Monday, 20 January 2025

Choose Your Own Adventure

Welcome, weary traveller!  You have reached an obscure corner of the internet, known to few and read by fewer.  It hides away waiting for visitors to entrap, offering jewels that invariably turn out to be unworthy of attention.  You are beckoned into a small tavern.  It smells of old ale, as though the innkeeper started drinking twenty years ago and never stopped.

"But why is this happening?" you ask.

"A desperate attempt to make this interesting," says the fat twat behind the counter, hiding his hideousness with a hood.  "I write of railway stations, but sometimes, I write of towns; when these two places occur on separate dates I am forced to split the posts."

"Isn't this a blog?" you ask.  "Can't you write anything you want?"

"Shush," says the fat twat.  "I'm clutching at straws here."

You apologise.

"Choose, adventurer, and choose wisely.  Do you seek tales of medieval market towns and industrial boilers?  Or do you yearn for railway platforms and service patterns?"  He waves his arm in a manner that's probably meant to be a magical flourish, but actually comes off as a bit camp.

You have a decision to make.

To read about the fat twat's visit to Tewkesbury, and his thoughts on the town, click HERE.

To read about the fat twat's journey to three separate railway stations, click HERE.

If you don't really understand what's going on because you weren't around during the gamebook craze of the 1980s, click HERE to educate yourself.  And stop being so young.

History Boys

I needed to collect two stations at the bottom of the West Midlands Railway map; Ashchurch for Tewkesbury and Worcestershire Parkway.  They were a long way away and too far apart to walk between so they were a bit of a blockage.  It became clear that the only proper way I could visit them - short of simply getting off one train and getting on the next without any exploration - was to stay overnight.

Fortunately I had Shrewsbury on my side.  The BF had been absolutely delighted by the ancient town when we visited it back in the autumn"We should do that more often," he said.  "Go places in England and explore".  I didn't have the heart to point out that I've been doing exactly that for the best part of two decades but I certainly used it to my advantage.  

"Have you ever fancied visiting Tewkesbury?"

Which is how we found ourselves on the town's high street on a cold January morning.  I will say, right up front, that we probably weren't experiencing Tewkesbury at its high point.  The snow had barely melted away and, as the point where the Avon meets the Severn, they'd clearly experienced a great deal of flooding in the thaw.  

It couldn't detract from the wide array of historic buildings that littered the centre.  This is an ancient marketplace, and the views reflected that, ticking off every prominent era of British architecture.  There were even some 20th century incursions, which got the BF absolutely furious; he does not share my love of modern buildings.


This being the United Kingdom in - blimey - 2025, the High Street wasn't in great shape.  There was a preponderance of charity shops, going from the standard ones you see everywhere to obscure one issue stores that you suspect are a front.  There were a disproportionate amount of takeaways too; there's something vaguely obscene about seeing a grand Victorian building with Chick'N'Kebabs wedged in its ground floor, LED signage and neon lighting glowing.  There was also an Edinburgh Woollen Mill, and you can imagine how I felt about that.

The town museum was sadly closed for the whole of January, continuing my run of managing to visit a place at exactly the wrong time to appreciate it, but fortunately there were plenty of helpful signs posted around to fill you in.


One of the more interesting facets were the various alleys and courts that ran off the streets, each with their own name and history.  The alleys were introduced as a way to increase the density and profits of the properties, with the homeowners fronting the street building on their land at the back or converting the rear to lettable space, then cutting a passageway through to give access.  An art project had seen tilework erected to give you an idea of where the name came from.


This one didn't have a tiled explanation, which the BF claimed was because "Lilley's Alley" was probably a euphemism for homosexual antics.  I don't think this is based on any actual facts but he made me take a picture of it so here it is.


We wandered down to the fields behind the main street, which were, at that point, basically a large lake.  It was amusing to see signage for the cricket club outside what was too all intents and purposes a pond.


