(Nothing But) Flowers

Last December I was driving past the former Matthew Boulton College building on Sherlock Street in Birmingham as it was being demolished. Clare was in the passenger seat, but seeing as though neither of us were former students at the place and it wasn't an old cinema it failed to elicit any kind of emotional response worth mentioning.

A few weeks later we drove past it again. All that was left of the college was a big pile of rubble, but that didn't particularly bother me, either. Civil engineering was never my strong suit, but the one thing I do know is that rubble is an inevitable byproduct of knocking down a building.

A few weeks ago Clare & I once again passed the former Matthew Boulton College on Sherlock Street in Birmingham. On the site of the erstwhile big pile of rubble was a reasonably large field. This didn't look like freshly rolled-out turf: it looked like it had been there forever. Despite the fact we were driving past it at a reasonable speed we could even see weeds.

"I remember when all this was buildings," said Clare, wistfully.

Ulysses on the Buses: Stockland Green

CONFESSIONS OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN (1974)

Cert X, Dir. Alan Smithee

Stockland Green Plaza from 16th June, 1974. Showtimes vary.

Based on the acclaimed novel by cult science-fiction satirist Jimmy Joyce, this new British sex comedy stars the ever-popular Robin Askwith as Steve Dedalus, a chirpy young aspiring novelist who yearns to break free from the suffocating straitjacket of conformity by embarking on an illustrious literary career. Steve soon finds, however, that it takes more than an abundance of talent, ruthless tenacity and sheer luck to make it big in the book business: it also requires a willingness to subject oneself to a series of back-breaking romps with various ladies of letters. This hardback harem of softback sirens include a licentious librarian (Sally Geeson), a lascivious literary agent (Rula Lenska) and a saucy censor (Irene Handl), and Steve’s so-called ‘epiphanies’ take place in a variety of ludicrously lewd literary-themed locations including a marquee at the Cheltenham Literary Festival, the back of a mobile library and the top deck of the number 11 bus.

This, it must be said, is something of a departure from the source material.

Ulysses on the Buses: Villa Park

Next week’s auction of rare manuscripts by the great Irish author James Joyce looks set to ignite a bitter dispute between private collectors, leading academics and fans of a West Midlands football team. The documents – made up of original, handwritten drafts of what many believe to be his earliest published work - consist of over 1500 pages of articles, match reports and in-depth player profiles that Joyce wrote between 1919 and 1924 for Aston Villa’s weekly match day souvenir programme.

‘This has got us all worried,’ says Harry H. Earwicker, Aston Villa supporter and spokesperson for the Anglo-Irish ‘soccerlit’ pressure group, Villa Yootha Joyce. ‘There’s a very real danger that some well-heeled foreign buyer could take the manuscripts out of North Birmingham. These documents form part of this great club’s history. They are the only surviving link between the modern-day Claret and Blue Army and the lost world of Modernist literature. They should remain at Villa Park or, at the very least, somewhere in Witton.’

As well as being one of the most important writers of the last century, James Joyce will also be remembered as one of Aston Villa’s original ‘famous fans’. In this respect, he was very much the Nigel Kennedy of his day. Joyce would often boast about this in public, despite the fact that - in the 1920s at least - no serious artist wanted to be compared to Nigel Kennedy. What first attracted the Dublin-born writer to this legendary North Birmingham club remains a mystery, however. Some Joycean scholars have tentatively suggested that he supported Aston Villa as an defiant act of artistic rebellion against the dated literary conventions of Victorian novelists like Thomas Hardy, Anthony Trollope and the Brontë sisters who were, for the most part, Birmingham City supporters.

Whatever the case, his obsession for the club found its way into the early drafts of many of his most famous books. His autobiographical novel, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, was originally entitled A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Fan, while his masterpiece Ulysses – in which the entire narrative famously took place on a single day, 16^th June, 1904 – was originally scheduled to take place on 2^nd April, 1897, the date of Villa’s first FA Cup victory.

Joyce began writing for the club’s souvenir programme in 1919. He was living in impoverished exile in Zurich with his lover, Nora Barnacle, and was desperately struggling to make ends meet. By the time his ends eventually did meet it was too late, as the pair had already moved to Paris. To help alleviate Joyce’s poverty his well-connected patron, Harriet Shaw Weaver, put in a good word with Aston Villa’s owners. In those days, the football souvenir programme industry was a melting pot of Modernist talent and many of the great artists of the day got their first break working for these publications. The likes of T.S. Eliot, Gertrude Stein and Marcel Proust cut their creative teeth writing articles, match reports and in-depth player profiles until people started taking them seriously. Writers weren’t the only people to benefit from this industry, of course. Pablo Picasso famously produced a series of lurid strip cartoons for Birmingham City’s souvenir programme during what later became known as his ‘Blues period’.

Over the next five years Joyce was a prolific contributor to the publication. He produced 276 articles, 573 match reports, 834 play-by-play tactical analysis charts and over 15,000 in-depth player profiles. This prodigious output was all the more remarkable as he spent most of this period living abroad and, as a result, was rarely able to attend home games. Instead, he had to rely heavily on detailed telegrams, eyewitness accounts and conjecture.

