Artsfest and canals

In my attempt to find cultural things to do and ‘must see’ places in and around Brum while I’m here I thought that a trip to the Tourist Information Centre was in order and along with a pile of flyers about historical sites and art galleries I picked up a booklet about the annual Artsfest.

So, a couple of weekends ago was Birmingham’s annual Artsfest weekend, a city wide free arts festival showcasing some of the known and not so well known talent and crafts of the West Midlands area, and I thought it would be a really good opportunity to do something different and cheaply (always good!)  and perhaps learn a little more about this place I now call home.

We started the weekend off in a ‘Spoonies pub with my former housemate, his brother, his friend ‘Q’ and the missus. We got left protecting the drink of a drunken old man who disappeared to the toilet and was never seen again (I was actually a little worried). We then headed down to newuni’s union (or guild as I’m going to have to get used to calling it!) for the Birmingham Beer Festival. It was very much enjoyed and lots of interesting beers were drunk and accompanying music heard.

The next day the missus and I headed into the city centre, wandering around the craft market on New Street and in the City Hall – I can’t say I was all that impressed.  We went to look at the exhibitions to commemorate Matthew Boulton (a Birmingham based entrepreneur of the Industrial Revolution) which was very interest (particularly the maps showing Birmingham city centre pre-industrialisation) apart from the masses of silverware which I can’t say appealed!  After that we went to a play called “Why is John Lennon Wearing a Skirt?” at the Library Theatre. It was an excellently presented exploration and observation of gender stereotypes, adolescent culture and the liberation movement. It beautifully combined humour with some very striking narrative and appropriate music. The narrator (“John” – though which actress played each of the roles rotated through the whole cast during the play – which was a little confusing at times) is looking back over her life and her friendships, particularly discussing her aversions to skirts and all things feminine – while her friends embraced such things, chasing after the attentions of boys, wearing make up etc. ”John” tries to stand her ground. “John” does not dislike being a woman as such and does not dislike men (an attitude she encounters during a visit to a women’s liberation meeting), but merely doesn’t like the things which are impressed on girls as the normal thing to do: why can’t she wear trousers and be successful? Why can’t she play football with the boys? The only downside was a rather abrupt end and I also couldn’t tell whether this was supposed to be a “coming out” story or an exploration of gender stereotypes by the end – but at the end of the day it was a most enjoyable way to spend a couple of hours, particularly for free.  We then headed back to the aforementioned beer festival to finish off the tokens we had left over.

Sunday – we wandered up to the Jewellery Quarter to visit the new Stan’s Cafe exhibition, Giant Steps. Despite this being aimed at families, we throughly enjoyed following the footprints of the fairytale stories (mainly Jack and the Beanstalk, but also integrating other tales off that one) and interpreting the story that the foot prints told – I was very impressed actually. There is something impressive about the ability of an individual to understand and tell a story despite there being no words given, this allows all to be included, all interpretations of the story to be valid and -although there was some level of guidance – a lot of freedom allowed in the story. Once we’d gone round the story (twice!) we wandered along the canal, along the Filey Flight to the canal roundabout at Brindley Place before heading up for a drink at the Mailbox.

So all in all a fantastic exploring weekend, and a nice introduction to this fair city.

Church

For the last year or so I have taken a sabbatical from church.

I was starting to feel disillusioned by going to church at the time, mainly because due to my busyness at weekends I only attended church when I was on ‘duty’ – either as a steward, student worker or in some other capacity. My other ‘church’ has for a long time been the student society I attended when I was a student at Sheffield, but partly due to the nature of my job at the time and due to not being a student I didn’t feel my place was there either. That along with a fairly nasty bible study made me make my decision to leave church behind. 

Having never really been without a church, this was at first a scary thought, but then became a liberating experience.  During the time I’ve had off, I’ve reflected on my faith journey – where I’ve been, where I’m at, and where I think I’m going. 

At the time I walked away from church, I spoke to a colleague at work about the fact that I was very clear about what I don’t believe but I’d like to know what I do believe too, and it was difficult to be part of an establishment which didn’t necessarily address either of these areas of concern – in fact in some ways (particularly during the bible study mentioned above) it highlighted that the loudest voices were the ones preaching the things I most definitely didn’t believe in.  I’ve regularly attended the weekly university service (with said colleague) which has been beneficial in stopping me being completely disillusioned with it all, but other than that I’ve only occasionally been to church (mainly because the missus is preaching!)

Anyway, with my move to Brum it seems a sensible point to start exploring going back to church again at least it some form or another.

