(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.’

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.

The Destroyers

As yesterday was St Pat's day I spent the evening visiting my Mum. While I was there I caught up with my brother, Rob, who asked me about the fabulously riotous Brum-based band The Destroyers. For Rob's benefit - and anyone else who might be interested - here's their video for Out of Babel:



The Destroyers are a genre-breaking 15 piece group who describe their sound as "Eastern European folk music with a gothic turbo charge." They're a phenomenal live act who seamlessly combine the spirit of The Pogues, a Black Rider-era Tom Waits and The Wedding Present's Ukranian John Peel Sessions to powerful effect.

They are, to use the common parlance, good shit.

11-11-11: Aston Lane

Am 11. November 2008 Clare und ich verbrachten einige Stunden circumnavigating die Stadt von Birmingham auf dem Bus der Nr. 11. Dieses wasn' t unsere Idee, verstehen Sie. Eher war es das Geistesprodukt der Jon Bounds der erstaunlichen Brum-gegründeten Web site Birmingham: It' s Nicht Schit.


Birchfield Library

At about 2.30pm we leave Wellington Road and cross the Perry Barr roundabout on Birchfield Road. Although I'm no stranger to this area, this is an odd approach for me. I regularly drive along the Birchfield Road, but I usually take the underpass that runs beneath the traffic island. Here's a picture of the underpass from when it was under construction in 1961, courtesy of Digital Handsworth:


That's The Old Crown and Cushion pub in the background, which has changed a lot since then. Luckily the underpass has too, otherwise it'd be a bugger to drive through.

One of the advantages of seeing the world from the front seat of the top deck of a number 11 bus is that you get to witness all the juicy street level stuff you'd normally miss while driving through underpasses and along flyovers. That's why I'm surprised to see that the library that used to sit on the corner of Birchfield Road and Aston Lane has now been demolished, and that's why I say out loud (and a bit too loudly): "Where the fuck did that go?"

Someone sitting behind me lets out an audible tut. As we're sitting on the front seat, "someone sitting behind me" hardly narrows it down, so I let it pass.

Maybe I'm too sensitive about these things, but there's something about the sight of a demolished library building that leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Didn't this country once take a moral stand against a cruel and evil regime that was more than a tad partial to burning books? If so, then how can we turn a blind eye and let such wanton acts of anti-intellectualism escalate on our own doorstep? I imagine it's because we're all too busy driving through the underpasses and along the flyovers of life.

Let's just hope that all the books got out in one piece.


Tufnol Factory, Aston Lane

At Aston Lane the bus stops for what seems like seventeen years. As the Wellhead Lane depot is nearby, I assume that the bus has to change drivers, the driver has to take a leak or the leak has to change buses.

I notice an elderly couple get on board. The man is wearing an Edwardian-looking suit, sporting a pair of jam jar glasses and bears an uncanny resemblance to the great Irish writer James Joyce. I can't say whether his companion resembles Joyce's wife and muse Nora Barnacle, but that's only because I can't remember what Nora Barnacle looked like.

Along Aston Lane, on the corner of Wellhead Lane, we pass the Tufnol factory. Tufnol, in case you don't know, is a firm based in Birmingham and Glasgow who have been producing rods, sheets and other laminated plastic products for over 70 years. The reason why I know this is because my Uncle Eddie used to work there. Uncle Eddie was one of my favourite people in the world. He had a sense of humour was as dry as a sand sandwich and he always made sure that my family were never short of rods, sheets and other laminated plastic products. I miss him.

As we pass the Tufnol factory I realise that it's been years' since I last travelled along Aston Lane. That's why I'm quite surprised to see a massive, new 24 hour Tesco Superstore, and that's why I say out loud (and a bit too loudly): "Where the fuck did that come from?"

Someone sitting behind me lets out an audible tut.

I think it might be James Joyce.

The Stand Down Margaret

The funniest thing I read today appeared in an article about 80s Anti-Thatch pop in this month's Uncut:

It's 1980, and The Beat are scheduled to play "Stand Down Margaret" on the early evening kids' TV show, Cheggers Plays Pop.

"We had to get the song on by stealth," laughs lead singer Dave Wakeling. "Our genial old Jamaican saxophonist, Saxa, explained to presenter Keith Chegwin that The Stand Down Margaret was an old Caribbean dance. 'Come now, Cheggers,' he was saying. 'Let me show you how to dance The Stand Down Margaret...' and he invents some ridiculous little dance routine. Then we start playing the song and unzip our jackets and we've all got T-shirts emblazoned with pictures of Maggie Thatcher..."

