Btown1 - Brum

I spent all Saturday planning where I was going to go, homing in on one particular city.  That's right BIRMINGHAM.

I have never really gotten to know it and it had several things in its favour this weekend - a Social Meetup at a (very poncey location in the new canal area).  A house, from  GreeningBrum.org.uk which had an open day, with unadvertised tasty cakes.  There were NO bike hire facilities anywhere in the city on the weekend (huh?), which meant I would have to RUN everywhere.  Hmm :-)) The sun was shining.  The Rea Trail along the river looked appetising.  And it began with a B.

Bus No 5 was scary.  A smoking youngster upstairs and loud music playing at the back from Sizzla: "Badman don't apologize to no batty-boy If yuh dis' Black Woman,then mih gun will shot yuh boy".  I've got it on MP3 (now) if anyone would like it?

Cheap Dive Hotel, can allegedly be found in Edgbaston!  On freshly cleared ashtrays (notice how nice that sounds): 'One of us stinks Room, and I don't think it's me'.  I was happy to lay my head somewhere rough and different.  Stuck to rice, from the great Indian round the corner, as stomach still unsettled.  Happily sent emails and drew trees concerning the Crees family, who'd lately got in touch, and had lived in Brum too for added synergies.

The House - is waiting to be named Britain's first zero-carbon home.  I had just finished reading Scared to Death by Christopher Booker and Richard North which thoroughly dispenses with the whole 'global warming' myth.  During the talk with over 100 people present, on the beautiful trodden red clay (carbon-neutral) floor, I could hear myself preparing awkward questions to ask, so I chewed on my cheeks and crossed both legs together, biting my shirt on occasions.

Greening Brum - Brum stuns.  Brum shuns dumb thuds - buds up to new fronts.  I was massively enamoured with the ragwort/graffiti combination and playing fields which abutted private dwellinghouse appurtenances in unashamed ways.  I would have liked a Birmingham childhood, particularly if I'd had a football as a friend.  Hats off to Miss Louisa Hilton (TBC) for her topnotch park.  It had rained like hell but everyone was out nonetheless.

Other stuff done - the Back to Backs museum in Hurst Street.  The gay scene in Hurst Street (let's go round again.  Seemed friendly enough if mindless but non-scene seemed the way forward here.)  Skipped - the meetup in Posh Dock.  I creepily snuck round the side of the restaurant and took a good look at the serried rows of punters and decided that a long night in with the bedbugs sounded more preferable.

Sunday.  I ran round the brilliant Edgbaston Reservoir and up the Balsall Heath Road, a type of soap? with its harsh and heavy sunshine doing nice things to the long redbricked side streets.  Before going Back to Back and Up the Rea and through graffiti/ragwort canal lusciousness.  I finished up with a cuppa something in Gloria Jean's Coffee place in the Bullring.  I think it's meant to be shaped like a coffee bean and it's a gem.

And back on the train to London, at some expense probably.  But I wanted to play badminton at Sobell Centre on Saturday first innit.  (So no time for long slow coach.)  Yay for Brum!