Tag: Birmingham

March 12th – Since I’d had to miss the bike jumble last week, and spring always starts with a ride into Birmingham on the canals and cycleways, I took a gentle ride into the city via Sutton Park and the Witton Lakes cycleway, returning via NCN 5 through the Galton and Sandwell Valleys. 

It was warm, still and the journey was as full of surprise and delight as ever it is. Everything form the ladybirds to the urban cats is awakening, and I see Bill Drummond is still communicating with Birmingham via the patch of light under Spaghetti Junction.

A good start to spring.

March 3rd – Birmingham, late afternoon. I’d finished for the day and needed to get a few errands done, and while I was about it, check out the slow death of Birmingham’s affair with architectural Brutalism.

This grey, colourless day was the perfect day to survey the wounds being inflicted on the skyline by the cranes, breakers and cutters currently removing Madin’s Central Library and 103, Colmore Row. The demolitions are fascinating, dramatic, conflicting. On the side of the library, soon to disappear, the mural proclaims ‘Todos eat posible’ – all is possible. Survival for that mural isn’t, but change is a certainty.

Until dusk, colour only existed in bright demolition machinery and the hi-vis of the wonderfully nonchalant crane driver; but dusk brought the lights and glimpses of the other Birmingham.

I don’t know what I feel. Uneasy probably applies best.

January 27th – Awful day. Horrible commute in rain and a headwind, loads to do then I had to nip into Birmingham. Coming back, New Street was rammed, the train back was awful and I just wanted to be home.

The top photo really illustrates the hogwash on ‘Grand Central’ – or the ‘remodelled’ New Street. The platforms are still cramped. It’s still very, very dark down there. The new cladding only covers bits that can be seen from the street. And nothing has been done to alleviate the terrible train congestion that dogs the station.

Climbing off at Walsall, I was expecting a following wind, which didn’t show up. But Walsall Station, splendid in it’s isolation, was as haunting as ever.

Those Late Night Feelings again.

December 16th – New Street, mid morning. These are not photos of the station pre-upgrade, but afterwards. Some of it may be improved later, but nothing shows the  shallowness of the turd-polish this project really was than this view; just a little away from a main route through the station, bare 60s concrete, dirty 80s cladding and ugly, dark structures. 

New Street looks stunning in press photos from the concourse, and from the streets nearby; but use it and you soon realise that the Emperor has no clothes and the station is still failing, still unpleasant and still unfit for purpose.

You can’t polish a turd, as the saying goes, but they have rolled this one in glitter.

November 30th – New Street again, but early morning feelings rather than late night ones. Seven in the morning, steady rain, not yet clear of the night before.

Something about the light, machinery, wet urban surfaces, overhead wires and signals spoke quietly of urban strength, reassurance, safety, control. Alpha Tower in the distance stood as a fixing to location.

My feelings towards this place are ambivalent these days. But this morning, on the darkest and most miserable of days, something beautiful happened and it took my breath away.

It’s what Birmingham does, and I suspect has always done.

November 27th – Passing through New Street mid day, I was again struck by the contrast between the media hype of a reborn station, and the grim, badly maintained reality of the place itself. Those brick arches are probably the oldest remainder of the original station, and it wouldn’t surprise me were they to be Victorian. They should be made a feature, but they are decaying, stained and lie mostly unnoticed. Even some of the lights above them have given up.

Closer to the central area of the same platform, a gap in the above-platform construction lets the rain and wind howl in, concentrated and focussed by the angles and surfaces. No shiny cladding here, as it’s not outward facing. Just original 60s concrete and cheap white cladding.

A notice on the platform says ‘Mind the gap’ – the credibility gap is more hazardous.

November 13th – Snatched evening shots in a busy city. Birmingham is still curiously beautiful at night, and I do still love it so. Just gearing up for the Christmas rush, it was frenetic, but not yet frantic.

There’s much to love in the urban night.

November 13th – The bicycles of Brum are becoming more and more diverse. In the city for an afternoon, there were a variety of beaters, bike shaped objects, fixes, singles and other steeds clearly with the primary purpose of utility.

The KTM city bike was interesting, with one of the most ingenious frame locks I’ve ever seen, but the ladies Raleigh was nice too, showing some interesting design. Bit concerned about the interaction between the rear wheel and back brake cable though.

The ladies BSO with broken front brake parked without a lock was scary too – and the brake disc equipped front wheel with no callipers on the bike told it’s own story.

That red fixie was someone’s pride and joy, too.

November 5th – Off to Telford, and another wet, warm commute. That wonderful autumn has come to a very soggy, miserable end. I stood on New Street watching the people, signals and trains as the drizzle softened the light. I must have spent hundreds of hours waiting here over the years. This station is in my blood like the traffic fumes and air of the city, and although I hate the state of it, and what’s been done to it, I still love the place.

I find as I get older my relationship with urban spaces is getting more and more complicated. These are still my places, but I feel much more ambivalent about them now. I’m not sure I like it.