11-11-11: Crown and Cushion, Perry Barr

Le 11 novembre 2008 Clare et moi avons passé plusieurs heures circumnavigating la ville de Birmingham sur l'autobus du numéro 11. C'était idée de limites de Jon Bounds de 'Birmingham: n'est pas Merde.'


We're still on the number 11 bus, we're still in Perry Barr and we're now passing the Crown and Cushion pub. There's been a Crown and Cushion standing at the corner of Wellington Road and Birchfield Road for as long as I remember, although it hasn't always been this Crown and Cushion.

The current incumbent is a fairly modern-looking, functional affair that, by my somewhat unreliable estimation, was constructed in the late 1980s or possibly even the early-1990s. I wasn't on the number 11 at the time so I didn't take any notes.

It was built on the site of a more traditional looking red brick boozer called, unsurprisingly, The Old Crown and Cushion. As I recall, across the road from what used to be The Old Crown and Cushion was a smaller pub squeezed between a row of shops on Birchfield Road. It was called The New Crown and Cushion.

Now, I'm no expert on pub name etymology, but I think its safe to assume that the New Crown and Cushion was a late arrival on the scene. Being a younger pub, I imagine it was a bit of an upstart fuelled by youthful exuberance and swaggering cockiness, although it probably skipped on the the piss and vinegar for health and safety reasons.

It must have felt a bit annoyed when the Old Crown and Cushion was bulldozed and replaced with a Crown and Cushion that was newer than 'The New Crown and Cushion'. For one thing, it had to change its name.

For some reason this makes me think of Spinal Tap.

11-11-11: St Theresa's Club, Perry Barr

On 11^th November 2008 Clare and I spent several hours circumnavigating the city of Birmingham on the number 11 bus. This wasn't our idea, you understand. Rather, it was the brainchild of Jon Bounds of the marvelous Brum-based website Birmingham: It's Not Shit. You can read about it here.

While some tech-savvy contributors to this social experiment provided a real-time, multi-channel omnifeed of sights, sounds and experiences, I preferred a more 20^th Century approach and instead scribbled down my thoughts in a notepad with the intention of writing it all up on my blog the following day.

This process is taking somewhat longer than I'd anticipated.

At about 2.25pm on the 11th November 2008 the number 11 bus - our number 11 bus - makes its way along Church Lane, past Hamstead Road, up Wellington Road and down Memory Lane.

We're in Perry Barr, now, and - seeing as how I spent many of my formative years living in nearby Kingstanding - this stretch of the route turns out to be pretty damn evocative for me. Many of the buildings we pass seem to resonate with all kinds of personal significance and I soon find myself embarking on an unscheduled detour via the outer circle of my brain. There's no mention of that in the official timetable.

Over there, to the left, is the Holy Roman Catholic parish church of St Theresa's. That gets me thinking about two of my closest friends - both former parishioners - and of gatherings, both happy and sad. Next, to the right, is a garden centre. A dim, nebulous childhood memory flickers and sizzles and struggles to take form. It seems to involve me shopping for shrubbery with my parents on a wet Sunday afternoon in 1981. I decide to let it go.

Then, just a little further along and to the left, I catch a glimpse of a modest-looking building you probably wouldn't notice if you didn't already know it was there. Tucked away just off Wellington Road, behind what used to be a bed warehouse, is St Theresa's Social Club.

St Theresa's Club in Perry Barr used to be one of my family's most regular haunts. It's been more than a decade since I last paid it a visit and, as we pass it now, I find myself sliding into a synaesthetic spiral of sentimentality. Family snapshots cascade through my cortex as I taste the velvety richness of a perfectly-pulled pint of Guinness, smell the aroma of stale cigarette smoke and hear the sound of Irish Music being played with varying degrees of authenticity. The experience is quite overpowering and leaves me feeling a bit like a bad Caffreys ad.

The St Theresa's regulars I got to know were all friends of my parents' who, like my Mum & Dad, were part of that big wave of Irish migrants who arrived in Birmingham during the 1950s and 60s. When I was in my late-teens and early-twenties I shared many a raucous night in their company and - despite the not inconsiderable age gap - they were often more amusing, unpredictable and interesting than many of my peers. Back then, they'd often comment on how much better the place was in the old days, but from my experience of this demographic they'd usually say that about most places. Of course, if I got off the number 11 bus and popped into St Theresa's now I'd probably also comment on how much better it was in the old days. From my experience of my demographic, we say this about most places, too.