This area was notable as being the site for the Battle of Tewkesbury, one of the decisive conflicts in the Wars of the Roses.  This is where I have to hold my hand up and say I don't really understand the Wars of the Roses.  It's Lancaster versus York, yes, and there was Richard III and Henry VII at the end, but it's all a bit vague.  I actually know more about the 1989 film The War of the Roses starring Kathleen Turner and Michael Douglas than I do about this important period of my nation's past.  As is usual in this country, we've got way too much history, so we tend to only focus on the most interesting bits.  There was a proper civil war a couple of hundred years later where they actually chopped the king's head off; we'll concentrate on that one instead.


Indeed, one of the helpful information boards started talking about a different civil war in England, The Anarchy, which I had never heard of, despite it having a gloriously metal name.  This was a conflict between the heirs of Henry I, where, in a story that will be familiar to anyone with a passing knowledge of gender politics, his daughter Matilda lost the throne to his nephew Stephen because basically people preferred someone with a penis.  On the plus side, it means we got a "King Stephen", which continues to sound made up, like if there was a Pope called Kevin.


One of the reasons Tewkesbury was so important in both the Anarchy and the Wars of the Roses was the presence of its Abbey.  It survived the dissolution of the monasteries after the locals bought it off the King and turned it into their parish church; it continues to be wildly out of proportion to the town around it.


Sometimes, when you've been in a relationship for a long time, things can get lost.  You wonder if you're together out of habit.  You vaguely think that you might not have anything in common.  Then something happens that reminds you, no, we were absolutely made for each other.  

The BF and I stepped into this magnificent building, a stunning showcase of craftsmanship and artistry, a building constructed to inspire awe and devotion.  And we both let out excited noises.  Not at the opulence of the nave.  No, we both spotted this at the same time, and dashed over for a better look.


This is a Gurney Stove, installed in the 19th century to heat the cathedral through the burning of anthracite.  There was something about its elaborate iron form that immediately appealed to us, and we spent a good few minutes cooing over it.  We are not very interesting people, but we found each other, and that's the most important thing.


This is not to say that Tewkesbury Abbey disappointed.  It's a really beautiful building, well restored and stunningly lit, with a surprising amount of colour and decoration; the sort of thing you thought the miserable old Puritans stamped out.  


It's just that, well, abbeys and cathedrals are all a bit much of a muchness after a while.  Oh look, another stunning piece of stonework intricately carved by a master mason over years.  And another one.  You end up looking for oddities, like the scale model of the abbey above.


Or the tomb of Hugh le Despenser The Younger, who was apparently a "favourite" of Edward II, which caused me and the BF to purse our lips and roll our eyes like Cissy and Ada.  He was subsequently hung drawn and quartered, though looking at his Wikipedia page, he seems to have been a bastard on several different levels so this probably wasn't a bad thing.  


We wandered past the shop, and a book exchange, guarded by a chalkboard listing the Ten Commandments.  Thou Shalt Not Steal was underlined and dotted with exclamation marks, and the whole thing was finished with The Lord is watching - so is the CCTV!!  


The Nativity was still there, tucked in an alcove at the back.  Seeing the baby Jesus in all His glory in mid-January made me feel a lot better for still having my Christmas tree up so long after Twelfth Night.  


We stepped out of the abbey and back into the town.  It was early afternoon but they seemed to have shut up shop for most places; Tewkesbury is definitely not a twentyfourseven town.  We ended up in the Costa having a large latte and a panini.  It's a nice, decent little spot, a handy day trip if you're in the area, but I can't say we'll be rushing back.


Your visit to Tewkesbury has ended.  To continue to the railway stations, click HERE.  To go somewhere far more interesting, click HERE.

