Bio-active rubbish dumping; A self-imposed consultation and medical survey with a leading medical healthcare centre in the UK

A survey by eccentric archaeologist, Harry Palmer 2009.

Earlier this year I managed to conduct an independent and self-imposed survey into street litter and poor rubbish dumping habits. With the help from a leading healthcare company here in the UK (which included CAT/CT scan monitoring) – I undertook a study into the potential relationships between my mental state and overall health, daily eating habits and reasons. Although results are still being examined, early indications seem to support my concern regarding wellbeing associated with differing nutritional eating patterns and street-trash discarding actions. In addition, I also looked at any potential disturbances from noise pollution, housing provision demands, street billboard advertising by way of pervading psychological nuisance, as well as mapping associations between my regular pedestrian thoroughfare routes, lifestyle and employment schedules, mobile phone usage and seemingly ad-hoc phone calls and ‘demands’ – as external trigger factors for example. The following article introduces some of the key reasons why I initiated this independent consultation (upon myself).

According to a trusted vascular specialist, it is hoped that the report might be made into a televised documentary highlighting problems concerning rubbish on our streets linked with challenging mental health and socio-economic factors and commercial expediency.

Introduction

Arguably one of the more obvious elements that can be traced in any public location is discarded debris, namely litter. Highly selective in regard to what we observe and how we react, the remnants of everyday located ‘rubbish’ is usually seen as abject and unsightly, often ignored and somewhat accepted. The scattering of unpleasant street detritus haphazardly lingers in seemingly random locations, reappearing on many (non) pedestrian routes. It doesn’t go away.

I have, for sometime, been puzzled by public litter. Is such rubbish indicative of an ‘attitude’ – a person with no apparent concern, dropping trash as they determine? I remember the “Keep Britain Tidy” campaigns that used to be prevalent on buses and banners, TV ads etc…, reminding us all to put litter in the bins provided – bins that attempted to be in logistic public positions in thoroughfares, yet evidently many misplaced for effective trash dumping. Take-away consumers for example, after completing quick fix meals, have often relocated elsewhere, away from the strategic bin that would otherwise have been useful. Food containers are easily disposed of, dropped onto floors, thrown over walls, out of car windows, placed on sidewalks – basically dumped with little or no concern, perhaps a reaction to not having a bin close-by?

Continue reading “Bio-active rubbish dumping; A self-imposed consultation and medical survey with a leading medical healthcare centre in the UK”

Danny Smith’s Guide to 2008 Pt1

Danny Smith was writing lots of guides to Brum for the Itchy guide, last year. It never happened, so we present his guide to the past in a number of parts:

Readers World
137 Digbeth
Birmingham
B5 6DR
01216438664
Sure you could go to Borders or WH Smiths who, I’m sure, will always have exactly what you want in clean, well lit, and organised sections. But who wouldn’t rather want to lose half a day rooting around huge Health and Safety defying stacks of second hand sci-fi and fantasy books, in a shop that resembles a cross between a Harry Potter set and a reclusive geeks bedroom? The worlds is a richer place for having shops of this type of uniquely British oddness and consider it your patriotic duty to pop in and grab a musty bargain.
Tues-Sat, 10am-5.30pm

Snobs Nightclub
29 Paradise Circus
Queensway
Birmingham
B1 2BJ
01216435551
Big Wendsdays at Snobs is kinda like the Rolling Stones; just when you think it is due to die, a new generation discovers it and it becomes even more popular than before. The décor hasn’t changed since my parents were enjoying the 50p shots and rutting in the toilets. Most nights have more in common with Caligula’s Vomitariums where the glass walls drip with sweat while you struggle through the elbows of a bouncing crowd. Indie classics in the main room and 60’s soul and funk in the better smaller one; dancing shoes are a requirement. Be warned the queue can get pretty big so check out the Flapper and Firkin for Q jumper tickets.
For details check out http://www.snobsnightclub.co.uk/

Cramps? Best Brum gig evah?

Birmingham Music Archive is teaming up with BiNS to find out What has been the best gig ever to take place in the city and what was/is the best venue. Jez from the BMA is kicking things off, argue the toss here and in the forum.