According to Earwicker, Joyce’s early articles for the souvenir programme featured ‘a winning combination of hard-hitting match analysis, erudite Irish wit and obscure literary allusions that proved to be a big hit with Villa fans.’ His classic work during this period included the groundbreaking match report Villa v QPR (1919) and its disappointing sequel, Villa v QPR (1920), and during Villa’s 1919-20 FA Cup campaign Joyce received widespread acclaim for his detailed account of the long road to Wembley, which was entitled ‘The M1.’

Unfortunately, Joyce’s love affair with Aston Villa was not to last. Egged on by fellow Villa fan Ezra Pound, he began to introduce increasingly experimental literary techniques into his Villa programme contributions. His play-by-play tactical analysis reports featured an increased use of multiple-viewpoint narration and Lobachevskian geometry. This confused scores of Villa fans who were more familiar traditional third-person narrative approaches and Euclidian geometry. He also abandon many of the traditional rules of punctuation: a 1921 interview with Frank Barson upset the legendary ‘hard man’ striker after Joyce removed all the quotation marks and replaced them with inverted commas.

The situation finally came to a head in 1924 with his controversial profile of one of Villa’a most notorious fans. A precursor to the modern-day streaker, Macintosh Brown would interrupt Villa matches by charging across the field wearing nothing but a brown macintosh. Joyce’s profile of this shady exhibitionist – complete with pop-up illustrations - resulted in a highly-publicised obscenity trial and Joyce was forced to accept a three-match ban.

The club’s owners were furious with Joyce. When Villa were defeated by Newcastle United in that year’s FA Cup final, Joyce submitted a 10,000 word match report which featured passing references to Irish patriot Charles Stewart Parnell, Catholic theologian St Thomas Aquinas and Italian philosopher Giambattista Vico. The club owners urged Joyce to remove these references which, they felt, were ‘somewhat irrelevant’ and ‘confusing to younger fans’. Angered by this perceived attack on his artistic integrity, Joyce submitted a 10,000 word profile of Parnell, Aquinas and Vico which made only passing reference to the FA Cup Final. In retaliation, the club owners published a clumsily edited version the original article and attributed it to one of Joyce’s uncles, who he didn’t like.

For Joyce this was the final straw. He sent the club a blunt, two-word resignation letter in Latin which read: ‘Non-serviam.’ The club responded with a blunt, two-word response in Anglo Saxon, which – unfortunately – was lost in the post. After turning his back on his religion and then his country, Joyce finally turned his back on his favorite team. In a fit of rage he attempted to set fire to his vast collection of Aston Villa scarves, track suits and other paraphernalia. Unfortunately, due to his failing eyesight, he instead set fire to a pair of curtains and an early draft of a planned sequel to Ulysses that was provisionally entitled Twolysses.

Nearly a century later, Joyce’s influence still remains strong at Villa Park. According to Earwicker, his ghost has often been witnessed sitting on the top deck of a bus that passes close to the ground and shouting abuse from the terraces. Most touchingly, perhaps, many of his early, lyrical poems have formed the basis of some of the club’s most enduring supporter chants. These include the touching ‘We Love You Villa, We Do’, the rousing ‘We are the Boys from the Holte Army’ and, of course, the ever-popular ‘Shit on the City.’

Yesterday was Record Store Day

I popped into Birmingham music emporium Swordfish Records yesterday in order to fulfil my obligatory Record Store Day obligation. As this blog is committed to transparency and a full disclosure of contributions to the music industry, I'll fess up now and admit that I purchased Television's People by the rather marvellous Brum-based endorphin-pumpers Misty's Big Adventure. I also bought an additional CD and two vinyl LPs from their £1 clearance section, but - as this blogger is committed to protecting what's left of his credibility - I'll refrain from telling you what they were.

As I drove to the store I was listening to Frank Zappa's 1983 album, The Man From Utopia. It's not one of his best but it seemed appropriate, to me at least. Zappa has always reminded me of Swordfish Records, and Swordfish Records has always reminded me of Zappa. I'd like to offer some deep and thoughtful insight into the roots of this weird interrelationship, but instead I'll just tell you the truth: Zappa reminds me of Swordfish Records because the staff used to play his music all the time.

Of course, with the twin onslaught of download culture and deep discounting supermarkets, even the major High Street record stores have been having a tough time of it lately. It can't be easy for independent retailers, either. One of the advantages that independent record stores will always have over the competition, though, is that your average major supermarket or High Street record store is unlikely to play weird, subversive shit like Willie the Pimp, The Illinois Enema Bandit or Why Does it Hurt When I Pee? over the tannoy anytime soon. Too bad.

Independent record stores also tend to be staffed by people who are passionate and knowledgeable about music. If you were to ask a member of staff at, say, Sainsbury's to point you in the direction of the Zappa album that featured the original studio cuts of Suzy Creamcheese and Bobby Brown Goes Down you're unlikely to get a detailed, well-informed response. I'm making a sweeping generalisation, of course. This might only be the case at my local branch.

As I rifled through the racks at Swordfish yesterday, a Zappa album was playing in the background. I smiled, wistfully.