But still, I couldn't help but wonder. On many of those raucous nights I'd often find myself imagining what places like St Theresa's club were like in their heyday. As I watched the old black and white photos come to life, it certainly seemed a lot busier. Young men in sharp suits were dancing with young women in fine dresses to the tunes of a visiting showband. Over there I can see my parents and their friends sitting at a table, and they're all looking a damn sight younger than me...

Of course, this was just me romanticising the past. I used to do a lot of that, back when I was sentimental.

For the most part, the Irish of my parents' generation didn't come to Birmingham because of its network of canals or extensive collections of pre-Raphaelite art. They came to Birmingham because they were looking for work. When they first arrived they often lived in cramped bedsits or "digs" in inner city areas like Handsworth, Sparkhill and Sparkbrook, and most were prepared to work hard - and work long hours - doing the jobs many of the 'locals' didn't want to do.

They were, to use the modern parlance, economic migrants.

This, of course, was nothing new: leaving home in search of work has always been hard-wired into the Irish DNA. The irony of having these thoughts while sitting on the top deck of the number 11 bus is not lost on me:

"Occupations such as working on buses and trams were rejected by English workers for the higher wages and appealing shorter working hours enjoyed by their counterparts in factories. One contemporary estimated that in just fourteen months in 1946-7 two-thirds of the 6,000 drivers and conductors in Birmingham had resigned and taken other employment. As was the case in London, the local transport authority recruited directly from independent Ireland, continuing in effect a practice initiated during the war that eventually ceased in 1953. By the early 1950s roughly one-third of the transport authority staff were Irish, many of them women. "

Edna Delaney, The Irish in Post-War Britain p 97

Of course, indigenous populations don't always take kindly to people from other countries "taking their jobs", and the Irish influx was often greeted with distrust and even hostility. The fact that the jobs the migrant workers were 'taking' were the ones that nobody else wanted to do was neither here nor there.

I'm so glad that sort of thing doesn't happen any more.

When the Birmingham Irish of my parents' generation first arrived here they worked hard, lived in often squalid conditions, were separated from their loved ones and were often distrusted and disliked. In this context, then, the Irish church clubs in Birmingham played a fairly significant role. With their regular dances and visiting showbands, places like St Theresa's - as well as those other Patron Saints of the Birmingham Irish like St Chad, St Francis and St Catherine – offered the Birmingham Irish a means to reconnect with their culture, reengage with their community and have a bloody good time. More significantly, though, if it wasn't for places like this then people like me probably wouldn't be here today.

My parents met at a dance at St Chads...

11-11-11: Handsworth

(By way of a recap: on 11th November 2008 Clare & I embarked on a public transport-based Kerouacian Carousel around the City of Birmingham. I'm writing up the journey in a series of urban travelblogs that are insterspersed with low humour and the occasional knob gag. Think Bill Bryson meets the late Reg Varney.)

As we make our way out of Winson Green along Handsworth New Road, onto Boulton Road, across Soho Road and up Rookery Road, I notice ubiquitous fly posters advertising a Public Enemy gig at the Custard Factory in December.


Three things come to mind:

1. I like Public Enemy.
2. I'd very much like to see Public Enemy at the Custard Factory in December.
3. How come I didn't know about this already?
   

I consider saying to Clare in my wheezy, Old Git Tom voice: "Public Enemy, now that was proper hip hop. Chuck D not only articulated the righteous anger of a generation with his incisive, incendiary lyrics and toe-tapping beats, but you could hear every word he was rapping. Not like this modern rubbish you hear on the radio."

I decide to keep my mouth shut after Clare shoots me one of her impeccably-timed If you're going to say what I think you're going to say then you better not say it-looks. I'm not going to risk it: she's been right more times than she's been wrong. Besides, it's never a good idea to mock your older self. You'll only end up resenting yourself later.

But still, I want to know why I didn't know that Public Enemy were playing at the Custard Factory in December. Has this got something to do with the conspicuous lack of fly posters along the route I drive to work? Should I write a letter to the council, or would it be easier to change my travel arrangements?

Maybe, and maybe not. I've got a horrible feeling, though, that there's a lesson to be a learnt from all of this. Worse, it's one of those deeply ironic lessons that I really hate:

Has it taken a journey along Birmingham's Outer Ring Road to make me realise that I'm totally out of the loop?