My favourite gig was The Cramps at the Birmingham Odeon. My memory is not what it was but the gig was either April 25th 1984 or April 30th 1986, I’m tending to go for the 86 one due to me age, but anyway.. For those of you who don’t remember the Odeon before it became a 400 screen cinema, selling 2 tonne bags of sugar to kids who need no encouragement whilst showing Rambo 55, it was a fabulous art deco music and cinema hall.

For the gigs, there was a huge orchestra pit which doubled as the mosh pit (well not if you were watching Ultravox or The Thompson Twins), then those lovely plush velvet seats and above, a balcony were assorted punters would cover the crowd below in piss and beer – luckily they were often indistinguishable from one another!

So there I am, fancying myself as a bit of a psychobilly, knocking around at the Barrel Organ, Powerhouse, Zig Zags and all the others when news comes through of The Cramps coming to town to play at the Odeon. Immediately it’s THE ODEON! Who on earth has booked The Cramps to play there? Have they not seen or heard of the mayhem that normally occurs when the play. This reputation was justified. For me The Cramps remain one of THE live music bands. Raw, threatening, chaotic but always brilliant.

As I say above, my memory is no longer functioning as it used to, but this night The Cramps were late on for some reason and literally ripped through the set. Main man Lux carried around the entire audience, climbing right to the top of the pa system, Poison Ivy machine gunning the crowd with her guitar, legs akimbo, hardly, if any, talk by the band and then 30 minutes later they were gone.

Now I wasn’t in the mosh pit that night for some strange reason but they were going wild, calling for encore stamping their feet and so on. But as it became clear The Cramps weren’t returning they had nothing to really vent their anger on. For us in the seats it was different.

I’d never felt such adrenaline or emotion or basic wildness in a live crowd before. As the shouting got louder I can just recall a shower of seats reigning down towards the stage, missing it by some distance and nearly decapitating several hundred pyschobillies (or at least their quiffs). It was over in minutes but seemed like forever, even as everyone filed outside it was as if the whole crowd had become feral.

For the music but mainly for the crowd I think this has to rank as one of my all time favourite gigs in Birmingham. If anyone else was there and would like to dampen my recollection or even agree with it then get it on here and at www.birminghammusicarchive.co.uk, and then add your own best gigs/venues

Nirvana at the Barrel Organ, Oasis at The Jug Of Ale, anyone remember the Birmingham Rock festivals of the mid 70’s, saw the Pistols or Dexy’s at Barberella’s or Rum Runners, Eek-a-Mouse at the Porsche Club anyone?

2007, the sands of time

Birmingham by the Sea by cactusinthesea2007 was all about sand, blogs and noise. Sometimes more than one at the same time. At the end of last year we were all excited about having had a patch of sand up by Millennium Point during the World Cup – if you’d have told us that Brum would be host to more sand than, er, a place with a lot of sand, er Manjits Builders Merchants on Alcester Rd, we’d probably have exploded. The beaches came in, what was supposed to have been a, summer though – so let’s take a shuftie through the calender a month at a time…

January

Midlands Today’s Nick Owen got a myspace page and blog in January – don’t look for it, it’s not there any more – so we were treated to his views on cricket, cricket, and line dancing. Dancing of a different nature was going on at a council house in Great Barr, which was reportedly being used as a night club – complete with pool room, bar, and a “steam room powered by paint strippers”. Moseley and Kings Heath’s own Louis Theroux – Councillor Martin Mullaney posted his YouTube film on graffiti tagging – almost relishing pointing out “Fuk Martin Mullaney”. There’ll be more from Martin in due course…

February

Duran Duran, not in BiNS T-ShirtsIn February we were second best second city – according to a BBC poll – and the rudest city in the country – according to a crap survey promoting a crap supermarket. Still Lawrence Llewelyn-Bowen had some nice words to say about us on the Holiday programme, encouraging visitors to pop into town for a city break. The English Tourist board were also tempting visitors to the fleshpots of the city – specifically Saramoons (as apparently Duran Duran formed there), for a Pino Grigio no less. Not a pint of M&B mild and a fight, which is more usual.

