Shelf sacrifice

The thing about anywhere you consider ‘home’ is that you never really start considering it that way until it’s not there any more.

Walking into Central Library on its last day I found it devoid of books, mostly partitioned off, infused with dour atmosphere and dotted with cheap furniture. It looked for all the world like a second world abortion clinic. And it felt like being punched in the back of the head.

But even then walking out of the doors—knowing it’ll be the last time—bought a lump to my throat the size of a child’s fist.

Sometimes home is stolen gradually. Changes adding up slowly between each visit until you look around one quiet afternoon and wonder where the fuck you are and who these fucking people are anyway.

Other times you’re standing outside the charred remains of the club that defined your young adult life noticing that even days later the heap that was Edward’s Number 8 is still kicking off heat and smells like Bonfire Night.

Being dyslexic meant that learning to read was difficult. But my mum not only more than prepared me for school, she sparked a love of reading that meant I quickly burnt through the children’s section of the local library. Then, because I was a regular in there, the adult section. So I was allowed on the bus to go to the other local libraries. And when I had inhaled the contents of those, my parents relented to my nagging and allowed me to go to the Central Library.

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So farewell then Central Library…

 So. Farewell
Then
Central Library

John Madin’s ziggurat
You were a huge
Building
With books in.

But that was not
Your only purpose.

You stood for
Ambition and
Birmingham’s ideals.

But you weren’t
Neo-classical.
Or “iconic”,
Apparently.
So the philistines
Pulled you
Down.

Brutal.

 

E J Thribb (40 years into a 100 year lifespan)

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101 Things Birmingham Gave The World. No. 31: Whistleblowing

The Acme Thunderer

If there’s one thing you learn at school, and if the current Education secretary gets his way it many be soon the only thing, it’s this: no one likes a tell tale tit.

Watching The Sweeney, you may have picked up this: nobody likes a grass.

In fact the only positive cultural representation of an informer that is easy to find is Starsky and Hutch’s Huggy Bear: and you can bet that he had to run the gauntlet of hate from the other boss pimps in the area.

So, given that we don’t like people what ‘tell’ how do we make sure that those in the know can reveal terrible problems in institutions without undue opprobrium? Back in the early ‘70s US civic activist Ralph Nader coined the phrase “whistleblower” to avoid the negative whistleblower charges and also negative connotations found in other words such as “snitches”, “grasses” and “bastards”.  He took his cue from the practice of giving a healthy toot on a whistle when there was a problem—be that a referee spotting a running back smacking a quarterback blind-side, offside, in the bastardisation of rugby that the yanks play or the lookout on the Titanic seeing (all too late) a metric shittonne of ice.

Those metallic tooting machines—they came from Birmingham. The whistles on the Titanic were the famous Acme Thunderer, designed by Joseph Hudson’s company who also supply refereeing aids worldwide. Hudson was a farm worker from Derbyshire who moved to the city like so many during the Industrial Revolution, and trained as a toolmaker.

He converted the wash house at the side of his end of back to back home in St Marks Street into a workshop where he made many things to help increase his family’s income. The company are still making a racket to this day—in Hockley.

 

Photo CC Alison Clarke

Sutton Coldfield Sneezing Girl

Sutton Coldfield Sneezing Girl
Picture courtesy ITV and Media Archive for Central England

Talk of a world-record hiccuping girl on BBC News this weekend led David Nash to ask after the Sutton Coldfield sneezing girl of 1979, and the wonderful people at MACE were able to deliver this video footage of Tricia Reay as she set off to France for a miracle cure.

Paradise Circus was pleased to hear that Tricia did eventually stop sneezing, but the sad end to this story is that her Guinness World Record title was lost a few years later to another teenage girl from Pershore – though not before her achievements were celebrated in a bluegrass style song by Roy Castle on a Record Breakers LP (which may not have broken any records itself, but is much fun — more here):

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101 Things Birmingham Gave The World. No. 30: An Inferiority Complex

Under Analysis

Sometimes we all feel like we’re just not worthy of attention: even though we are perfectly fine women, men, and cities. We share the experience of being unable to reach a subconscious, fictional final goal of subjective security and success to compensate for the inferiority feelings. If we’re not careful we may exhibit an inferiority complex.

Stemming from the psychoanalytic branch of psychology the concept of the inferiority complex is one of Sigmund Freud’s. Alfred Adler, founder of classical adlerian psychology, held that many neurotic symptoms could be traced to overcompensation for this feeling—like building big bed-spring style libraries when there is already a perfectly good one for example. Or shovelling visitors between antiseptic hotel and featureless conference centre without letting them see the real city, or stuffing shuttlecocks down our collective pants. But who are we comparing ourselves to? Surely a city as well appointed and industrious should be confident in its place in the world, size may not be everything but we’re carrying a pretty package.