This is Record Store Day

Which, in case you don't know, "is the one day that all of the independently owned record stores come together with artists to celebrate the art of music."

I'll endeavour to pop into my favourite local indie music store, Swordfish Records, at some point later today and I might even try to observe a minute's silence for its fallen comrades in arms, like Frank's Wild Records and the Plastic Factory.

You can find the Record Store Day site here.

11-11-11: Ulysses on the Buses

Stateless, scrawny James Joyce and his mistressmusewife, Nora Barnacle, were waiting for a number eleven omnibus in the Perry Barr district of Birmingham. It was twenty-six days, five months and one hundred and four years after 16th June 1904, although they didn't necessarily spend all that time waiting for a bus.


At what precise location in Perry Barr was their bus stop located?

By a clay bark’s bank, where a stone lane meets a field of birch.


Do you mean by the Barclays Bank on the Corner of Aston Lane and Birchfield Road?

Um, yes.


What obsolete vernacular term for acute dental dysfunction can be used to describe the approximate time of the bus’s arrival?

Tooth hurty.


What action did the author make upon the arrival of his omnibus?

He inserted his hand mechanically into the back pocket of his trousers to obtain his senior citizen’s bus pass.


Was it there?

No. It was in the corresponding pocket of the trousers which he had worn on the day but one preceding.


Why was this quadruply irritating?

Because he had forgotten; because he had previously reminded Nora to remind him not to forget; because Nora was now reminding him that she had previously remembered to remind him not to forget; because the previous trousers were now at the dry cleaners.


Was the controversial author of such groundbreaking classics as Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Ulysses and Finnegans Wake entitled to free travel on bus, train and Metro services throughout the West Midlands and environs?

Yes, insofar as the author was 126 years of age and could therefore be classified as a pensioner.



Due to the aforementioned bus pass oversight, was Joyce required to tender the full adult off-peak fare?

No. The stately, plump bus driver was in a charitable mood and let him off on a technicality.


What was the technicality?

The fact that Joyce had been dead since 1941.


Briefly outline Joyce’s initial observations with regards to the distribution of passengers in the lower deck of the number 11 bus.

The lower deck contained twelve adult females (two with infants), nine adult males, and eight juveniles (five female and three male) of varying ages, races and creeds; five adults (three female and two male) were reading (or appearing to read) daily newspapers, monthly magazines or this week's Take a Break; two adults (male and female) and one juvenile (male) were listening to music (or appearing to listen to music) on portable MP3 players; one adult (male) and one juvenile (female) were conducting (or appearing to conduct) mobile telephone conversations with unidentified parties on matters pertaining to, in the first instance, a somewhat contentious business transaction involving an otter,and, in the second, a highly detailed account of a series of regrettable and somewhat lurid romantic entanglements involving a third party known only as Our Sonia.


There were no available seats on the lower deck, then?

Indeed.


What parallel course did Joyce and Nora subsequently follow?

Starting united both at normal walking pace from the driver’s cabin, they turned right and approached the steps leading to the upper deck. Joyce, a well-mannered man, insisted that Nora go first; Nora, a feminist icon, insisted that Joyce go first. He eventually acquiesced, for fear of getting a punch on the nose.


What change in circumstance almost thwarted their ascent?

The vehicle’s sudden and unexpected transition in relative state from at rest (statum) to moving (agitato) caused Joyce to lose his footing on the narrow stairwell, ricochet off the handrail and launch into a form of graceless backflip commonly referred to as arse over tit (ineptio).


What prevented Joyce from sustaining a serious head injury?

The fact he collided, face first, into the ample cleavage of his mistress, Nora Barnacle.


What was Nora’s initial reaction to this?

NORA: Get off me Jim, ye wee skitter! I’m not falling for that one again!


What was crestfallen (and chestfallen) Joyce’s initial reaction to that?

Shock: embarrassment: shame: mild titillation: guilt: a profound sense of irony.


Why irony?

Because he had now done by accident something that he had previously done on purpose; because when he previously did it on purpose he pretended it was an accident.


What was the origin of this hitherto intentional stair-stumbling, cleavage-colliding phenomenon?

A high risk seduction stratagem Joyce called The Epiphany Accelerator.


Where and when did this previously happen?

With Nora, along a set of stone steps in Ringsend, Dublin, on 16th June 1904.


Shall we move on?

I think we should.


Were there available seats on the upper deck?

There were.


Where did Joyce and Nora decide to sit?

On the left hand side of the deck, at an equidistant point between a cackle of truants sitting on the back seat and a skinnylooking galoot and his girlfriend sitting at the front.


Why did Joyce take an irrational dislike to the skinnylooking galoot?

He was making witless remarks, scribbling furiously in a note pad and looked like a blogger.


What course did the number 11 omnibus subsequently follow?

Travelling in a south-easterly direction at an average speed of 26 mph, it left the field of birch and its broken librubble and followed Aston Lane’s Path, past Roddy Tufnol’s factoray and the new 24 our tescosuperstore.


What was the skinnylooking galoot’s reaction to the broken librubble?

- Where the fuck did that go?


What was the skinnylooking galoot’s reaction to the new tescosuperstore?

- Where the fuck did that come from?


