Thursday, January 31, 2008
reboot
Earlier this week I had the opportunity to go up to Birmingham with the boss to visit a site that we're looking to finance. Not being one to miss a chance to a) evade the office for free b)travel somewhere new on a train c) score a free lunch and d) suck up a little, I gladly accepted.
The only flaw in the plan- the severity of which I, in my innocence, underestimated- was that we were going to Birmingham. In my mind, Birmingham was a slightly smaller, grubbier version of London. I mean, it's only 90 mins away by train.
oh my god. I got off at the station (as I normally do, rather than leaping from the toilet window when it slows down for a sharp bend), sent the boss a confirmation that I was on my way, and headed out. First native Birminghamian I see? Some deformed person. Honestly. The first person past the ticket inspectors (apparently turnstiles haven't reached that far north yet) was a facial Quasimodo.
Normal body, mutant head. I'm afraid I stopped, stared and made gagging noises. To bolster myself, I thought I'd go for a coffee, figuring that whatever was in the water would be killed by the tender ministrations of the hopefully non mutated barista. No coffee shop. Sure, theres an 'open air' coffee stall with a few folding seats around it off on one side of the concourse, but not a single proper coffee shop- or simply somewhere to sit down. Only cheap seats on a linoleum floor. And this is at one of the principal train stations! It's about then that I started to suspect that the city was a actually a suburb of purgatory
My lift was running a few minutes late, so I decided to escape to the pavement outside. Naturally, this was clogged by a collage of station staff, vegetating with their cigarettes. I say vegetating because I honestly don't think any of them could go to the shop for a packet of crisps without writing it down and tying a string around their finger. I've never seen such a downtrodden, uniformly hunchbacked group of pasty faced troglodytes.
Fortunately my ride appeared before they could scent my fear and I was soon safely ensconced in a ton and a half of never-seen-a-dirt-road SUV and on my way to the meeting. The meeting itself was damned interesting; there's such a lot of development going on in Birmingham its unbelievable. Every road you go down has something being renovated or built. I'm looking forward to the project, despite its location.
But the overall impression the city leaves is one of depression. Have you heard the lyrics of the title song of The Enemy's "We live and die in these towns" album? It could have been written for Birmingham.
Everything looks so tired and washed out; it leeches the life out of you just looking at it. There's no zing. Nothing that lets you warm to it. I don't know what the town planners were thinking all those years ago, but they should be found, dragged out into the streets and beaten to death with lead pipes.
Me, I'm just glad I could get onto a train and zoom back to civilisation. Euston station was a slice of paradise. Toilets you could actually find- with dry floors to boot, a selection of coffee shops where you could sit down on real chairs, even announcements in a language resembling english
You can keep the midlands, thanks. I'll stick to my own lovely city, warts and all.
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