Paradise Circus

Sutton Coldfield Sneezing Girl

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):

Continue reading “Sutton Coldfield Sneezing Girl”

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

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

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.
Continue reading “101 Things Birmingham Gave The World. No. 29: Slapstick Comedy”

101 Things Birmingham Gave The World. No. 28: Calls being monitored for training purposes

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.

Continue reading “101 Things Birmingham Gave The World. No. 28: Calls being monitored for training purposes”

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

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.

Get the Bus

Three don’t come along all at once, we’re never late, we’re never early. We never stop, we pause but we don’t stop. It’s cheaper that way, most repairs can be completed without stopping – dangerous but better than the alternative.

You could automate this, but what’s the point? A job’s a job. There are so few about, that even one that involves hanging off the back of a moving bus isn’t something you can turn down. There’s something stuck around the back driver’s-side wheel, wait for a nice straight bit of road and get out there. I strain from a sweaty chrome handle, one foot jammed against a vent and I can see something flap round. Like some filthy brown bird, it wheezes and waits for its chance then coils and springs round again. I’ve got to catch it before it disappears and dislodge it, set its carcass free.

I grab, miss, grab, miss. It’s getting wound more and more round the axle. If we have to stop, lose time, then we’ll be late and lateness isn’t an option.

Stretching, last chance, push harder away from the bus, swing almost.
Continue reading “Get the Bus”

Drink in the Sun

Life in the sun just feels better. I think there is a strong case that the notion of the Judeo-Christian God always watching over us is just a bastardisation of the visceral good feeling of being in the warm summer sun.

So the sun is shining and everybody in England runs outside as naked as they can get away with, to drink as much free vitamin D through their dappled, pasty, flesh as they can. And I’m alright with this.

I’m outside my favourite pub in Birmingham: canal side, listening to the geese honk up to the balcony for scraps and fag butts to be thrown down, presumably to eat. This is Birmingham and finding out that our waterfowl need nicotine patches wouldn’t surprise me.

I’ve always loved this place, even during the brief period when me and my friends were so barred the staff would phone the police if we even walked past.

But time be time, and now I’m free to watch the sun slink behind the overpriced apartment blocks, drink my beer, and silently pray to the uncaring fiery god for one of the cyclists or joggers to hit a stone and fall into the canal.

King Kong, Sex and The Americas

Discovery is subjective.

When Europeans discovered the Americas, they didn’t let indigenous races spoil their narrative: that continent was discovered and it would stay discovered, damn it.

They say that every generation of teenagers thinks it’s invented sex. The moment we become sexually active we reinvent the wheel (you ever tried it? I’d advise you stretch first) and simultaneously project our parents into a sexless hinterland (a bit like Telford, where fittingly Philip Larkin worked), denying them a sexual history despite being embodied evidence of it.

Brummies have an Americas: it’s the King Kong statue, a monument forever being discovered.

Continue reading “King Kong, Sex and The Americas”

Waiting Room – Tips for sleeping on New Street Station

I didn’t really visit New Street Station very much as a kid. For a start we didn’t go into town that often, and when we did the train was very much more expensive than the bus. The buses, at least for a time, were 2p to anywhere*. There were lots of muggings on the trains in those days and they were very much grottier than the buses. I can still smell the mixture of piss and ripped seat foam that permeated the Walsall to Birmingham line. I don’t think many of my generation have ever got back into using the local trains. New Street Station became a place for longer trips—one I’d still get the bus to get to from Great Barr.

The odd day trip, most memorably to an all-but closed Llandudno—”Change at Crewe” the guard bellowed as we got on the wrong train back—and then as I got older travel to gigs, friends and festivals all over the country. The staff were always helpful, even if the place was dark and the WH Smith’s was expensive. On my first visit to the Glastonbury festival, my two mates and I queued up at the ticket office with not a single clue between us where the place was, nor the train station we’d need to get to. They found out, gave us tickets, and charged us about 30 quid. A lot for the pleasure of standing up all the way there and back but some things don’t change. Except of course all the money now goes to Richard Branson.

For a while I’d feel a lift of spirits as I descended the escalators from the Bull Ring. And along with that a desire to touch the advert for whatever local radio station was pushing its dire breakfast show as footballers do leaving the tunnel at Anfield. Now I live in another town it’s just a point on route. But let me tell you about the time I kipped overnight at New Street.

Continue reading “Waiting Room – Tips for sleeping on New Street Station”