What was Joyce’s reaction to the skinnylooking galoot’s reactions?

He let out a pair of audible tuts.


Was Joyce the first great 20th century novelist to have used the number 11 bus despite being dead?

No.


Can you elaborate on your answer?

Can you be more specific with your question?


Alright, then. Was Joyce the first dead 20th Century Modernist author to use Birmingham’s number 11 bus?

No. Ernest Hemmingway spent some time on the Outer Circle route during an otherwise regrettable trip to Birmingham.


Why was the trip regrettable?

He didn’t realize the Bull Ring was a shopping centre.

11-11-11: Lost Souls and Plimsoles

Well we know where we're goin'
But we dont know where we've been
And we know what were knowin'
But we can't say what weve seen

Talking Heads - Road to Nowhere

It's about 1.50pm, Clare and I are still in Harborne and we're still sitting on the front seat of the top deck of Birmingham's legendary number 11 bus. We're sitting to the right of the bus, and - on Lordswood Road - a girl sitting to our left gets up and click-clacks her way down the steps in a pair of presumably-fashionable high heel plimsoles. This may seem fairly inconsequential to you, but for me it was the catalyst for a minor revalation: sitting on the front seat of the top deck might give you a great view of the road ahead, but when it comes to interbus people-watching it's far from ideal. Visibility is seriously impaired due to the fact that almost everybody else is sitting behind you.

It was, of course, Clare who noticed her shoes: footwear observations aren't exactly my forte. I wouldn't have clocked what was on her feet if she staggered past me in a pair of of Elton John's 4 foot tall Doc Martens.

I assume she's a regular passenger, not some eejit with a blog and a day off work whose partial to a bit of public transport-based sociological high jinks. This is someone with a destination in mind, who knows exactly where she's going. She's the kind of person who uses the bus to get from A to B, not someone who misuses the bus to get from A to A.

It's probably best if I don't dwell on the metaphorical implications of any of this.

11-11-11: from Kings Heath to Cotteridge

1.25pm: Kick off.

1.26pm: Boost bars are unwrapped.

We make our way down Vicarage Road onto Fordhouse Lane - from Kings Heath to Stirchley - as Clare writes: "I don't like Stirchley, or the innermost layer of a Boost."

By contrast, I'm inordinately fond of Stirchley. Having lived there during the mid-90s, I've always loved the fact that the nearest train station from my old stomping ground was Bournville. When you left the station you would look out upon this idyllic, picturesque vision of England. You'd see nice, polite chaps playing cricket while shoots of ivy climbed up the sides of their ornate red brick houses. It always seemed like a cross between The Kinks' Village Green Preservation Society album and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

Once you walked under the railway bridge, however, you were confronted with Stirchley, and the contrast couldn't be greater. You'd see disused factories, discarded pizza boxes and cars mounted on bricks. Compared to Bournville, this was urban and butal. It's hard to believe that two such different areas could be divided by a single railway line. I imagine an aerial photograph of the area would look a bit like like the face of Harvey Dent from Batman.

Whoever coined the phrase "The other side of the tracks" probably lived there, too.

Paradox on the Buses

I'm perversely tempted to take part in the indefatigable Jon (Birmingham: It's Not Shit) Bounds' demented-yet-delightful bus-based social experiment, 11-11-11:

On the 11th of November let’s create a modern ritual, a post-millennial cultural cult.

Eleven hours on the eleven bus — join us.

The rules:

• Get on the 11C at 11am (or as near as dammit) on 11/11.
• Get off the 11C at 10pm — 11 hours later — (or as near as dammit) on 11/11.
• You can get on and off the bus as many times as you like (don’t spend more than an hour off bus).
• Document your journey; photos, film, writing, cross-stitch, knitting, amigurumi, poetry, blog, twitter, however you like.
• Meet up with others as mad as you, if you want.

I'm up for a bit of that. I quite like the idea of donating some bandwidth-by-proxy to such a bold, civic-minded endeavour, particularly when it’s a public transport-based collective metamedia travelogue. It'd make me feel like a walking, talking, head-on collision between Bill Bryson, Marshall McLuhan and, perhaps, Reg Varney.

More importantly, though, it'd give me plenty of potentially juicy things to write about on here. Not only is the Number 11 the longest urban bus route in Europe, but every time I've been on it I've witnessed something odd, weird or mad as a bungee-jumping bishop in a ballgown. They don’t call it an "Out-Patient Ward on Wheels" for nothing.

All this talk of buses reminds me of several things.

For the sake of clarity, brevity and sanity, however, I’ll narrow it down to one. Long ago and far away (which, by my calendar, makes it approximately August 1996) I witnessed a Hofstadter Strange Loop in action on the Number 45. Being a part-time philosopher and half-arsed science geek - which I define as someone who read about CERN and the Large Hadron Collider before Dan Brown wrote about it in Angels and Demons (which, of course, I don’t plan to read) - I had a basic grasp what a Hofstadter Strange Loop was. For the sake of clarity, brevity and charity, however, I’ll just say that a Hofstadter Strange Loop is a sort of elaborate definition of a paradox. You can find a proper definition on Wikipedia, but for me its best summed up by the art of MC Escher or that memorable line from the 80s video classic The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the Eighth Dimension:

“Wherever you go, there you are…”

Indeed. Anyway, while I had a reasonably firm grasp of what a Hofstadter Strange Loop was, I never knew what one looked like. I certainly didn’t expect it to resemble a grumpy old fart with a tartan shopping trolley.