New and Newer

 

Here's a fact about rail maps: they lie.  Ok, perhaps lie is too strong a word.  Misinform is perhaps better.  They often write a cheque they can't cash.  They place all the stations at the same distance from their neighbour, implying that they're all a nice even gap apart.  They expand city centres to fit in all the stops and make them look more important than they are.  They tell you that the best way between two points is to take a train from here to there and change and then over there when actually you'd be better off walking because it's actually round the corner (I think we all know which bit of the Underground I'm referring to).  And they make it look like there's a nice direct service between two stations when there's nothing of the sort.

Actually, that's not fair.  There are direct services between Ashchurch for Tewkesbury and Worcestershire Parkway.  Three of them, provided by CrossCountry, spaced four hours apart.  Which is hopeless, considering they're right next to one another.


It meant that when I arrived at Ashchurch for Tewkesbury station I headed for the southbound platform, rather than the north; I was going to have to go to Cheltenham Spa, change trains, and then head north again.  This was irritating for many reasons, chief of which being that Cheltenham Spa isn't even on the West Midlands Railway map, so it was an absolute waste of my time going there.  


As you may have guessed from the name, Ashchurch for Tewkesbury isn't exactly well placed.  It's a whole two and a half miles from the centre; a sign outside the station says Welcome to Historic Tewkesbury then signposts a 56 minute walk to reach the actual town.  


There was, at one time, a branch line that crossed from Ashchurch through Tewkesbury and on to Great Malvern.  Unsurprisingly, Dr Beeching (boo, hiss) took one look at this and closed it.  The route of the railway line is a footpath, while the station was where there is now a Morrison's.  


Ashchurch closed at the same time, but, as usual, everyone almost immediately realised this was a mistake.  The station was reopened in 1997 with a bare bones construction; two platforms, footbridge, car park.  No ticket office and a couple of glass shelters.


Its services have been slowly stripped back, too.  Now there's only one train an hour in each direction, one to Worcester, one to Temple Meads, with the aforementioned three CrossCountry services threaded in between.  These are the only services that get you to Birmingham.  


I got on the surprisingly clunky train for the one stop journey.  Up here in t'north we think we've got easily the worst trains in Britain; the ones the south chucks our way when they've finished with them.  This train reminded me that there are shit trains all over the country.


I'd actually been to Cheltenham Spa once before, late in the last century.  An old college friend had moved there and so a few of us went down to see her for the weekend, staying in a B&B.  While we were there I bought a black shirt with a flame design which I then wore out in public; I'm not sure what the hell was going on in my head back then.  I think I may have been temporarily possessed by the spirit of Guy Fieri.  

The point is, I remembered it distinctly for its charming white stuccoed building, like an escapee from a Poirot.  I was delighted to arrive and see it looking like this:


I continue to have the worst timing for my visits.

I went up to the road and took the station sign - may as well, while I was here.


There's a second entrance to the station, opposite a row of shops, so I walked round the block to reach it.  The railway bridge was decorated with a huge mural declaring that Cheltenham thanks... those who risked their lives to keep the country running during the Covid outbreak of 2020.  It was starting to look dishevelled and worn; some of the colours were fading, and there was graffiti over the top.  I wonder how many of these memorials will be allowed to quietly disappear over the years, how many Thank You NHS rainbows will be painted over, as we all try to put the pandemic behind us.


I went down to the northbound platform to wait for my train.  There was an extremely good looking despatcher there, plus this button, which I stared at for way too long.  I really wanted to push it.  I didn't.  But I really wanted to.


Another reason for Ashchurch for Tewkesbury's relative failure as a station is that Worcestershire Parkway came along in 2020 and stole its thunder.  This was another station built with a car park close to a motorway junction, except this one was bigger and brighter and it had interchange facilities!


This is the point where the east-west services from London and Hereford cross the north-south services to Birmingham and Cardiff; as such, it's a great spot for an interchange.  Unfortunately, there is nothing around here except fields so there was no real impetus to build it.  Worcestershire County Council, however, saw the potential for a new development centred around the crossover.  They pushed through the construction of the station and it'll soon be the hub for what they're definitely not calling a new town, even though that's basically what it is.