March

March was big on weird goblin-y things, not only did a frankly bizarre Tolkien statue for Moseley get planning permission but it was, of course, Birmingham’s annual leprechaun, Guinness and green things pageant – the St Patrick’s day parade was rained on, but as huge and popular as ever. What wasn’t popular was anything produced by Heinz – as they reneged on their promises and shut our wonderful HP Sauce factory. Self-publicising John Bull character Ray Egan climbed to the top of the tower with a ‘Daddies For Justice’ banner – and we never bought anything made by Heinz ever again.

April

Ray Egan was at it again in April, fiddling on the roof of Harbourne Post Office – but who is the lovely smiling lady in the foreground? It’s Harbourne Councillor (and Edgbaston Conservative Spokesperson) Deirdrie Alden – who is perhaps Birmingham’s most consistent blogger, one post a day, every day, one photo, no comments. Towards the end of the year Deirdre would become worthy of parody, was she in April?

Brum’s other internet councillor, or auteur, Mr Mullaney was targeted by some people with very good handwriting – but by this time there were quite a few people upset with his videos, so I doubt it was clear who was responsible. It didn’t stop his videos tho’, keep going Martin.

Probably the best news story of the year was in April, when the Daily Mail discovered a cat who takes a TWM bus every day on his commute to the local fish shop. No reports on whether he smokes catnip up the back of the number 50.

May

May was the month that the Council and the Bull Ring both announced plans to build ‘urban beaches’ for the summer, apparently inspired by something similar Paris had done a few years ago. The row made it to the national media, although they really used it a a bit of light relief featuring some comedy Brummie voices. Meanwhile on t’interweb, more and more tiny bits of Brum got their own blogs – Camellotment is a blog about plot 171 of the Moor Green Allotments, in Cannon Hill Park, and you can’t get more niche than that.

June

The Bull Ring fired the first shot in the sand war, and opened its sandpit. We used an obvious pun and got all manner of comments haranguing us for not falling at the feet of this promotional tool – but it wasn’t really to matter as the Bull Ring beach, the Council’s Chamberlain Square one, the RNLI’s Brindley Place one and the volleyball Centenary Square sanded areas were all washed out by one of the wettest summers imaginable.

It was enough to make you stop in and watch telly – lucky then that Jasper Carrot launched his obscenely convoluted quiz show ‘Goldenballs‘. The show required so much concentration that you needed to have a lie down afterwards, in a darkened room. We went down to the darkest room of all, perhaps, as part of Architecture Week – the tunnel between the Mailbox and New Street Station.

Rootsville was a blindingly ambitious and blindingly weird festival that we loved, more next year please.

June was a month to launch campaigns too – the first stirrings of what was to become Keep Digbeth Vibrant, er stirred up on, gawd, The Stirrer. The fight still continues. We were in angry mode too, and announced Talk Like A Brummie Day.

July

TLAB Day, as we unwieldingly acronymed it, took almost all of our energy in July what with constant rounds of press, TV and Radio appearances, and trying to work out exactly where on the road to Sandwell the word ‘bostin’ kicked in. Luckily there was loads going on to take our minds off it – an art space turned into a real ale pub, symposiums on the heritage of metal in the midlands, the best damn festival (it says here) in the world.

August

Frank SidebottomWe got all worked up over nothing in August, there were rumours (from staff, no less) that The Jug of Ale was to close – people ranted, and were generally horrified – but in the end it turned out to not to be true. At least it gave us and excuse to have yet another tenuous picture of Frank Sidebottom on the blog. It’s scary that despite really caring, the gig going, and drinking, public have absolutely no power over things like this – there really needs to be some sort of plan to save our beloved toilet circuits.

September

September was dominated by Artsfest, Artsfest in turn was dominated by the bloody huge, bloody loud, bloody brilliant Blast – which was fire and industry and trains and a barking review from us that was obviously written with the experience still ringing in the ears. Something else that’s just as barmy is the VTP200 – a huge tower planned for Eastsiiiide – that was announced in September. It’s pointy and tall and odd, and you’ll be able to chuck yourself off it in relative safety.

