballet. As a Director of a largish company in Birmingham in the late 90s, being invited out for the evening by professional advisors and other business people was an occasional perk. Most of the time, sitting with 500 other businessmen listening to an evening of speechmaking was not always something to set one’s mind racing with anticipation, but occasionally something turned up which literally added a whole new interest in your life.

One such invitation came near one Christmas, for my wife and I to make up a party at the Birmingham Hippodrome, to see the BRB’s performance of The Nutcracker. To say I was affected by it is an understatement. I went into the theatre probably a tad prejudiced against it, and came out a speechless convert. The sheer beauty, the power, the grace, the passion and the sheer aural and visual impact of it all made it one of the most memorable evenings of my life. That “freebie” actually cost me a fortune, because over the next eight years, we used to buy a pair of Season Tickets, and go to every programme they put on.

I’m sure Ballet Companies are like football teams, in that their skill levels ebb and flow as the years go by. And I’m equally sure that in the late 90s, the BRB had a range of dancers which could stand comparison with any other major company in the country. But the life of a top flight ballet dancer is fearfully arduous, and fearfully short.

People like Joe Cipolla, the O’Hare twins, Monica Zamora, Sabrina Lenzi, Leticia Muller, Wolfgang Stolwitzer were truly excellent dancers, both in the classics, and also the newer, more avant garde pieces that David Bintley, the BRB’s charismatic Director, put on over the years. But, by the turn of the century, many of these top flight performers were reaching the end of their careers, and all of a sudden, they’d gone. The only real new BRB entrant over this time who had immediately made you think –“Bloody hell, he’s got something” was Robert Parker.

He started in Birmingham around 1998, and rose swiftly through the ranks to reach the pinnacle of Principal Dancer, where he has remained for many years in my opinion, as the best dancer in the Company. He seemed to be able to turn his hand to everything. He was immensely athletic and seemed to have a real insight into the character he was portraying. Dancing on his own, you could not take your eyes off him, whilst when partnering one of the female Principals, he blended with her and presented her in a very elegant and supportive way. To me he was always utterly convincing and got to the heart of the role more than any other BRB dancer, and it was always an absolute pleasure each time you turned up at the Hippodrome to find that he was dancing that night.

He seems to be using a very sensible brain to “go out on a high”, and take his career on a very different course, at an age when time is still on his side. He intends to move to the USA and train as an Airline Pilot, would you believe.

All I can say, as a real fan of his, is to thank him for the hours of utter pleasure his dancing has given me. I should advise potential flyers in America to fly with him, as, if he lands his aircraft with the same precision and grace that he showed with his leading ladies, you will not even know you’ve touched the ground.

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