The service pattern is still getting there.  More trains need to pause here to make it properly worthwhile, but it's been promised those in future timetable changes.  Its passenger numbers have already exceeded expectations, once again proving that if you actually build transport infrastructure, people will use it, so crack on with it, Government.


What they've constructed here is what we can politely term efficient.  The problem is, I've been spoiled.  My little wander round Stockholm has shown me what you can achieve with transport infrastructure if you actually try.  Daniel Wright's Beauty of Transport blog shows it too.  There's a world where stations are recognised as important human places, as crossings and meeting spots, as fixed points in the movement of worlds.  
 

Great railway stations call out to us and inspire us.  They bring joy.  There's a lot to like about Worcestershire Parkway - the dark wood ceilings, the curves, the sheer space to allow for movement between platforms.  But it's a little bit boring.  It doesn't make you want to cheer.


There are still signs that it's been done on the cheap.  There's only one platform on the east-west line, which is asking for trouble.  They've created a bottleneck.  There are plans to someday introduce another platform; of course, if you'd built it all in one go, you'd have the convenience of that facility on opening day, plus you won't have to find funding and close the railway for construction at some vague point in the future.  Saving a few grand today means spending a few hundred grand in ten years' time, not to mention added inconvenience.


Still, the ticket hall is reasonably grand, and includes actual ticket windows with real human beings behind them.  It could do with a little shop to create a bit of animation.  At the minute, there's only a coffee cart outside.  There's not really anywhere to sit and wait for your train.


Let's celebrate a transport facility being designed, planned and opened in the 21st century.  Let's cheer a new station.  Let's hope there's more to come.


I waited in the car park for the BF to arrive in the car and drive us home.  I got in and turned to say thanks - but wait!  That's not the BF!  That's a gelatinous cube!

Your journey is over, adventurer.  Next time, be more careful who you get into cars with.

Tuesday, 31 December 2024

Numbers, Man

 

It's the last day of 2024.  Kind of a "meh" year, wasn't it?  There were enormous political changes and they don't seem to have really had much effect.  It wasn't exciting culturally.  Society seems to have hunkered down and simply pushed their way through it.  Since the pandemic, I've stopped seeing a change of year as anything really significant; I've effectively written off the 2020s as a bad lot and I'm waiting for the 2030s to start.  By which point I'll be well into my fifties.  Oh dear.

Anyway, shall we have some numbers?  2024 was the fifth year of me trying to complete the West Midlands Railway map, though as I alluded to above, that "five years" has a whacking great asterisk in the middle of it to indicate that 2020-21 had a few problems.  I'd thought I might be able to polish it off this year for good, but circumstances meant I didn't do anything over the summer, and I decided it was better to do it right than do it fast.  It's all about the journey, after all.  

This year I collected another forty stations on the map, including five of the tram stops (we'll get back to those).  It means I'm at 91% of the map done, with 9% to go.  Now it's mostly stations at the fringes - "destination" stations, in the sense that I have to go there and walk around then get on a train home again.  They're too distant or isolated for me to walk to the next station along, or they're so far away that it's a huge journey to get there and back in a day.  There's also the stations in the city centre, New Street, Moor Street and Snow Hill, all of which deserve to be visited and evaluated properly, and the last few tram stops on the map between St Chad's and Edgbaston Village.  Now that I've done the rest of the Metro line I sort of have to do them.

It's also entirely possible that I could get a few more stations added to the map before I finish, as there are two new lines under construction - though as always with British transport construction, when they're actually open is still a theoretical.  It could be in 2025, maybe, but who knows?

It's getting there, so thanks for bearing with me.  It's a lot.