The UCE was changing its name, and we got wind of the alternatives – including the eventual winner Birmingham City University – but resisted the inevitable Aston Villa University joke ©every bloody commentor on all of the blogs in Brum. It’s not often we get to take the humour-high-ground, so we’re milking it.

October

The highlight of October was without doubt the Plus International Design Festival – including all sorts of lectures, a real-life pacman game, a top party, and for me at least a free tour of Birmingham – focusing on typography (not so much of a niche market as you’d think). October was also awash with ‘something days’; National Poetry Day featured poets sauntering around the city dressed in their pyjama, Blog Action Day featured us coming over all environmental, and Badger Medical Centre day – well, I just made that up.

November

Sorting the soundOn BiNS November is awash with the hustings for the Brummie of the Year Award – Pete Ashton decided he wasn’t worthy, then campaigned like a trojan – but enough of that until December. Gigbeth happened, and for reasons lost in the midst of time we decided to refer to it as Igbeth, it was a huge glob of everything that’s brill about Brum’s music scene (with a few bits that are bad too). It gave us the brilliant sight of three or four bands all playing at the same time (and even sometimes the same song) in the middle of Digbeth High Street – I’m sure it will be back.

There was also the Pantomime Horse Grand National, which got all charity-ed up and moved well outside the pantomime season. Given that the horses aren’t pantomime horses either, I wonder how far removed it will be next year. I’m making a stand of calling for it to be renamed the Pantomine Horse Grand National, since that’s how us Brummies pronounce it anyway. We didn’t win.

December

Winterval kicks of with the crowning of John Tighe Brummie of the Year 2007 – a close run thing, but there wasn’t anyone disappointed with the result. John made a speech of sorts on our blog, but for the life of me I can’t tell you what he was on about.

Noddy Holder got a star on the ‘Walk of Stars’ on Broad St – arriving in the most black country way possible on a Glam Rock Canal Barge. I have no idea exactly how glam rock it was (platform shoes for legging-it through the tunnels?), but we were pretty well disposed to the Black Country for the month – as they went up for £50 Million of Lottery funding. They didn’t win either.

December of course brings the German Market to Brum, being so popular and photogenic that it’s been a struggle not to have every picture in our advent calendar of Evil Santa.

And that just about wraps it up, I’d envisioned doing more jokes about sand. Have you got any good ones? Or more general Birmingham 2007 memories or thoughts? 

Signs of the times

We mentioned the Type Tours before, but I couldn’t pass up a chance of a private mini-tour for myself:

Ben Waddington outside Baskerville House

Ben Waddington is one of those people who wants others to appreciate their surroundings. An exiled Manc, he’s been running tours of some kind round Brum for a couple of years – I went on Ben’s tour themed around John Baskerville last year, and was impressed with his research and amiable guiding if not our city’s treatment of Baskerville’s legacy. If we must have a new library (when the current one works, no matter how you consider it looks) then it should feature some tribute – it will be on Baskerville’s old land after all.
As part of the Plus International Design Festival, Ben is running his Baskerville Tour again – as well as ‘Type Tours’ of Digbeth and the city centre. A man who knows Brum well enough to give you a guided tour, as well as being a bit of a font geek? This is someone that I really should get to know, so despite my aversion to meeting strange men in pubs having contacted them over the internet, I popped out to The Old Contemptibles last week where I found Ben, Erdinger in hand. I plumped for a very acceptable Amstel.

We retired to the back of the pub, which now has a gentleman’s club vibe going on, to talk of Birmingham, design, architecture, the M6 and LCL Pils. It turn out that Ben has been posting on the BiNS forums (see if you can guess what name he posts under) pretty much since they started. Looking back it’s obvious that this was a man in possession of facts as well as the sense of righteous indignation that seems to infect the Brum-based internetter.

The first tour of hidden Birmingham that Ben organised was a walking tour of Digbeth’s forgotten pubs, putting adverts in CAMRA magazines and the like. What he neglected to mention in his pre-publicity was that a lot of those pubs were so forgotten that they were no longer open. Despite the James & Lister Lea goodness, some the tourists “were interested in walking to pubs, not so much in walking away from them. There are pubs in Digbeth that are still surviving purely on the indigenous industry, though slowly those are closing.”

