Dear (Greater) Manchester,
Season’s greetings! And so happy to hear that your little administrative family has extended this year. We are too trying to build the brood, but despite a lot of temperature taking and effort all rounds the patter of teeny tiny Black Country boroughs has yet to happen. Still – it’s fun trying!
We’ve had a mixed bag of a 2014 – I was feeling much more chipper after a little bit of cosmetic surgery ‘down there’, but the latter half of the year has been us moving from one financial worry to the next.
First off, little Mike Whitby had a party while we were away and all sorts of undesirable types must have seen it on Facebook and gatecrashed. How else would you explain all those red trousers in Birmingham, we know Little Mike doesn’t know anybody like that: unless he’s fallen in with a bad lot saints he started spending all that time in London. The police had to be called, they closed off Broad St(!) and it cost a fortune: that was all our entertaining budget gone.
We had to sell our little summer place in Solihull, which was a wrench, although we mainly used to rent it out on a timeshare basis. Some of the people that we’ve had in were awful, we stated no dogs but you should have seen the amount of hair and unmentionables left in March! We’re well rid of it.
We did get featured in the parish magazine quite a bit, they still loved our new library, but weren’t so keen on much else we did.
Do you remember young David Harewood? He was suddenly flavour of the month everywhere: in autumn he was in a play — we didn’t go but we saw a video — but it seemed to be all about London, we were very disappointed.
If London is so good David, we said, why are all these bloody hipsters coming up and opening trendy bars and coffee shops and painting graffiti.
Anyway, we’ll sign off now – and don’t forget, if you want to know what we’re up to in the year we can always look on Paradise Circus, and then a few days later in the Evening Mail.
Lots of love,
Birmingham