Cut to: one sunny Saturday afternoon in 1996. There I was, sitting on the lower deck of a number 45, heading home from somewhere I can't remember and reading a book I can’t recall when the bus got itself stuck in a traffic jam along the Pershore Road. It was a particularly vicious and stubbornly viscous strain of traffic jam, even by the standards of the Pershore Road. I didn't mind, though: it was a pretty good book.

Sitting in front of me was a grumpy old man with a Tartan shopping trolley who spoke in a Birmingham accent that was so strong that you could be forgiven for thinking it was a bad parody of a Birmingham accent. I couldn't be forgiven for thinking this, of course, as I've written so many bad parodies over the years' that I wouldn't get away with it. A fairer description would be to say that the old man spoke in that rarest strain of the Brummie accent, the raw, unrefined, undiluted Brummie accent that these days only exists amongst scattered pockets of traditionalists and in certain parts of the BBC Radio WM schedule.

As the traffic jam slowly eased its way into a terminal case of entropic paralysis, the man and his trolley huffed, puffed and fumed with increasing bile and volume. I tried to ignore them, but it wasn't easy. These things rarely are.

Eventually he stood up and marched over to the bus driver: "Ooroyt, mucka – what’s gooin’on with the traffic, then?" he asked. “It’s a bloody disgrace, that’s what it is – a bloody disgrace!”

The driver explained that some Reclaim the Streets protesters were exercising their democratic right to park their derrieres on the tarmac up ahead.

The old man seemed to explode with rage. Innocent bystanders were maimed by shards of herbal cough drops. The shopping trolley spewed its contents out in sympathy. “Bloody protesters?” he roared, “bloody protesters? You mean to say we’re stuck here on accounta bunch a BLOODY PROTESTERS?” He was disgusted. He was outraged. He was possibly vitriolic with fury. You could feel his vile, but I wouldn’t recommend it.

“I’m sick of these bloody bastard protesters”, he continued, now addressing the entire lower deck of the bus. “Bunch of arf-soaked, scruffy, workshy bastards with nothing better to do, the lot of ‘em. If they’re not out saving the whale or banning the bomb or getting there knickers in a twist they’re holding things up for the rest of us.”

"That sort of thing should be against the law," he said. "People shouldn't be allowed to protest."

I looked up from my book, but decided to say nothing.

Roadkill

I was sitting at my desk today, doing some work and trying to mind my own business. Some colleagues sitting across from me were talking about Roman roads. I don't know why, they just were.

Against my better judgement, I decided to elbow my way into their conversation: "Is that Roman roads you're talking about?" I asked, rhetorically. "Do you know that substantial parts of one of Birmingham's major 'A' roads - the A38 - follow the course of a famous Roman road? Between Worcester and Birmingham - and again between Lichfield and Derby - the A38 follows a route built by Roman invaders over two thousand years ago."

There was a pause. I did that to prime them for the punchline:

"Of course, back in those days the Romans didn't call it the A38. They called it the A XXXVIII."

The sudden outbreak of silence distracted everyone.

More Julian Cope...

Quite looking forward to seeing St Julian at Latitude in July. I like him loads, have never seen him live and over the years have heard great things about his gigs. In the meantime, I've got this to look forward to:



The Birmingham Town Hall website says this about it:

Cope will present one of his infamous lectures, based on his years of study of the occult, mythology and Britain’s pre-history. Followed by a screening of cult film Haxan (1922 dir: Benjamin Christensen)-an other worldly vision of grave robbing, torture, possessed nuns, baby sacrifices and satanic Sabbath, with a live soundtrack by art house electronix outfit Bronnt Industries Kapital.

Which sounds reassuringly mental. To me, at least. If only History lectures at Uni were more like that then I might have turned up to more of 'em.

I've been trying to talk Brother Younger into going along with me. This sort of thing is right up his street.

The sound of a pin dropping...

Okay, for the last couple of weeks I've been as quiet as Marcel Marceau and prolific as Peter Gabriel. I have reasons for this. I always have reasons.

The main one is that Clare, her wonderful 4 year-old daughter Lily, Kiki the family Kat and your's truly are moving to a stylish newbuild apartment this weekend. Or maybe it's a flat. I'm not affiliated with the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors so can't tell the difference between the two. I've got a hunch that 'flat' and 'apartment' are pretty much interchangeable. The latter is probably a rebranding of the former designed to appease those aspirational types we all know and love. In any case, it certainly sounds a lot more wanky.

This move is a Big Deal for me. It's also a Big Deal for Clare, Lily and quite possibly Kiki too, of course, but this is a blog and - by definition - I'm permitted to exercise a certain level of self-absorption. I'm not normally like this, you understand.