Speaking of new lines, my old stomping ground, the Northern map, has got a new spur in the form of the Ashington Line from Newcastle.  That is obviously calling to me, not least because it'd mean a return to Newcastle and the Tyne & Wear Metro.  However, it's another line that's still a work in progress, with three of the five planned stations still unfinished at the time of writing and having an opening date of "shrug emoji".  So that's all up in the air for the time being.  (There's also Horden station, which opened right in the middle of the pandemic, and I still haven't got round to visiting).

Of course, the real highlight of the year for me was going to Stockholm and spending a week larking around on the Tunnelbana.  It didn't seem to provoke much interest, readership wise - you people clearly like your stations to be home grown - but it was enormous fun for me.  I still get a little smile when I see a picture from that trip.  It was a wonderful, tiring, exhilarating week, and I'd do it all again in a second, as soon as I win the lottery.  

Anyway, the gist is: goodbye 2024, thanks for nothing much, and roll on 2025.  Thank you for reading, commenting, correcting me - ok maybe not so much that last one - and I hope you'll stick with me for a bit longer.  Blogging is a disappearing art, replaced by TikTok and YouTube and other visual media.  I'm not a visual person, I'm a writerly one, so I'm not going to start dancing around to get likes and subscribes any time soon, so thank you for persisting with my ancient ways.  See you on the other side. 

Thursday, 28 November 2024

White, Chocolate

 

This is entirely in my head, I know, but it seems to snow in Birmingham a lot.  Well, at least it seems to snow a lot when I visit.  I was last on this section of the Cross City line in March 2023, and it was snowing then.  I come back, and it snows the night before, and then again while I walk around.  Perhaps I'm simply used to endlessly mild weather, being a resident of The Leisure Peninsula itself, the Wirral; we hardly ever get snow.

I was here to close off the last remaining gap on the line, the four stations between Bournville and Longbridge.  This is, of course, the home of Cadbury's, purveyors of fine chocolate, and the local factory has contributed to its station by painting its metalwork Dairy Milk purple.


That's the beginning and end of its contributions, mind.  The rest of the station is the tin shed aesthetic common on the line.  I'd hoped there'd be a bit of extravagance here, perhaps a giant Caramel bunny or benches shaped like a Freddo, but the purple was all you got.  I headed down to the street and took my sign picture.


I was tucking my camera back in my pocket when a man in a car at the neighbouring lights called out.  It took me a few moments to process that he was talking to me, and so I'd not been paying attention.  If I don't expect chat, my brain is simply not listening for it; it has to go back and rewind and process it.  I said, "what?", because I am a master of witty repartee, but he didn't say anything more and drove off.  

My brain finally deciphered the words from the thick Brummie accent and I realised that he'd said "ain't you never seen snow before?"  This immediately put me in a bad mood.  I wasn't doing any harm.  I was amusing myself.  And this bloke decided to pop up and police it.  Reader, if you see someone doing something innocuous you disapprove of, keep it to yourself, or do what I do: bitch about it on social media where they can't see it.  Calling out to random people and judging their behaviour leaves them feeling angry and vulnerable and socially awkward, and I'm all those things normally anyway.  Don't add to them.


Cadbury's is directly opposite the station, and it's an intriguing mix of architectural styles.  There's this half-timbered Olde Worlde building, but right behind it is a high brick factory, while access roads give you glimpses of steaming vats and loading bays.  A more modern office block and reception desk has been squeezed onto the street.  It'll never be confused for Willy Wonka's place, let's put it that way.


Not that it's stopped them trying.  Cadbury World is at the back of the factory - annoyingly, quite a walk from the station - and was opened in 1990 as a visitor attraction with interactive displays and histories and a lot of opportunities to stuff your face.  


I would not be visiting Cadbury World on this visit.  For starters, I've already been, back in 2010 with my friends and their children.  You shouldn't really visit unless you have children present, because the exhibition is very much aimed towards them.  A single man wandering around that place would get some funny looks.


