Thoughts, recollections and impressions of a city new to me

  • names and places I’ve never been or heard of
  • Kingsheath or Moseley?
  • Too much shopping
  • beautiful-ugly
  • mistaken for a woman by blokes outside the British Legion pub while walking with Laura
  • what’s the front door you imagine when asked to imagine home?
  • Eagle-tattooed front man: head-crashing, ear-pulsing, knee-jerking, gentle-whispering
  • Looking for Auden and Tolkien in the landscape
  • Recognized by staff of London Midlands trains
  • Wild speculation that the flat beneath us was occupied by Banksy on hide out. Clues: recycled box of New Balance trainers, empty graffiti cans, in and out at odd hours of the night.
  • Berlin or Birmingham? Berlinham
  • Kira O’Reilly lives in Birmingham
  • A beautiful eighteenth century dovecote
  • AE Harris building singing with potential
  • A flat transforming into a home parallel to the establishment of a collection of household items destroyed by guests
  • ‘M.S.’ melted our kettle and burnt the oven gloves
  • Nicholas made soup
  • Inspiration walks
  • And what about my per diems? It all over – It all over!?
  • Stan’s Cafe live in Birmingham
  • Met the occupant of the flat beneath us. He is a graf artist, not Bansky. Disappointed.
  • Baskerville is currently my favorite font
  • Staggering towards the terrifyingly named ‘Bear Grease’ – actually a Wetherspoons called The Pear Tree
  • The coming insurrection
  • ducks and swans cracking ice on the water in front of the MAC
  • a drawing of a giant snowman in the car park
  • “We are now approaching Birmingham New St. our final destination”