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Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery have just come into some money, £300,000, and they’re going to use it to create a gallery showing Birmingham’s history from medieval times to the present day. I’m sure we used to have something a bit like this (a local history room anyway).
But anyway — apart from getting some of the industrial history stuff back from Thinktank, digging out the system that did push-button playback of “I can’t find old Brummagem” and providing some of the Library’s Baskerville collection — with a decent home what should it have?
Here’s some suggestions:
Dennis Mortimer’s beard from when villa won the European cup.
Every plan and architects model for a regenerated Brum, all google-earthed up and you can rum simulations of how the city would have looked if they’d come to pass.
An interactive exhibit that allows you to do the voice over for Telly Savalas looks at Birmingham - a bit like Singstar where you have to match the pitch, speed and not laugh when you claim to have “dallied in Dale End”.
Dana International - well she’s not doing anything at the moment.
A “how we used to stuff our faces” section, including replica RTP crisps (thanks @regengirl), the first balti pies (from Walsall’s ground), whatever retro sweets Cadbury are knocking out that week, Frosty Jack’s Cider, Highgate Mild - plenty of merchandising opportunities.
A diorama depicting how Brum was at the time of the Doomesday book (a small holding worth a pound apparently) - for bonus points the medieval man should stand near a goat and look suspiciously like Benny from Crossroads.
An anamatronic Carl Chinn, that eventually goes crazy Westworld style, lecturing all and sundry about local history.
A “how the museum used to be” section - with a papier-mâché T-Rex (meta I know).
Birmingham is not in much fear of flooding due to higher sea-levels, despite what people might mock up to sell their online games:
It is quite a way above the water — “highest point west of the Urals” I’ve been told (without knowing really what that meant: in a direct line? still higher that what’s to come further west?) — but is it the highest city in England?
I’d have guessed possibly. But guessing isn’t enough for John Mostyn, who set out to find out for sure. First he asked the Ordinance Survey, they said “we don’t know, go away” (to paraphrase), then he got his MP to ask them. And they snapped to attention (it’s what we pay our taxes for):
Not so long ago I read about the death of ‘Nightingales’ scriptwriter Paul Makin, who I would find out was from the Black Country. It reminded me that I’d been meaning to get hold of the programme on DVD, I have and it’s still brilliant.
It stars Robert Lindsay (pre ‘My Family’, when he was good), David Threlfall and James Ellis (’Z Cars’, but I remember him better for ‘One by One‘ the everyday detective drama of a vet in a zoo) as night security guards in a nondescript office building. It’s better than it sounds, and much more surreal — the first episode has them dealing with a werewolf.
What the building was used for in the day isn’t ever established, theirs is a very nocturnal existence. Nor is where it is based. There are a few external shots, but more in the ‘Friends’ style of establishing that they’re in the big city — can you see where I’m going with this?
Yes, it turns out that the Nightingales were guarding the offices above Snobs — you can see the Town Hall in the background and the light on in the kebab shop. “Can I have chilli sauce?”
Somehow it makes me understand the show a lot better now I know it was set in Brum. It makes be feel good to know that when I was snorting vodka at 50p a shot and lusting after the cute DJ in the back room of a Friday night, that Wolfie Smith was fictionally looking after my welfare. In a comedy way.
Best of all the closing titles are over film of the city at night, you can not only spot Snobs, the Rotunda in the background, but also the fantastic red cage metal car park and the sadly missed swirly bridge thing. And it has been pissing down with rain, so should be just how you remember it. Top flight early nineties nostalgia:
A few weeks ago I bought a T-shirt with the Rotunda on it, and unusually it wasn’t one I’d designed. It was from this ’shop’ on Spreadshirt.net, quite expensive but pretty unique. Unique for how much longer, I don’t know – at least three people have stopped me while wearing mine and asked me where I got it. I can never remember, so if I put a link up here at least I can point them to BiNS. The shop does a fine range of Spaghetti Junction shirts too:
One of the first things I did when starting BiNS was to look for a free forum hosting site. The one I found was a bit rubbish, but it was free and I was on the dole. It worked though, and there has been all manner of wit and not-so-wit on the forums over the last 6-or-so years. But as more of the site started to revolve around the blog, the forums got a bit sidetracked. So much so that I would only remember to pop in every couple of weeks.
The original forums became the online equivalent of the Mercat pub — open all hours and nice, but intimidating.
So, we’ve got some new ones that have RSS feeds, tags and the like — it’s the acceptable face of regeneration. These new ones are like the Mercat, after a lick of paint, some windows put in and adding some sodding futuristic beer availability notification system.
The old forums and posts aren’t gone, they’re still online as an archive, but I’ve stopped all posting there.
You have to register to post on the new BiNS Talk — but that happens automagically, you don’t have to wait to be approved. When we sort the technical gubbins out then you’ll be registered and cookified so you can post just as easily on the blog too (I’ll also find a way to stop it calling me ‘Key Master” like some Ghostbusters reject).
We’re grown-up, you can swear, curse and talk as much bollocks as you like, but keep it legal — any racist or libellous posts will be deleted and the offenders banned. That’s just the way it has to be.
So get posting on the all-new BiNS Talk. Post your flyers, events news, fave Brummies, anecdotes, bus ticket reminiscences, whatever.
I’m quite open on the features the new Talk system has (although I’d like to keep it simple and fast loading) and how the different forums are separated out, so if you’ve got any ideas feel free to comment here (or on the forum, because I’ll be able to find it now).
As a counterpoint to getting upset and protesting about potential demolition of things in Brum that we like (not that we’re going quietly over the Library or the Flapper - FB group about to hit 800 people), I thought it would be nice to proffer a few candidates for “regeneration”. Regeneration, in this instance, means “make it look nice or knock the sod down”. No easy jibes here, although the Orion Building and Beetham Tower are really nothing-y — and Selfridges needs a wash (it’s filthy up close, especially the bridge).
Here’s a few ideas of stuff that could be happily replaced with more yuppie flats:
The McLaren Building
” A big brown stain in the sky” Blockish and uninteresting, and the most scatological colour scheme on our horizon.
McLaren Building
1 Lancaster Circus
That’s it on the left — the only picture on the internet, and why would anyone take a photo of this supremely boring building. Take the wrecking ball to it and we could see the glory of the Ben Johnston, the fire station, hell even the skateboarding goths.
Ethel St in town is fast becoming Brum’s French quartier, there are two baguette shops, Chez Jules and a Café Rouge. Okay it’s not much, but you can bet it’ll be in the Big City Plan v2. In fact I’m almost tempted to open a tabac in the vacant shop, and sell only fags and stamps (how the hell do they survive?).
I also got this email the other day from a genuine French, asking for Brum-related advice. Now, I wouldn’t normally do this kind of thing, but do you fancy helping them out (bonus points for pointing out Françis-esque stuff, or weak onion and snail puns).
“I’ve just seen ur web site and it makes me laugh — plus I am going to move to birmingham from france next september (erasmus programm blah blah blah)– so I though maybe YOU’d have good advice for me such as : where should I try to live and what’s gonna be fun there?
First victim is Colin Troth, who helped get the Rotunda listed and features as one of the stories in 21 Stories, the film, photo exhibition and book about the Rotunda we keep praising to high heavens (currently on show at the Three White Walls Gallery in the Mailbox).
, I have and it’s still brilliant.