Nick Horner's article in last week's Great Barr Observer about the virtual reconstruction of Kingstanding's former Odeon cinema will be of interest to those odd critters like me who have a weakness for magnificent old cinema buildings. I don't know what the technical term for this is, but I suppose you could call us necrocinephiles.

Anyhow, I posted about this recently, but in the meantime Nick has since done some proper journalistic legwork and uncovered some additional information. King's Visualisation Lab (KVL) created their VR Odeon Kingstanding in 2003 and their plan was to eventually construct a comprehensive database of virtually reconstructed British cinema buildings. Unfortunately, one of KVL's partners pulled out and the database has been on hold ever since.

According to Martin Blazeby, researcher and 3D modeller at KVL, the design team used eye witness accounts and even visited the art deco cinema-turned-bingo hall to take paint samples: "We found a specific type of green, Odeon green, which had been painted over when the cinema became a bingo venue."

If you happen to be a well-heeled necrocinephile with philanthropic tendencies, then this project needs you. You can contact them via this link.

Here's a couple of pics of the Kingstanding Odeon in its heyday. Firstly, an exterior shot courtesy of English Heritage's John Maltby Collection:



And here's the ornate lobby from Digital Handsworth:

11-11-11: Winson Green

"The road you can talk about is not the road you can walk on."

Lao-Tse - Tao Te Ching

At about 2.10pm the bus is driving through Winson Green.

For the uninitiated, Clare and I are indulging in a spot of guerrilla ethnomethodology aboard Birmingham's legendary number 11 bus. Some youths board the bus and sit behind us. This doesn't concern us, however, as everyone else on the top deck is sitting behind us, too. That's what happens when you sit on the front seat.

Before long, we notice a suspicious, burning odour coming from behind. This isn't the typical, pungent, herb-based burning odour that's commonly associated with philosophy students, jazz aficionados and the top deck of a double decker bus, though. This doesn't smell like anything exotic, illegal or monged. No, it smells like someone is baking a jacket potato.

"Kids nowadays," says Clare.

We're driving through Winson Green, and Winson Green - of course - is best known for its prison. In fact, to most Brummies, 'Winson Green' means prison. In this respect it joins a long list of locations that seem forever lumbered with deep-seated incarceration associations. Notorious places like Strangeways in Manchester, Alcatraz in San Francisco and Portmeirion in Wales.

Which is a bit of shame, really. If you manage to separate the word from its links with the local lock-up, then Winson Green itself is quite a pretty name for a place. It wouldn't seem out of place in Trumptonshire, alongside Camberwick Green and Chigley.

Of course, things like that are always easier said than done. This place and its prison seem to be neuro-linguistically fused in the popular imagination. It'll take more than Zen detachment and baked potatoes to sever those tethers.

The fact the 11 bus drives straight past the prison probably doesn't help.

11-11-11: From Bearwood to Edgbaston

By 2pm we've left Harborne. It happens to us all eventually.

After crossing Hagley Road (home to my old sixth form, St Philip's College), the number 11 saunters wistfully along the Bearwood High Street as another song comes to mind. This time, it's the sublime This is What She's Like from Dexys Midnight Runners' wilfully uncommercial and criminally underrated 1985 album, Don't Stand Me Down:



On the album version of the song, The Little Nibble café on the Bearwood Road gets name checked during some pre-song banter (legend has it that Kevin Rowland and his bandmates used to meet there for tea-dinking sessions). Sadly, The Little Nibble ceased trading in January, Dexys haven't recorded a studio album since Don't Stand Me Down and I've been sitting on the top deck of the number 11 for long enough now to start making connections.

We take a right onto Sandon Road and into Edgbaston, passing the former home of my good friend, the macaroon-chomping friend of Garfield Jez Higgins. I remember going to a barbeque there years' ago. Jez and his goodwyf Nat are vegetarians, so this - understandably enough - was a vegetarian barbecue. Our mutual friend - the talented comic artist and occasional thug, Tony McGee - arrived at this vegetarian event clutching a greasy megaburger in his mitts. I vividly remember him wantonly flaunting his tasty bovine-based snack with scant regard for the feelings of others. At least, I'm pretty certain it was Tony.

I hope it wasn't me.

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 Selly Oak to Harborne

At 1.43pm we cross the Bristol Road and head down Harborne Lane. From the front seat on the top deck of the number 11 bus you get a great view of the still-under-construction new Queen Elizabeth Hospital. The futuristic, super sleek tri tower structure already looks so impressive you could be forgiven for thinking that the builders cut corners and used CGI.