So since making that decision I’ve had the experience of 2 church services. One was the christening of my former uni chaplain’s daughter at the local Methodist church. Now christenings are never a very good indicator of a church because 1) no one knows who is the baptism party and who is a regular so no one talks to anyone and 2) the service (even when the parents are both clergy) rarely gets any deeper than ‘woo, we have a new member of the Christian family’.   In fairness, it wasn’t that bad and when I explained to the minister as I was leaving that I’d just moved into the area she did say ‘welcome’ – though I couldn’t say whether that was an invitation to return or not.

Unfortunately I may never want to go into a church again as the second service I’ve been to was this, which the missus does justice in describing at her blog. She probably wasn’t as harsh as I could have been. The service made me despair that this is potentially what I’m getting back in to – in fact it made me want to hurt myself or someone else (the preacher)…it was so bad that I’m imagining God was probably despairing too and is also thinking a sabbatical from church might not be a bad idea (well at least that one!)

Note to Self:

Don’t start a new blog just before loosing internet connection!

Ah well, it’s up and running now so hopefully so will this…

Exploring the 11

So this weekend we decided to do some exploring to help me get an idea of the new city in which I live. We decided that given I had a sparkly new bus pass that it would be worth using the bus routes to get a better idea.

The explore started with a visit to a possible new church – which I think will have a post all to itself.

After leaving the service we headed along the main road in the area which I live, and managed to get ourselves attached to a drunken homeless man with a sob story for 20 minutes on the street corner!  Once we managed to extricate ourselves from him we headed over to the ‘world renowned’ bus route 11 (Outer Circle) – according to a sign half way round it’s the longest bus route in Europe.

NC had been to a talk about the route at Greenbelt, but she wasn’t all that impressed and said that the route was far better than the speaker made out.

We hopped on the bus and headed south, down the east side of the outer ring. I clutched my a-z in an attempt to work out where we were. We motored through suburbia, passed a chinese restarant called “Buffet Island”, then over the canal and through a number of industrial estates, big (rundown) shopping areas and housing estates.  Birmingham in it’s appearance is so very different to that of Sheffield, although both were industrial towns they seem to have a very different ‘industrial’ feel.

Anyway, NC realised that were were probably able to jump off the 11 to go and eat at our favourite veggie Indian restaurant, so we did and enjoyed an absolute feast.

We wandered back to the 11 route to discover we’d just missed the bus, so we walked the not too far distance to Sarehole Mill which is on the edge of a country park and (more importantly) part of the J.R.R. Tolkien trail – it is thought that he based The Shire in the Lord of the Rings books on the area. So we nosed around the museum and I declared I would have liked to have been a Miller or a Miller’s wife – mainly because the Millpond was so lovely and there was a vegetable patch on the edge of it (actually, I’m not sure that has anything to do with being a miller really!)

We then got back to the bus stop, this time we were on time but the bus was not (apparently a rather common occurance on this bus route). So we waited and I got unnerved by the noise of the rotating advert board on the side of the bus stop, so was quite delighted when the bus finally arrived.

Now we had the good intention of going to the Mosley Folk Festival which was happening but the 11 doesn’t go through Mosley and so I decided that we’d just stick to the bus route this time (which is very unlike me – but we didn’t have tickets and I was getting tired having eaten that much curry!). So we continued around the 11 route, along the bottom of Birmingham, passing through Bournville (where the Cadbury factory is) and then heading North up the West side of the outer ring, passing through Selly Oak (Birmingham University) and the big hospitals. We got off the bus for a drink in Harbourne, which is about half way up the western part of the 11. We decided that given the time we wouldn’t finish the full circle and headed straight into the centre and then home – but we will complete the 11 and hopefully the Tolkien Trail too.

Life update: Landing…

I’m going to write – what I’m going to call – life updates from time to time: they will usually be incredibly un-blogworthy but it’s helpful for me to write them…

So I’ve finally arrived in Birmingham after about a year and a half of trying!

Without too much hassle or parental arguments, I got all my stuff from Sheffield to my new flat. It really is a lovely flat and I’m so pleased to have found it. It’s light and quiet and surrounded by green and it’s mine and mine alone. These things are all good.

I have a student bus pass now and an a-z (purchased in Sheffield because none of the bookshops in the Bullring in Birmingham had such a thing!), I’m partially registered for my course (just need to upload a picture and actually turn up to my enrollment meeting) so I’m rapidly ticking things off my list.

Unfortunately trying to organise and sort things like broadband and phone are incredibly stressful to me (for some unknown reason) so that is going more slowly – though BT were helpful in getting the phone sorted yesterday.

Just need to work out who to get internet from as I can’t keep hiding at the missus’s residence all the time!