We discussed how pubs are in danger as an architectural genre from all sides, the large suburban ones that formed the centre of the community on the post-war estates are fast becoming Chinese restaurants or McDonald’s as they are more and more difficult to profit from and license, squeezed by breweries and the police. In the city centre where pub culture is seemingly still thriving it would be unthinkable to actually design a purpose built pub, Ben says “the most recent one in Birmingham is, I think, The Yardbird – and that’s just a box.”.

Curiously we found out that we’d both got, wildly different, books about Brum that we’re working on – not that I’m about to reveal what’s in either of them – but they both in a way are searching for a reason why Birmingham lost the status as the industrial and creative powerhouse it had during the birth of the Industrial Revolution.

“It was lost a little as creativity and industry separated, Birmingham got industry and that then faded. Birmingham is ready for some sort of renaissance of perception. Maybe that can come though art or music.” Do we need the fabled ‘Tony Wilson figure’? “Capsule are about the closest we’ve got to that.”

As I see it no other city has that figure anyway, for Birmingham it would be the equivalent of Ashley Blake running Capsule and the Custard Factory, while continuing to be news-totty for women of a certain age. I also think that the days of music as the defining cultural force of a city are gone, splintered by downloads and diluted by Blair’s 50% University quotas. Is there a visionary around for Brum from some other field?

There have been plenty of the years, and a brief type-cum-architecture walk Ben takes me on, in rapidly fading light, helps to prove that. Surprisingly, I find that Ben wasn’t a typography expert before being asked to do the tours: “I was asked, originally, to do the Baskerville tour and researched that, then for this year to do the type-specific tours. I find I look at buildings differently depending on what tours I’m conducting. Originally it was architecture, now I’m focusing more on the signage.”

“The type-tours aren’t just about signs that are ‘printed’, the Digbeth one in particular will be as interested in hand painted notes and other letter-forms. You can talk about theory, but often you can only guess at the intended purpose of so much of it – in a way the tours will be a conversation. If people want to disagree with me, that’s okay.”

I couldn’t find any fault with Ben’s observations of what’s been done to the signage over the door of the old Eye Hospital – whatever trendy wine bar that has taken over have plonked a steel and glass canopy directly over the lettering. “It’s as if they’re frightened of you going in, ordering a drink and asking them to take a look at your glaucoma.” They’ve left the work on the corner of the building intact though, and being with someone with a fine eye for detail, I see an almost playful blurring of the letters. Can you imagine an eye hospital

While there is interesting type everywhere, Ben is most animated when discussing the old, the disregarded, ghost signs, and when it’s modern things it’s those that are anything but corporate off-the-shelf Gil Sans. He promises me “what [he] hopes will become [my] favourite piece of signage in Birmingham, but first we take a walk towards the Jewellery Quarter, and past a huge piece of graffiti acting as a sign for the café next to The Snow Hill. “There aren’t professional sign-writers so much in this day and age, you can either go and get something printed or ask some kid who does graffiti. Look at the time and care that’s gone into that, it’s ordered, planned, but that tiny bit organic.”

A building that Ben is enamoured with is the HB Sale building on the corner of Constitution Hill and Hampton St, it has fantastic terracotta lettering on it, and also had this brilliant bit of work in the window:

sale

It’s round the back of this, and past the painted signwork on the current premises of HB Sale, that we come to the wonder that is ‘Socks Direct’. It’s not often that someone tells me something about Birmingham that I didn’t have an incling of, but I did not know about Socks Direct. Now I’ll not get my socks anywhere else. The sign itself is interesting because it’s not standard in any way, we spend a geeky five minutes pondering if the Ss are upside down. In order to get my own back I tell Ben about the Henrietta St café as we pass, of how seventies rock star Alvin Stardust was a regular there in the late nineties for breakfast. Ben likes research to much and asks for evidence – I will find some, but I don’t have any at the moment.