The apartment (or flat) is in Kings Norton. Or Kings Heath. I'm not quite sure about that, either. The postcode is B30 - which reliable sources inform me is a Kings Norton postcode - but it's only a five minute walk away from my one-time, Kings Heath-based bachelor-pad flateau. If I'm moving into a new, unchartered part of Brum it certainly doesn't feel that way, but that may have something to do with the fact I'll be using the same fish and chip shop.

Part of me rather likes the idea of living in Kings Norton, but it's not due to any postcode snobbery or aspirational bullshit. For one thing, living in an area I technically haven't lived in before adds another notch to my Birmingham postal-district bedpost (I've been 'round the block a few times - just check the voter's register...). More importantly, though, the word itself - 'Kings Norton' - resonates with me because it reminds me of Norton I, the first and only Emperor of the United States of America.

Joshua Norton, in case you don't know, was a failed English businessman who ended up homeless and destitute in mid-19th Century San Francisco. In 1859 he proclaimed himself 'Emperor of the United States' (later adding 'Protector of Mexico' to his illustrious title), and for the rest of his life the people of San Francisco treated him as such. He issued proclamations, arbitrated disputes and even issued his own currency. When he died in 1880 as many as 30,000 people lined San Francisco's streets to pay tribute. Needless to say, he's one of my favourite historical figures.

By contrast, the word 'Kings Heath' now makes me think of dead movie stars.

I made a whistle-stop visit to the Creative Republic/Created in Birmingham party in Hockley last night. I was there to catch up with and congratulate my pal Pete on CiB's MediaGuardian Awards triumph. I didn't stay for long, partly because I'd misread the start time on the invite and partly because my day job isn't in a creative industry. In fact, I felt like an imposter. It's a bit like arriving at a WI meeting in drag: if you stay for too long there's always the danger that someone might expect you to have an interesting opinion about something you don't understand.


That didn't stop me, of course.

444 Club on Friday

For the benefit of all those Birmingham-based, gig-going, uplifting gormandizers out there (Heyyy now, Daddy-O...), The Courtesy Group - Al Hutchins' awesome band of Scrotnig noizemeisters who've been mentioned here on many an occasion - are supporting London-based up-and-comers XX Teens at The Rainbow in Digbeth tomorrow evening. XX Teens sound like a lot of fun - plus I'd like to see the mighty CG playing a non-Curate's Egg event - so I'll endeavour to get my pert wee Irish arse there. I think you should, too.

It's one of Kamikaze Events' 444 Club nights, in which new acts share the spotlight with local bands. Alongside The Courtesy Group, there'll be sets from Magnificatz and Betty & The ID.
Plastic Noise DJs will be, um, DJ-ing. They look as though they'll be fun, too. I purloined this wonderful image from their Myspace page:


That looks disturbingly like a mindmap of what I listen to while I'm driving.

Anyhow, here's the flyer:

Because I'm Fickle

Well whaddaya know: I've changed my mind already.

Since watching Rocky Balboa last week with Clare I've decided that it deserves a place in my Top 10 Films of 2007. Yes, I saw it during the last week of January 2008, but it was released in 2007. My list. My rules. Don't argue, Clare.

It's either at number 9 or number 10. I haven't quite decided yet. Tell you what: I'll be decisive and make it Number 10. That knocks Beowulf off the list. Sorry, Beowulf. Empty your desk and hand your security pass in at reception. You know the drill.

Rocky Balboa resonated with me in all manner of ways. For one thing, well, you know... it was a fecking Rocky film, fer Chrissakes. Do I really need to elaborate on that? Alright, I will. As a kid I'd get so pumped up after watching a Rocky film that, next morning - without fail and without exception - I'd always go for a vigorous early-morning run in Birmingham's Perry Barr Park. Now, I've never been much of a jogger - I'm just not the type - but after watching a Rocky film I would, betwixt dusk and High Noon, mutate into a hardcore fitness fanatic.

Maybe I should have watched those Rocky films more often.

Or maybe it's just as well I didn't. After all, I didn't just imitate the Italian Stallion's hardcore physical regime but copied his bizarre eating habits, too. These were the days before Edwina Currie and her salmonella scares: gulping down a pint glass full of raw eggs didn't seem quite as breathtakingly stupid as it does now. It just seemed stupid.

Perry Barr Park was the ideal venue for these pre-pubescent, post-Rocky flick runs. As you entered the park from Aldridge Road there was a path lined with park benches, ideal for leaping over systematically a la the Rocky II training montage (which, of course, I did). At the other end of the park was a steep grassy slope that led to the bright yellow perimeter fence of Alexander Stadium. As I punched the air and whistled Bill Conti's theme tune, I felt like Rocky running up those famous steps of Philadelphia's National History Museum, except for the fact there weren't any steps. And it was covered in grass.

But it wasn't just these somewhat embarrassing memories that made Rocky Balboa chime with me. I've always loved stories about ageing heroes who come out of retirement to kick some serious arse. This isn't just about me being a decrepit old fart, you understand. It's always been the case. I've always loved movies like Sam Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch and Ride The High Country, Richard Lester's Robin and Marian, Clint Eastwood's Unforgiven, Don Siegal's John Wayne swansong The Shootist and, yes, Star Trek 2: The Wrath of Khan. Despite becoming somewhat disillusioned with Frank Miller over the years, one of my favourite comics is still 1986s Batman: The Dark Knight Returns. That, in case you don't know, is a story about an ageing bat-themed vigilante who comes out of retirement to kick some serious arse.

