Bumpkin's Brum — Roving Reg blogger hits the road
The sun glows a kind of burned cheese’n’onion Pringle yellow as it flops behind a rain-washed terrace, the wind sighs through a neighbour’s sickly privet hedge, a minicab driver irritably sounds his horn, unable to walk the five yards to his fare’s front door: Birmingham, the UK’s biggest city beginning with “B”, is my new home …
Christ, I'm still laughing!
What a wonderful parody! Eat yer heart out, Craig Brown :)
I live in Warwickshire and I love Birmingham, warts 'n' all (no, honestly, I do). But Jamie's piece had me in stitches because (though Brummy Reg readers will rise up in droves to deny it) he not only parodies brilliantly but paints a horribly accurate portrait.
More like this on Fridays please.
If yowm saft enuff ter cum up 'ere agooin wom, yowr tay ull be spiel't!
As long as you can say "bostin' " convincingly, like cheap lager and second hand light, Birmingham is the place to be! I spent many years in the West Midlands and Black Country and have to be honest, it is a unique place, almost like another english-speaking country than England!! A lot of people moan about ethnic mixing in other parts of the country but in Brum and it's environs, it actually works and works fine I think.....
But bless it's rather large and worn cottons, Brum'll never please the eye, despite the City Council's best efforts, it shall forever be dull and grey and a shade too builtup....
is the cry you will hear from most privately schooled, London-based media brats. A few twats like Max and Peaches don't worry me. It's the future of TV being turned into a big, incestuous, smug, middle-class, pile of shit by people who think supporting Labour makes them left-wing and "in touch" that worries me.
".......almost like another english-speaking country........"
Or would be if they spoke English, you mean.
As Jasper Carrot so succinctly put it: "How can 1 million people have a speech impediment?"
I really have to question any basis in reality this mindless drivel may have.
Having moved to Birmingham around 6 years ago, not much of what you say about the place is ringing many bells. And it's not like I live in a nice bit, or don't know the place.
Peasants
Don't you know that the canal is where the trolleys go to breed, it is their natural spawning ground!
Paris because I'd like to throw her in a canal..and not for spawning reasons....
With insults like that, I believe you should resign in about a week and a half's time, once the DM have had a chance to latch onto this non-story.
For the rest of us forward thinkers - LoL.
A Black Country Lad.
Did you know that the USSR never targetted Brum with nukes during the Cold War. They thought someone had already beaten them to it....
That's why most Brummies don't actually live in Birmingham and why the city boundaries keep getting pushed further and further outward at the destruction of beautiful Worcestershire, Warwickshire, Shropshire and Leicestershire countryside as the desperate Birmingham Council attempts to corral the ever disappearing population. They'd be broke from the lack of Council Tax otherwise.
Me? I have the good fortune to escape to the wonderful Cambridgeshire countryside in pursuit of my work in the week, returning to sample the delights of suburban Birmingham over the weekend. I've nearly lost the accent so one day I'll sever the link... one day...
I'm having a spot of bother understanding this Guardian-esque articles presence here on El-Reg, but hey, it was relatively good reading, in that there's London, and then theres the rest of the country, kind of way.
Didn't the guardian get slagged of for doing this sort of thing, when one of the editors sons got to go to India or somewhere and write some drivel about the place for a fat fortune. At least this guy knows a little about writing interesting articles AND he gets to go to glamorous places like, Brum. Humm.
I've visited Brum many many times as I'm quite close by.
Yes the city is kind of ugly (as sin). Theres something about the councils up here between the 50s to the 70s that thought that putting up thousands of concrete monstrosities was a good thing, and that over the course a good half century of pollution exposure that they wouldn't actually get as grimey as they are now, the Idiots. Not to mention ALL the other reasons why concrete blocks of flats suck donkey balls.
.
More please, but perhaps a point to all this next time though yeah? Cos at the moment this guy sounds a bit like your average city dosser, kind of like the hoodies he describes, and is doubtless getting paid for it too.
.
Wait a minute, I smell an april fools style halloween joke.... We've been had!
;-)
R, I live in brum and you aint alf right loik.
"it shall forever be dull and grey and a shade too builtup...."
Having lived in Coventry for a few years until recently Brum is a rainbow :)
The parks in Cov are lovely though, I only wish Sheff had more. Walking to the Peaks and back is hassle. Probably.
As a Shropshire lad brought up in Wolverhampton before working for a while in Birmingham, I loved this damp, drippy homage to the so-called second city.
Bit worried about the overly-positive image it describes about Birmingham mind you.
When's Bodkin doing a whole cyberpunk novel set in Brum?
I could imagine the future denizens setting up a whole alternative lifestyle environment on spaghetti junction after the big quake of '10 left it unusable by motor traffic. Old garden sheds epoxied to the undersides of flyovers, canal barges concreted into place on bridge supports, prows jutting into the fetid air like misguided balconies.
Maybe some crazy artist / scientist type could move into one of the old British Leyland / Rover / {insert defunct Midlands based car manufacturer} factories and churn out slow, dull, mindless, rusting deathtraps... (so no change from about 20 years ago really, except perhaps the lack of a trade union)
Sorry, it's Friday afternoon, I had a pint for lunch and the mind is wandering.
Well I live in an affluent, green, leafy bit of Birmingham and I sip my wifi-enabled skinny latte in Brindleyplace and the Mailbox. But then again I'm posh, not a lovable cartoon Brummie. I'm just off to Waitrose now to buy me pie and chips and a bottle of Banks's mild for supper.
http://www.birminghamitsnotshit.co.uk/
It actually has a reason for being and not just a wate of paper so misses the point of miss sorry mrs what-ever-her-name-is-now and remember they eat bacon butties without butter up there so how there buttie i'll never know?
someone that knows that Birmingham is not in the Black County!
get yerself down to the Actress and Bishop in St Pauls Square, sounds like you'll fit in.....preceeded by a meal at Henry's Chinese of course.....
Lived there years ago - it hasn't changed much, then :o)
You haven't lived 'til you've dined off grey peas and a pint of Brew, though...
Takes me back to my brum days. You've got me all misty eyed now...
So good it made me register with the register in order to register my admiration.
Paris - because she was a virgin poster once too.
"I've seen parts of the UK not many people have seen unless they too have been there"
My monitor is all brownish and soggy now
Having subjected myself to peaches article, then to read this was pure comedy. Good on ya'.
If this character is so damn cool, how come he didn't mention doing a few lines of nosecandy with Nathan Barley?
Seriously though, bloody well done.
polite note to commenters about to fire up a "This is not what I read Teh Reg for, kindly desist immediately" post: get a sense of humour
I'm a born and bread Brummie and proud of it. Birmingham will always be my home and I just love it. I hate London, it really sucks hard. I'd rather have a cervical smear than live there.
I just wish that people wouldn't confuse us with the Yam Yams who still point at aeroplanes and Hartley Hare....
I only know one place well in brum, its one good chicken and chip shop off the M1. Which I found by following the 'tricked out' Civics and their bass boxes to the local shopping area.
Err...since when did the M1 pass through Brum? The M5, M6, M6 toll and M42 get close and the A38(M) enters it, but not the M1, which is about 30 miles out of town!
