Monthly Archives: March 2009

0121 in the aria

If you, like me, have trouble remembering which shopping centre is the Pavilions and which one the Palisades then wait till Easter Saturday (11th April) and you will be able to distinguish them because one (the Pavilions) will be stuffed to its gills with cast and others from the Birmingham Opera Company’s production of Othello. Tenor Ronald Samm (Othello) and soprano Stephanie Corley (Desdemona) will be joined by bass Keel Watson (Iago) to perform bits, while Artistic Director Graham Vick will be on hand with his team including choreographer Ron Howell, R&B star Genevieve Sylva (Black Voices) and Chorus Master Jonathan Laird to offer a series of practical workshops for shoppers to have a go. Full details and schedule are on the BCO’s website (yay).

Listen again to the this week’s The Big Paws, including: a rude joke about butter, sweary news, and the brass section:

Press the Jenson button now

Old news, it seems, but just stumbled upon this promo for City TV Birmingham featuring top DJ ‘Kid’ Jenson.

The godlike geniuses Douglas Adams and John Lloyd invented a thing called ‘The Meaning of Liff’ it was one book, then an expanded edition all containing ah, well I’ll let them tell you: “In Life, there are many hundreds of common experiences, feelings, situations and even objects which we all know and recognize, but for which no words exist. On the other hand, the world is littererd with thousands of spare words which spend their time doing nothing but loafing about on signposts pointing at places. Our job, as wee see it, is to get these words down off the signposts and into the mouths of babes and sucklings and so on, where they can start earning their keep in everyday conversation and make a more positive contribution to society.” That’s great and contains such gems as: DROITWICH (n.) A street dance. The two partners approach from opposite directions and try politely to get out of each other’s way. They step to the left, step to the right, apologise, step to the left again, apologise again, bump into each other and repeat as often as unnecessary. But, Birmingham isn’t well featured (Edgbaston is defined I think, but not much...

Last Sunday was cold. And wet. And windy. It was also the day of the Birmingham Flickr meet up. There was a surprisingly good turn out considering the elements. I guess photographers are a hardy breed ;) If you would like to join the Brum Flickr Group, click here and sign up. The group meets up once a month and ventures to different parts of the city. I took a wander around Brindly Place. Unsurprisingly, given the weather, the outside dining areas were deserted. If you have been following my Birmingham at 4am project you will know that I really like empty spaces in the busy city, so I had to stop and capture the image. If you would like to see more of my pictures and find out about my latest projects, please visit my blog. See you next Friday!

Flatpack Blog

Eleanor McKeown from Electric Sheep, a quarterly cinema magazine published from London, is blogging loads of Flatpack stuff. Seeing Brum from the outsider's point of view too, it's a really good read. She's even staying at the back-to-backs.

Chico Hamilton that is. Intelligent football magazine When Saturday Comes prints in each issue a photo or selection of photos about football past. This month it was the turn of old villa club photographer Terry Wier. One of his shots is this, of a proud Chico outside his obligatory boutique (excuse the line, this one is scanned from across the fold). Where was this fabulous shop? Something tells me it’s in a High Street somewhere rather than being slap in the centre of town — but do you know where? A load of Terry’s photos were collected into a book, called The Weir and the Wonderful (it’s still available, but not cheap).

So, the big city plan has been a stunt for comic relief? Lenny Henry has been playing Mike Whitby all along. Seriously, happy red nose day to Peter Schmeical and the rest of the fundraisers.

Earth Hour is 8:30PM Saturday 28 March 2009 and is an environmental awareness event run by the WWF and the Air Raid Warden out of Dad’s Army. The idea is that everyone turns their lights off for an hour to show support for action on climate change, 930 cities and towns in 80 countries have signed up and Birmingham is one of them. Unlike Sydney which is having a giant concert, Birmingham doesn’t seem to be doing anything — in fact I hear that it’s not even sure that the council will be able to turn any lights off. Uploaded with plasq‘s Skitch! It’d be a bit sad if the combined brains of brum couldn’t do anything at all tho’, and James Rock has set up a Facebook group, please join and help organise.

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Monthly Archives: March 2009

0121 in the aria

The Big Paws Listen Again 14/03/09

Press the Jenson button now

The Meaning Of Briff

Friday Photo By Karen Strunks

Flatpack Blog

It’s Chico Time

Big City Relief

Turn that light out

@onBirmingham – Breaking Brum News on Twitter