Proving that not even we like walking away from pubs, we pop for a swift half into the Hen and Chickens where Ben talks a little more about his plans, amongst Channel Five and bizarre alterations to the bar – he thinks there’s enough of an interest in the tours, both type and more historical for him to keep doing them. “There aren’t typographical tours anywhere else in the country, and if people are studying type then they’ll be willing to travel. For the tours of buildings there’s a constant market of tourists and Brummies that are interested – I do one every Sunday now.”

Ben Waddington will be talking to Chinny on his BBC WM show on Sunday 14 October, between 2 and 3pm. And you’ll find an article and photos in this weeks Birmingham News.

Here are the Type Tour details again:

Type Tour of Digbeth – 17, 18, 19 October, 12.30 – 14.30pm
Baskerville’s Birmingham – 20 October 12.30 – 14.30pm
City Centre Type Tour – 21 October, 12.30 – 14.30pm
All priced at £10 More Info

Ben’s Guided Architectural Tour of Birmingham Buildings run every Sunday at 10am and “ a Thursday noon tour for noon-owls”. More info or tickets from the Central Library reception (0121 303 2323) or from birminghamboxoffice.com

Rotunda development

COUNCIL PLAN TO ATTRACT MORE TOURISTS DESPITE LOSING CULTURE BID
ROTUNDA TO BECOME WORLD’S LARGEST HELTER-SKELTER

Undaunted Council chiefs yesterday unveiled their latest plan to bring more tourist money into the city – by redeveloping the Bullring area into a Brummagem Theme Park.

an artists impression of how the new Rotunda will look. Courtesy of Adam Juniper
The centrepiece will be the much-derided Rotunda, which will have it’s circular floors skewed slightly to allow for it to become a huge slide – at 500ft the largest in the World. Visitors will be able to take newly installed lifts to the top, although fitness fanatics will be able to climb the thousands of stairs, and then will reach up to 50mph sliding down on some of them rough mats like you get at helter skelters at the fair.
Thrillseekers will be spewed out onto the main inner ring-road, allowing them easy access to some of Birmingham’s top hospital facilities.

Plans are also afoot to redesign the new Selfridges building as a giant bouncy castle, and utilise St Martin’s Church as a resturant-cum-souvenir stall.

“As long as you can still get Tennants I think it’s a good idea.” said a passing tramp yesterday.

Watch the Rotunda disappear


Top magician, ‘the great Boundo’ wow-ed the audience at the very first Variety is Back! night by making the Rotunda disappear ‘as-live’.

You can watch it here, recorded for posterity, as if you were there!

David Copperfield, eat your heart out!

Pantomime Horse Grand National 2005

Sunday 4th December 2005

Watch the ‘behind the scenes’ video here

Despite receiving a grand total of no pounds (that’s nothing, you tight-arsed little monkeys) in sponsorship, BiNS entered the third Pantomime Horse Grand National. Meeting the other competitors in the Bacchus bar (now open til 12pm relaxed licensing hours laws fans) at 12, we sipped a pre-race bottle of Nastro Assuro despite the outrageous £3.75 price tag and tucked into some fantastic fish-based snack.

Pre-race rituals over with we traipsed up to City Plaza, who were kindly sponsoring the race by letting us change in one of their un-let shop windows. The pantomime horse costumes owed more to Bernie Clifton than anything else, and after squeezing myself into the silks attaching a seemingly never-ending number of false legs I thought I was up and running. Unfortunately I’d put my top on back to front and the cap was made for a five year-old and not my finely coiffured barnet.

Brummieoftheyear & his jockey in official BiNS colours

The 33 competitors were then led a merry dance, down New Street, even out-wierding the Hari Krishna for a change and neigh-ing enough to drown out the sound of the fellas selling the amazing bird whistles. A brief detour up to Marks and Sparks (they didn’t seem to want us in there), and it was up past Brasso and into the Bull Ring (sorry bullringoneword). For once there didn’t seem to be any need for queuing to get on the escalators, and the stony faces on some of the shoppers we trotted past were a joy to behold. I’m truly sorry for disrupting their frantic Christmas retail bulimia.

At the course, all the competitors were immediately sobered up by the sheer dangerousness of the fences, or perhaps it might have been the freezing cold and the inordinately long wait before the actual heats began.