Further analysis reveals the source of all anxiety: in 1890 a professor of physics at Mason Science College (now the University of Birmingham) called  John Henry Poynting calculated the mass of the Earth and forever made us all feel small and insignificant.

Perhaps before that date, Brummies were as annoying overconfident and gobby as cockneys and those from Greater Manchester.

But now we have a lovely line in self depreciation—like good people everywhere—thank Birmingham and Prof Poynting, and thank heaven and earth, for that.

On top of Spaghetti

I woke this morning to a few tweets informing me that today is the 41st birthday of the Gravelly Hill Interchange, better known as Spaghetti Junction. Within these birthday messages lay a joke, a myth about Junction 6 that lies at the heart of many an outsider’s knowledge of Birmingham. This is the myth that traversing Spaghetti is hard. Continue reading “On top of Spaghetti”

101 Things Birmingham Gave The World. No. 29: Slapstick Comedy

battleofthecentury_lh

A number of years ago, during the stag party celebrations for a good friend of mine, I went along to play paintballing. Upon arrival at the centre we discovered that our opponents for the day were a group of men who had evidently been paintballing on several occasions before; they had the correct footwear, warrior-like nicknames for each other, and most worryingly of all: their own guns. They were likely to be more than a match for our disorganised and hungover group of musicians, liberals and wimps. And so it proved.

I was ‘killed’ within 30 seconds of the first game starting, taking a pellet direct to the facemask. My colleagues fared no better. With a mouth full of yellow paint I watched as my buddies died face down in the mud. War is hell.

After three or four games during which we had our arses repeatedly handed to us the safety official accompanying us around the course became exasperated. “Have any of you ever done this before?”, he asked. A single arm was raised, belonging to Richard Loach. Rich was immediately given the job of captain, which he accepted with some reluctance. He began tentatively, dividing the team into attack and defence squads and muttering something or other about tactics. Soon, however, he began warming to the task and eventually grew visibly before our eyes when he started shouting motivational phrases in a highly animated manner, evoking the spirit of Ron Saunders himself. It was stirring stuff, believe me.

As Rich’s speech neared its Henry V climax, and at the very point that we started to believe in ourselves, he shot himself in the foot. Literally.

A split second later the hooter honked for the beginning of the next game and the enemy came over the brow of a hill—finding us collapsed in a heap of weeping laughter. They fired at will.

This moment of pure slapstick will live with me forever and a day, and it just so happens that Richard was merely carrying on what is a long Brummie tradition. Without Birmingham, folks, there would be no slapstick comedy.
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101 Things Birmingham Gave The World. No. 28: Calls being monitored for training purposes

birmingham-press-mail

The last time you had a right row with someone at your bank—like you’d changed address with them but they hadn’t updated the one on your credit card—or you had to sit on hold to an ISP (because they hadn’t properly cancelled the account you had before you moved, and they wouldn’t talk to you as you hadn’t phoned from the number they’d cut off), thank the the city of Birmingham. For without the second city you’d have had to pop into a office to do it.

In 1965 the Birmingham Post and Mail installed the GEC PABX 4 ACD which is the earliest example of  a call centre in the UK—probably to deal with a huge influx of members to the Chipper Club. So, Birmingham gave the World: hold music, pressing ‘2’ to speak to the billing department, recording calls for training purposes (but not so they can remember what they’ve told you) and labyrinthine  telephonic ‘customer service’. Thank you, Birmingham.

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101 Things Birmingham Gave The World. No. 27: Not Admitting Your Mistakes

rubber-eraser

Inventor of fizzy pop Joseph Priestley made other contributions to our society too. On April 15, 1770—not ten years before he would move to Brum—he recorded his discovery of Indian gum’s ability to erase lead pencil marks. He wrote, “I have seen a substance excellently adapted to the purpose of wiping from paper the mark of black lead pencil.” And did so in ink, which pissed him off when he discovered he’d made a cock-up.

Priestley called them ‘rubbers’, and they made their way into the pencil cases of schoolkids: amusing classmates of people called Jon for years to come. It also gave PR people, politicians, capitalists, and other liars a sense that it was okay simply to pretend that you’d done nothing wrong. We love that.

Viva Joey P, and viva his home town (1780-91) of Birmingham.