Secondly, I don't really like chocolate.  I'm not sweet toothed at all.  I'll occasionally get a craving, and I'll get a Dairy Milk or a Fruit and Nut, because Cadbury's is the best; I've tried those supposed luxury bars that are 60% cocoa beans or whatever and they all taste bitter and unpleasant.  Otherwise, I can do without it.  In fact, once on holiday in Yorkshire, we visited an artisan chocolate making factory, and I had to go outside because the sugary sweet smell was making me feel ill.  I'd much rather have a packet of crisps or a pasty.  (The BF is the exact opposite, and he was extremely disappointed when I came home from my trip without a sack of Roses for him).  


I was far more interested in visiting Bournville itself, the model village built by the Cadbury family around the factory.  It was constructed as an ideal place for working class people to live - all working class people, not just workers at Cadbury's.  George Cadbury was a Quaker and it was his intention to create a community that was airy and well-maintained and with good architecture.  It was a contrast to the small homes and squalid conditions most employees could expect at that time.


In addition to hundreds of houses, community facilities, parks, churches and shops were built - but, as a teetotaller, George refused to allow a pub to be built.  Bastard.


Bournville's homes were far grander than those in Port Sunlight, its Scouse model village cousin.  I got the feeling that the Levers spent their money on the art gallery at its centre and the houses were not a priority.  Port Sunlight's gardens are largely communal, and the houses are more cottagey than the proper semis and detached homes here.


If it had been a nicer day, I'd have happily wandered around Bournville for hours.  Unfortunately the snow was really coming down now, leaving me cold and wet, so I did a loose circuit then headed back to the main road to continue south to my next station.


The village has become an incredibly desirable place to live in the century since it was built, and this has extended to the areas around it with a similar postcode.  If you can't afford Bournville proper, then the terraced homes nearby will give you that same frisson of middle class glamour.  It's why a flat row of shops, a strip that I'd seen all over the country that would normally house a corner shop, a couple of takeaways and a hairdresser, instead included a Zero Waste supermarket and "Birmingham's first organic butcher".


Linden Road went up and down over the hills, sliding down the social scale as it did.  They'd tried to make the council houses vaguely in keeping with the model village, but it was done on a budget, with none of the Arts and Crafts styling or elaboration.  It's a shame that uber-capitalist George Cadbury's hopes for the average person's home were undone by capitalism itself, firstly by restricting the money spent on public homes, then by selling them off and putting them out of reach of your working man.  Nothing like Bournville is being built today, and if it was, it certainly wouldn't be affordable for someone who worked in a factory.


Kings Norton was a messy stretch of shops spread around a junction.  Buses idled at the side of the road.  People inched their way along the pavements, remarkably clear in the main, but with the threat that the stuff falling would settle.  Chicken shops and pound stores and the Kurry Kingdom in an extremely impressive building.  I hummed Heather Small as I walked past Pride Dry Cleaners and avoided the queues of people getting their lunch from Sophie's Pizza and Pasta.


The bus layby came with another of Centro's pieces of art, a pair of metal feathers on top of the transport information board, but unlike many of the other ones I'd encountered during my visits to the West Midlands, this one still had its information board, telling me about the work and the artist.  I'm not sure if that's because of a commitment to informing the public or more likely nobody's got round to taking the poster down.


It means I can tell you these are the Feathers of Freedom and were designed by Paula Woof in 2001; they are made from stainless steel and represent "the sense of freedom felt by generations who moved here from central Birmingham".  So now you know.


Kings Norton (the apostrophe seems to be an optional extra) is about to get a lot more important.  The Camp Hill Line once carried trains direct into Curzon Street, but, starting with the replacement of that terminus with New Street and continuing through the improvement of other lines that shadowed it, it slowly fell out of use before closing to passengers in 1946.  It continued as a freight line but that was it.


It's now, excitingly, rarely, significantly, being brought back into passenger use, albeit incredibly slowly.  Three new stations have been constructed along the line and, eventually, trains will split off at Kings Heath for the city centre, making this an interchange station.  Fortunately it's already got four platforms to accommodate the two lines.