These are all stories about old-timers who get one last shot at being a hero or finding redemption, and they've all resonated with me throughout my life. With Rocky Balboa, Sylvester Stallone has crafted a worthy addition to this honourable genre. In fact, I've just decided to move it up to number 9 on my Top 10.

Just don't expect me to jump over any park benches in the morning.

Brum Tig: I'm "It" Now

I've been tagged by my new pal, the smart and feisty local Blogging journo Joanna Geary. I suppose I should explain what the Hell that means.

Jon Bounds of the excellent Birmingham: It's Not Shit website (they of the recent Spotted Dog Pub Landlord John Tighe-winning Brummie of the Year Awards) has come up with a novel way to help promote this fine city's thriving community of bloggers. It's called Brum Blog Tig and Jon's rules are as follows:

• Each player starts with an odd, but fun, fact about Brum and one odd, but fun, fact about their blog.
• At the end of your blog, you need to choose two people to get tagged and list their names.
• Tag your post “birminghamUK” and “brumblogtig” (the second one is a memetag).
• People who are tagged need to write a post on their own blog (with their version of the post) and post these rules (or link to them here). They can tie it in with their particular subject if they so wish.
• Don’t forget to leave them a comment telling them they’re tagged, and to read your blog.
  

So - without any further ado - here's My fact about Brum:

The Digbeth area has long been known as the spiritual home to the city's Irish community, but did you know that one of Ireland's most famous literary sons - a certain James Augustine Aloysius Joyce - once resided there?

James Joyce and his lover Nora Barnacle arrived in Birmingham in 1920. They were about to embark on a new life in Paris after their lengthy self-imposed exile in Trieste, and in those days Digbeth's Coach & Horse Station was a common stopover point for journeys between the the former Austro-Hungarian Empire and France. This involved a time-consuming 1,300 mile detour, which was - at the time - a common feature of short-haul European travel, despite the fact that SatNavs had not been invented yet.

Joyce - an Irish emigre with a fondness for booze, lock-ins and a thriving live music scene - immediately felt at home in Digbeth. Nora, by contrast, instantly despised the area. After years of living in impoverished exile she longed for the style, sophistication and readily available boeuf bourguignon of the fashionable Parisian scene. According to contemporary eyewitness reports, she tried to drag her suitcases onto a Paris-bound coach and insisted that Joyce should get her "the Hell away from this fecking shithole". Joyce stubbornly refused, and tried to drag her suitcases out of the Coach Station and into a nearby pub. This luggage-based tug-of-war soon escalated into characteristically violent confrontation between the hot-tempered lovers which lasted just over a fortnight. According to Richard Ellmann, the row only ended after Joyce - who by this stage was suffering from a cut lip and broken spectacles - hastily composed a conciliatory lyrical poem to Nora entitled "In the Coach Station at Digbeth":

O cracked lookingglass
The flesh of lip now parted
By repeated blows to my skull
From your suitcase

Following the fight, Joyce and Nora left the coach station and found lodgings at a nearby public house called The Dislocated Arms, and it was there that Joyce set about forming his first and last band. According to Joyce scholar Hugh Jenner's definitive study of this period (C'mon Feel The Joyze, 1988), the resulting band - 'Molly and Her Bloomers' - were pioneers of the interwar industrial music scene. Unfortunately, their bulky musical instruments - which included heavyweight manufacturing equipment like conveyor belts, steel rolling mills and even a viaduct - prevented them from getting booked into adequately sized venues and made touring prohibitively expensive.

Frustrated by these setbacks to his fledgling musical career, Joyce submitted to Nora's persistent demands and decided to leave Birmingham and resume their journey to Paris. Before they left, though, Joyce indulged himself in a mammoth pub-crawl of the area. This event was recorded in his personal journals and - according to Ellmann and others - formed the basis of his masterpiece Finnegans Wake:

Riverrun, past the Adam and Eve, from Pershore Street to bend of Rea, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Ceol Castle and environs.

That's my Brum Fact. Here's my Blog Fact:

Not everything I write here is absolutely true.


I'm tagging Pete Ashton and Dave Metcalfe.

Blurt at the Curate's Egg this Thursday

For the benefit of those who live in and around Birmingham, Al Hutchins and the Courtesy Group are hosting a Curate's Egg night with Blurt at the Hare & Hounds this Thursday. Here's the flyer:



I hadn't heard of Blurt before, but their Wikipedia entry intrigues me:

Blurt's compositions are based around repetitive minimalistic guitar and/or saxophone phrases with relentless, machine-like drum beats, over which Ted Milton orates his lyrics in a variety of "voices" that betray his days as a puppeteer. The overall effect is hypnotising, compelling and sometimes even unsettling.

Blurt have a very strong live reputation due to the extra-ordinary
theatrical talents of Ted Milton.

Blurt's music is featured on the soundtrack of the German movie
"Abendland."

Sounds good to me.


