February 12th – Really getting back into the swing now, but tiredness is a big issue, it has to be said.
Up at stupid o’clock to get a train to Leicester, not many were around New Street Station when I arrived before the commuting day was really kicking off.
I like this place empty, it’s atmospheric and oddly beautiful.
All I needed now was a train…
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January 13th – Spring ended with a bump. Leaving a meeting in Birmingham late afternoon it was wet, windy and cold.
On a deserted platform at New Street I waited for a train home. The service seems to have improved a little. It was only five minutes late. And mercifully warm. Praise the lord.
I was half expecting to be buttonholed by West Midlands Mayor Andy Street on the train on the way home, explaining how hard he’d worked to sort the trains out and how I should therefore vote for him.
Thankfully, I wasn’t harassed by Brum’s very own Charles Hawtrey tribute, but it did take a while to get back. As I stood with my bike on the train, gently and rhythmically rattling over miles of steel through the January night, I felt down that there were still weeks of wet, cld and dark commutes like this still ahead.
But they will end, the light will always creep through. The steel, light and shine of New Street by night will once more be a rare treat, and not the trap it seemed like this evening.
Tonight it just looked frighteningly inevitable.
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December 19th – Grand Central has always been a piss-poor, cliched name for an overblown shopping mall.
But I do wonder if America is littered with similar malls called ‘Duddeston’, ‘Northfield’ and ‘Bangham Pit’?
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December 19th – I took a longer visit to the Frankfurt Christmas Market in Birmingham, and had a great hour two pottering around. The relaxed midweek bible allowed me to visit Centenary Square and me and my companion explored long exposure and the Birmingham Eye.
As ever, the light, the atmosphere and weather combined, and it was a great evening.
Just one question: Will they ever finish Paradise Forum?
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December 18th – On the way to an important breakfast meeting in Brum’s Business District, 7:30am. Half way up Moor Street Queensway, one of my brake pads disintegrates in use.
I had thought the calliper had burst, but luckily, the pad just delaminated.
Nothing for it but to effect a running repair – in rubber gloves on the central reservation. In the rain.
The view was good, though.
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December 6th – Every year I swear will be my last visit to Birmingham’s annual Frankfurt German Market. After catching an almost identical one in Leeds in 2018, I’d concluded that these things were just a concoction for tourists selling all the same tat every year.
However, whenever I’m presented with the reality – the smell of food, the noise, the colour and spectacle – my heart melts and I really enjoy a potter around. I’ve found the best time to go is at night, midweek: Busy enough to be fun, calm enough to be tolerable.
I never buy much – save for the obligatory meaty and sweet treats – but I enjoy the frenetic beauty of it.
I must say, the people who lit it and New Street this year did a cracking job.
Merry Christmas Birmingham!
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November 28th – For once, the trains weren’t too bad. It was, of course, still a rain-sodden day and I was tired and wanting to be home.
I stood and waited and took three shots of what I could see: The exaggerated perspective and vanishing points – the people, crowding tensely but oddly patient – the train, engorging with people wanting to be home like me – the sleek, dripping machines waiting peacefully beneath their feast of wire.
New Street Station is still, and probably always be a conundrum to me. I both adore it, and loathe it. It’s like a bad mother to me: It may be all kinds of wrong, but it’s still mine.
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November 12th – A terrible day commuting to and from a job in Birmingham. It was wet, cold and the trains were very, very broken. Waiting more than an hour for a train out of Birmingham to get home, it was nearly eight before I got in.
New Street still retains it’s machine-like beauty at night, even when every light you see is red; but good lord, it’s frustrating.
The suck this year seems even worse; not only is it in the traffic and on the darkened roads, but the trains are bad, too.
I’ll be glad when Christmas comes, if I’m honest.
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November 8th – Spotted on a rather new-looking Raleigh ladies step-trough bike on the train on the way to Birmingham in the morning. A curious spring fitted between the downtime and rear of the fork crown.
I’ve never noticed this before. It seems an odd idea and I had no idea of the function, other than perhaps to modulate the handling to compensate perhaps for poor frame design.
A bright friend came to my aid – it’s actually a very weak spring to serve a somewhat unusual purpose. The bike has a kickstand fitted. The spring merely stops the forks flipping around when using the stand, keeping it upright.
A strange idea, but I would imagine quite effective.
You learn something new every day.
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October 8th – Returning from Birmingham, caught suddenly in a shower on the platform at New Street Station, I was fascinated by the darkening of the sky, then the light catching the buildings as the end was in sight.
In all the mad, frenetic urban landscape, I love the power it still maintains to capture the light beautifully.
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