I mean, that's the theory.  As is usual for British infrastructure, it's both hopelessly late - it should be open right now but they're still working on the stations - and also done on the cheap.  Those extra platforms are going to remain out of use, because the money isn't there, just as the money isn't there to build a viaduct at the other end to get Camp Hill trains into Moor Street (where there is capacity) instead of New Street (where there is not).  These will, presumably, be completed at a later date, when all the engineers have gone home and the planning permission has lapsed and they'll have to start all over again from scratch.  Clever.


I got off the train at Northfield behind a man with an enormous snuffling pit bull, running from side to side all over the platform and clearly not enjoying that the snow hadn't been cleared.  His stomach dragged through the piles and he hopped pathetically to try and avoid it (the dog, not the man).  The snowy platform added to a feeling that Northfields was a little unloved and deserted, a feeling not helped by a local network map on the wall being so old it still showed the Metro terminating at Snow Hill (a stop closed in 2015).


I followed two Eastern European ladies down the steps from the platform, listening to them chat merrily to one another, then passed through the subway under the tracks to the other side.  There was another piece of Centro art and, once again, there was an information piece for it, confirming my suspicion that these are only still there when someone at TfWM forgets to take them down.


This one is the All Seasons Tree by Rosemary Terry.  Erected in 2003, it's intended to represent the network's dedication to providing a service in all weathers - especially appropriate on a day like today, where the snow had given it a festive dusting.


I walked down the hill from the station entrance, past a garage advertising £40 MOTs and onto a side road.  The snow had stopped falling and the thaw had started, leading to a great river of water cascading down the drains.  I stepped into a patch of open land, breaking the snow with my feet, and following a short path into a copse of woods.


The drips of the melting snow were everywhere around me, accompanied by the rustle of bushes as lumps fell to the ground.  One or two pieces careened off my forehead, and I briefly considered the humiliation of being discovered unconscious in a wood having been accosted by frozen water.  I'd have to lie and pretend I was mugged.


I decided I'd swing back to the main road, rather than persist on my country walk.  The River Rea crosses The Mill Walk as a ford here, something you don't really expect to see in suburban Birmingham.


Immediately after I took this photo, a BMW appeared and crawled through the ford.  The driver then burned away at a ridiculous speed, his engine roaring, in case you thought that his slowness through the water indicated some sort of reserve or timidity and you didn't realise that he was actually an extremely masculine man who was manly.  Needless to say, I was extremely aroused, and definitely didn't assume he had a micropenis.


The main road was a wide straight boulevard with space for trams in the middle if they ever decided to restore them - which of course they won't - and plenty of shops.  On the corner was a JobCentre, which was pretty essential, as I was now entering Longbridge.


If you're of a certain age, the name "Longbridge" brings back memories of news reports, first about strike action, then about decline and closure.  This was the home of the Austin Motor Company, later British Leyland, later Rover, the builders of dozens of legendary British cars and a hotbed for complex industrial relations for over a century.  The factory took up a huge expanse of land and employed thousands of workers locally, before slowly declining over the second half of the twentieth century for a million different, equally sad, reasons.  The plant shrank and contracted until its very last stub - making MG cars for its now Chinese owner - was closed in 2016.


This leaves the question of how to regenerate the fallen area.  Housing has been a key part of it, of course, with flats and houses filling the former assembly areas.  The people who live there need jobs though and so a new Longbridge town centre has been constructed.


It's heralded by the South & City College Birmingham, housed in a truly hideous building that strives for "iconic" but actually ends up as "messy".  Architects and city planners have looked at the likes of the Bilbao Guggenheim and their takeaway seems to be "weird angles, gotcha".  They've avoided building square boxes and have instead embraced lumps, shards, spikes, all layered with coloured cladding.  They are, almost without exception, hideous, and will be demolished in about twenty years time when they stop being fashionable because nobody will want to refurbish them.  


