Posts Tagged ‘ upyerbrum ’

There’s nobody here but us chickens

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? Uploaded with plasq‘s Skitch! Any clearer? Concentrate on the building to the bottom left behind the office block: Uploaded with plasq‘s Skitch! Yes, it turns out that the Nightingales were guarding the offices above Snobs — you...

Talk amongst yourselves

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...

Despite the speed of the web, and my anal skim-reading of absolutely everything that mentions Brum, I still end up finding out things from the Evening Mail (or it’s 15 at a time, title only RSS feeds at least). Today I learnt that there are two projects in Brum up for Lottery Funding in one of these dreadful public votes (leading to lottery idol TV show). Nechells Baths are looking for help with the restoration, the Lottery web-site says £1.6M (but seems to talk in the past tense) while the Mail article talks about two thousand pounds . You can vote just with a click, without registering (think it looks at IP address, so if anyone was to continually reset their router and are on a ISP with dynamic IP addresses…). There’s a link through to an organisation called the Birmingham Foundation, a charity I’d never come across before, they obviously do a lot of good work but don’t like to talk about it. (photo by ray_wilkes2003)

The Clifton Bingo hall in Great Barr is to call time, along with “house”, “clickey-click” and other bizarre bits of slang, this coming Monday (23rd June), closing Gala the owners say, due to “the smoking ban, increased taxation and new laws banning big jackpot machines.” (via the Mail). I like bingo as a concept far more than as a game, but it’s doubly sad as it throws into question the future of a lovely piece of art-deco architecture (seen above in the BiNS calendar 2006). Built in 1938, as a cinema, it’s Grade II Listed which means it’s safe from the bulldozers at the moment at least, but the commercial uses in this day and age for a building of its size and structure are few. This particular area of North Birmingham has a fair amount of shops and pubs, but there isn’t a lot of entertainment around (as I remember from my youth) — what would be lovely would be if the council could buy it and open it up as a community space of some kind. Theatre space, art space, community hall for meetings, how great that would be.

It’s big, it’s round, it never had a revolving restaurant at the top

I met Clive Dutton yesterday, he reminded me a bit of Jonathan Meades, which is a fine compliment for a city planner. I also met the architect of the Rotunda a wonderful man called James Roberts (pictured below), and briefly spoke to Chris Upton about beermats. The reason for this gathering of Brummie luminaries (and the excuse for my attendance) was the première of Nic Gaunt’s film ‘Rotunda: 21 Stories’, a ‘Towering Inferno’ for the psychogeographic Midlands. The film, also book, DVD and exhibition, found 21 stories about the Rotunda to match each of the 21 storeys of the building — you see what they did there? Clever. Some were deeply frivolous, me, Malcolm Stent doing a joke about Selfridges and hub-caps, ex-mayor Randall Brew XI claiming that “they’ll have to carry me out of Birmingham in a box” (didn’t know the lack of burial space had got that bad), and some were very serious; a number of takes on the Pub Bombings. Some of the stories come from James Roberts designer and architect father of the building: He reveals his thoughts on the original build — that it gained 5 floors almost a whim — and how pleased...

Brum made the whistles on the Titanic you know

Have you seen that advert for Smirnoff? The one were all the debris is sucked from the sea to deomonstrate purity (purity for vodka being a big selling point) culminating with a huge ship leaning against a petrol garage? Well that was the first though that went through my mind when I heard that the Bull Ring was to have a cruise ship built in St Martins Square as it’s summer attraction this year. The nautical theme no doubt following on from last years “award winning” beach, the ship will be able to hold 200 people. More details will, perhaps at some point, be available on the Bull Ring website.

Whether it’s the dark and stormy nights meaning we all stay in blogging and coding, or Brum being particularly interesting at the moment, or (as I suspect) the drunken fun of blogging meet-ups forging new connections, there are an absolute ton of new Birmingham-related blogs and sites springing up. The collective noun for a group of Birmingham websites? I’m plumping for “a brewery”. Blogging Brum is a group blog set up by Mark Steadman – the idea is that bloggers that blog in, but not about Birmingham have a space to talk about the city. It seems to be taking off, and is also a useful hub for blogging meet-ups. I almost wish I didn’t have a load of Brum blogs to write for already so I could join in. Birmingham Bloggers is an aggregator pulled together by Paul Bradshaw, posts from all the Brum-blogs he can find pop up in the timeline. The site also has a brum twitter aggregator. In a similar vien is Brumspace – from Pete Lewis et al- which has blog aggregating and a chatspace. There’s also Planet Brum. WTFisBrum? is Pete Ashton’s brumular take on WFTistwitter? Upload talking-head videos answering the basic question...

Costa Book of the Year award within grasp for Catherine O’Flynn

Having won the Costa first novel award, Catherine O’Flynn’s What was Lost is now in the running for the Costa Book of the Year award. The winner will be announced later today at a posh do in that London. This morning, BBC Breakfast had a feature on Catherine, who talked about her inspirations which include growing up in Nechells and a fondness for gas towers; and also a chat with her Birmingham-based publisher, Tindal Street Press. Fingers crossed for Catherine for tonight’s award!

It’s not every year that you get to vote for your favourite locals, except it is. So here’s who you’ve nominated for the 2007 Brummie of the Year Award: Pete Ashton – blogging evangelist to the creative community. Lisa Meyer & Jenny Moore of Capsule – bringing much needed gigs (and cake!) to Brum. Carl Chinn – larger than life local historian. Condori : Big Chief Busks With Recorder – on behalf of all our buskers and street entertainers. Soweto Kinch – Mobo award winner and Town Hall associate artist. Martin Mullaney – Camcorder Councillor, trying every which way to involve people in local politics. Catherine O’Flynn – First time novelist who’s wowed the literary world this year. Richard Pawley – Wants to build a 600 foot tower – and jump off it. John Tighe of The Spotted Dog – Keeping Digbeth noisy, or so we hope. The results will appear here: Voting closed on the 1st of December and the results will be announced soon. No correspondence will be entered into and all that. Learn more about the nominees, with links:

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Posts Tagged ‘ upyerbrum ’

There’s nobody here but us chickens

Talk amongst yourselves

Lottery vote time is here again

Eyes up

It’s big, it’s round, it never had a revolving restaurant at the top

Brum made the whistles on the Titanic you know

Building sites

Costa Book of the Year award within grasp for Catherine O’Flynn

Brummie of the Year 2007 – vote now

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