Al should be commended for continuing to offer an alternative to what you'd expect from an alternative music night. If that makes sense. I went to several Curate's Egg nights last year and enjoyed them immensely. One of them (with Damo Suzuki in August) made it into my Top 10 Gigs of 2007 and another one (with Gallon Drunk in November) that probably should have. I wrote about the former here, but never got 'round to writing about the latter, which is a shame as it was bloody fantastic.

When Mr Bill came to Birmingham

My workpal Kuz has a second job working weekends on the front desk of the 4-star Marriott Hotel in Birmingham's city centre. Having a second job seems to be increasingly commonplace in this 21st Century economy. As I'm planning to reacquaint myself with the property ladder later this year I might have to do it myself. Not this week, though. I'm too knackered.

With Hillary Clinton's victory in the New Hampshire primary in the news today, I'm reminded of a Birmingham Marriott-related incident from some years' back involving her illustrious husband Bill. You remember Bill, don't you? He was very charismatic. He left office with a 65% approval rating, which made him America's most-popular outgoing president since the end of World War 2. For some strange and peculiar reason, I don't think the Guinness Book of World Records people will be revising that entry anytime soon.

Anyhow, this was 1998 - long before the Florida Miscount of 2001 - and the Great British City of Birmingham... my city... was hosting the G8 Summit of world leaders. Mr Bill was in attendance, of course, and he proceeded to charm the pants off all the Brummies he met. I can still remember the TV footage: the most powerful man in the world supping warm ale in a pub that overlooked a stretch of canal that had been specially purged of bicycle parts for the event.

He seemed quite comfortable in Birmingham, but in 1998 I imagine he'd have felt quite comfortable anywhere that wasn't in the United States. This, after all, was the year the Lewinsky scandal broke. He was being accused of having an extra-marital affair with an intern, and press, pundits and political enemies were endlessly scrutinising over every sordid detail of his sexual shenanigans. Mr Bill initially denied any wrong doing by famously saying: "I have never had sexual relations with Monica Lewinsky." It later turned out that his definition of sexual relations did not include a certain intimate act that's known in some quarters as a Parisian Mouthwash.

The semantic distinction only came to light after the aforementioned Ms Lewinsky handed over to investigators a famous blue dress. What made the blue dress so famous is that it featured a crusty old stain that later turned out to be fossilised Presidential manjuice. Now I'm no expert on matters of haute couture, but I don't think that look caught on.

I remember being baffled by the whole thing, and I remain so to this day. Being a simple-minded fool, I'd much rather live in a world with a US President who's partial to getting blown off than with a US President whose passionate about blowing things up. But that's just me, and I'm digressing. Let's get back to Birmingham.

For the duration of the G8 Summit, President Bill Clinton and his entourage block-booked the entire Marriott Hotel. Back then it had 5-stars, not 4. And it wasn't called The Marriott. No, it had a name that - in light of his troubles back at home - must have had a certain personal resonance with the visiting Commander in Chief.

It was called The Swallow.

I like to think he saw the funny side of it.

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Brummie of the Year 2007 is....

(Sustained drumroll. Collective gasp of anticipation. Vigorous wrestling with a glitzy-looking envelope.)

...John Tighe, the Landlord of the mighty Spotted Dog pub in Digbeth.

Congratulations to a well-deserving winner. This man has taken a stand against the gentrified hordes, and for that I salute him. You can read about John's valiant efforts at his campaign website. May his commitment to the authentic live music experience continue to upset the delicate sensibilities of irredeemable gobshites and their polite, James Blunt-soundtracked dinner parties.

So say we all.

Commiserations to the runners-up, particularly my good friend and erstwhile gigpimp Pete Ashton. Here's the full results, courtesy of the award's organisers Birmingham It's Not Shit :

Who’s Brummie of The Year 2007?

• Richard Pawley (1%, 10 Votes)
• Condori : Big Chief Busks With Recorder (hats off to the buskers) (2%, 20 Votes)
• Martin Mullaney (2%, 25 Votes)
• Soweto Kinch (4%, 44 Votes)
• Carl Chinn (4%, 48 Votes)
• Catherine O’Flynn (12%, 133 Votes)
• Lisa Meyer & Jenny Moore of Capsule (16%, 186 Votes)
• Pete Ashton (29%, 336 Votes)
  
• John Tighe of The Spotted Dog (31%, 353 Votes)

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Voix pour Pete.

As I mentioned in a previous post, my good friend and erstwhile gig pimp Pete Ashton is in the shortlist for Brummie of the Year. The deadline to vote is midnight tonight, and last time I checked, Pete was in second place.

As I mentioned previously, Pete has tirelessly encouraged, urged and sometimes forcibly coerced the city's artistic community to use the Internet to their best advantage. Pete is a true renaissance man - a world-renowned neurosurgeon, a leading particle physicist, a record-breaking racing car driver and a chart-topping rock star - and many of us feel that his groundbreaking work in cartography has helped put Birmingham on the map

Now, I don't know about you, but I don't think its right that someone with these credentials should end up as number two. It's undignified, and it makes the rest of us look bad.

So - for one last time - I urge you to go here and Vote for Pete.

Yes, you. Don't try to look away. That won't work.