Beyond it is open space, a series of terraces and flower beds beside the River Rea that form Austin Park.  There's also Austin Way, Cooper Avenue and Princess Street, all named after the former marques, which seems off to me.  Imagine being a former engineer at the plant, spending decades crafting those vehicles, and now having to trudge down Ambassador Avenue to get to your job fetching trollies in Sainsbury's car park.  That's rubbing salt in the wounds.


Because Longbridge has now been reborn as a shopping centre.  The signs might pretend it's a civic heart, but make no mistake; this is an out of town retail park that has been allowed to bloom here.  It was surprising to me how bad it was.  We've learned over the past few decades that making a place is the future of retail, that now we can get anything we want delivered to our homes, we have to encourage people to venture out.  


This is an L of boxes arranged around an open-air car park.  You could've put in a pedestrian square here, a space for exhibitions or events, or arranged the shops into more interesting avenues to be explored and enjoyed.  You can hear the developer grumbling: "we gave you that park, isn't that enough?"  It shows how big business can take advantage of down on their luck areas.  With the closure of the car plant, no doubt Birmingham was simply happy anyone wanted to build anything that would provide jobs, and waved it all through.  


It was lunchtime and I had time to kill before my pre-booked train home so I decided to sample the delights of a Hungry Horse.  I don't think I'd ever been to one before, but it wasn't exactly a surprise; sub-Wetherspoons decor, blandly unthreatening, plenty of seats and a reliance on food rather than the odd old bloke nursing a half of bitter.  It was a Tuesday, which meant the special was a "sizzler" for nine pounds.  This meant I got a skillet of vegetables with some breaded chicken, some onion rings and some chips, plus a mysterious powder that was supposedly a salt and pepper herb mix.  It was, technically food, but only technically, because food usually also has flavour and texture.  This was more like eating polystyrene that had sat next to an air freshener and had picked up a bit of the scent.  However, after several hours of walking in snow and getting soaked and frozen I was simply glad to get something hot inside me.


Also, they served beer.


I tottered out an hour later with a couple of pints sloshing around and wandered towards the railway station.  TfWM have constructed an enormous multi-storey next to it, with the hope of making Longbridge a park and ride.  As you'd expect for an area formerly filled with factories, there's a good road direct to the M5 from here, and the hope is that this will become a hub.  Network Rail, too, want to make Longbridge into a secondary rail centre, getting people to change services away from the overcrowded city centre termini.  As usual, there are lots of lovely reports, and not much in the way of action.


Longbridge has, at least, got a flashy new building out of the redevelopment, with a completely pointless architectural flourish over the roof, which was probably called a "placemaker" or something in the plans.  


The Centro artwork is, unsurprisingly, themed around the former factory, and is called The Genie of Industry by John McKenna.  It's a stark robot in an area that's increasingly softened.  I couldn't help thinking it would've looked far more part of the landscape when it was unveiled in 2002.


As I took the picture of the statue, a man lurched out of the bus stop and towards me, clutching a bottle of Stella.  Obviously I disapproved; one should confine one's alcoholism to inside spaces.  Like me.  I moved away quickly, down to the platform, and was able to almost immediately jump on a train.


Then I began to get a niggle at the back of my head, a light tap of disquiet.  Something was up.  I picked up my camera and scanned through the pictures and - yep.  I'd not taken the sign selfie.  

This is becoming disturbing.  My brain is starting to forget to do the one thing I have always done when I visit stations.  I've been doing this for nearly eighteen years.  Is this how dementia starts?  I got off the train at Northfield and transferred to the southbound platform to go back on myself.  This meant that, sadly, I wasn't able to visit the refurbished University station as I'd planned; two long waits for trains put me dangerously close to my train time from New Street and my anxiety was raging.  I'll have to check it out another day.


Still, I'm sure you'll agree the trip back was totally worth it for this magnificent photograph.

Don't answer that.