Light dazzles my eyes, and I automatically reach up to pull down my sun visor. I remember that I'm in a bus and not a car, and realise that I now look like an idiot or, more worryingly, a Nazi sympathiser. Not that there's any difference, of course. I wonder if the new hospital will find a cure for stupidity?

By 1.50pm we're in Harborne. I look out for my brother whose doing some carpentry wrork in the area. I scan the suburban streets for him and his big-ass silver van, but to no avail. If you want quality carpentry work done at a competitive price, you can find his website here.

Tell him the idiot on the number 11 sent you.

11-11-11: From Cotteridge to Bournville

Two days later and so far I've only covered the first two miles. Typical.

We pass a fancy dress store in Cotteridge, where a plastic mannequin catches Clare's eye. A potential Christmas present? 'No,' says Clare, emphatically.

We hook a right onto Watford Road and pass a shop called Vis a Vis. "So that's what David Brent did next," muses Clare. I respond with a good natured 'Heh.' In truth, I only actually get the comment once we reach Bearwood. Boost bars really slow down the speed of my basic cognitive functions.

We're heading down Linden Road, now, and passing leafy Bournville. A line from an old Elvis Costello song springs to mind:

In Chocolate Town all the trains are painted brown
On the silver paper of the wrapper

At least it wasn't Phil Collins' In The Air Tonight.

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.

11-11-11: Kings Heath departure lounge

Be warned: the following contains personal minutiae that might be deemed offensive or, possibly, inconsequential.

At about 12.45pm (-ish) Clare and I grab a bite to eat at the Wetherspoon's pub in Kings Heath. We swap Brum pub war stories, including my elaborate and unproven theory that the decline in the standard of the clientele at a certain city centre branch of a certain national pub chain was not unrelated to the filling-in of a nearby wino-infested traffic island subway. The food was tasty.



Clare decides that we should grab a pair of Boost chocolate bars from a nearby newsagent. At the checkout we're advised that Boost bars are part of a three-for-the-price-of-two offer. We leave the shop with three Boost bars. Clare scribbles note in my notepad: "3 for £1.09 on Boost Choc Bars - WHAT CREDIT CRUNCH??"



If you find anything in that last paragraph at all interesting you should be ashamed. I am.



At the 11C bus stop on Vicarage Road we see a man who bears a remarkable facial resemblance to the infamous Dr Harold Shipman. He walks past a clinic. We shiver.



Clare scribbles the following faux tabloid headlines in my notepad:

"Doctor Death Alive and Well - Walks Past Birmingham Clinic"

This is followed by:

"Woman in Large Hat or Small Head Mystery"

"Schoolboy Smokes Whilst Wearing Last Season's Trousers - 'Can Mother's Not Afford New Clothes?' Shocker"

'Teenage Parent Hides Complete Bus Stop in Pram WHILST SMOKING"

I don't think Clare is taking this seriously. Either that, or she's trying to get me to quit smoking. To be on the safe side I don't light up.



At 1.25 the bus arrives.

11-11-11: The Introduction

I said I'd do it and today I did. I took part in Jon Bounds' mad-but-inspired plan to spend eleven hours of the eleventh day of the eleventh month on Birmingham's number eleven bus. Much to my surprise, my significantly better half Clare decided to tag along, too. She enriched the day significantly by keeping me company, feeding me chocolate and providing a steady stream of comedy-rich comments and generous slices of fried gold observations. She really is much funnier than me and I have every intention to plagiarise her aplenty over the the coming posts. My people-watching partner in crime has already informed me that I'll be hearing from her lawyers.

We didn't manage the full eleven hours - there was the small matter of having to pick the Littlest Raindog up from Mandy the childminder - but we did complete a full 27 mile, bus-based circuit of the city. We boarded the 11C on Vicarage Road in King Heath at about 1.25pm and it brought us, by Joyce's commodious vicus of recirculation, back to Kings Heath and Environs about two-and-a-half hours later.

I thought of doing some kind of live blogging (a first for me), and even started setting up a Twitter account before we set off. Clare, however, took one look at my 4 year-old mobile phone and laughed. She's much more tech savvy than me.

In the end, I made copious notes in a notepad while Clare took some photos. I've yet to decide on how to structure this cavalcade of scribbles. Should I do it chronologically? Shall I do it thematically? Shall I just make it up as I go along? That's always worked in the past.

I am, as I have said elsewhere, an analogue man living in a digital world.