Heart FM did the event proud, filling in until something actually happened with a vast array of single-entendres and we were all very grateful not to be treated to anything too much off their playlist. It was great to see a load of Brummies out and about suspending disbelief and while we hung around we made a load of new friends, including one completely over-excited Frenchman.

Now the race joiners’ pack had promised us the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Archbishop of York and the Lord Mayor, but only the Mayor was in evidence, still I wasn’t too disappointed as we had got to park in the secret underground Council Car Park (it’s not council as in the OTT Christmas lights, white tracksuit exposing ankles smokes Lambert & Butler way – it’s where the Councillors’ park). It’s fantastic, just as you’d have imagined Hitler’s Berlin Bunker with additional silver Daewoos.

Ladbrookes were having a field day, tic-ing and tac-ing for all they were worth, we were a slightly disappointing outsider at 25-1, but since we were drawn in heat two we decided that we could study the tactics of the runners in the first race and copy them. One guy/horse got off to a flyer – Rob Rum – and seemed to be tucking the horse’s head underneath his arm – I thought I would try that. Looking at the course, it also seemed to be well worth getting on the front of the starting grid (is that correct horse-racing terminology? I suspect not, please don’t write in) as the fat arses of the horses were going to prove difficult to get round.

After the first heat, the track had to be completely rebuilt, as most runners had decided to go through the jumps rather than over them – a manoeuvre not seen since the 110 metres hurdles was dropped from the paralympics.

A nip or two from my hip flask and a longing look over to the Bull Ring Tavern, just think I was waiting to start almost on the spot of one of my most famous sporting triumphs – surely you’ve heard about the time me and my mate Tony stopped on the pool table at the Toreador all night in 1994?

I was a woken from my slumber by the klaxon and we were off! Or at least the 15 or so people who had stood infront of me were, I paused and then gee-d the horse up, pelting toward the first obstacle. I place my best hoof forward and onto the fence and, …

went arse over head.

A fall-er at the first, I’d got pictures of people cursing me and tearing up betting slips (I was only to find out later that no-one had backed me anyway). But, broken, but not beaten I struggled on. With my short fat hairy legs, however, getting over the fences was proving to be a difficult task. I’d have done better with a step ladder, and before the final fence I’d all but given up, letting a old woman saunter past me and leaving myself in a dishonorable last place. (In fact I do believe that she’d stopped for a fag at some point)

This had its compensations, as last place in the slower heat of the Pantomime Horse Grand National is far more interesting than the tenth or so I might have been capable of – and at least I didn’t have to do it again in the final. Sky News were on hand to interview me as a gallant loser, I managed to look at the camera and only used one expletive in the short time I was on screen (if anyone has taped this I’d love to see if they can ‘bleep’ me out live on air).

Still, as the – tardy to say the least – Archbishop would have said, ‘the last shall be first’ and I was, the first across the road into the Bull Ring Tavern.

A swift pint or two later I was away, back out to see what was going on, whether they’d got anywhere near staging the final yet. They hadn’t, but the late (not dead) Archbishop of Canterbury had finally turned up. I was overjoyed and looking forward to having a discussion of his view on ordaning half-men-half-horses into the Church of England, but no sooner had he arrived but he was gone. Asking the Archbishop of York, “where’s His Grace f**cked off to?” didn’t seem to be the best answer, so i staggered off for some mulled wine in the German Market and that was that.

No idea who won.

& that’s that, thanks to all those who supported us (if not financially).
It was fun and I’m sure a very worthwhile day out.

Pantomime Horse Grand National 2006

They’re behind you! And they all were as Birmingham: It’s Not Shit’s Airbiscuit, ridden by Mickey Stokes romped home in the Pantomime Horse Grand National.

We’ll openly admit we didn’t think he’d do it – last year our horse came a distant last and the course this year was tougher than ever. Not only was there the chicane round the back of the Council House and people drunkenly celebrating Germanmas, but the final straights were up the 2:1 gradient of Newhall St. Brummie of the Year wouldn’t even of made it round the hard-core parade trip to Marks & Sparks. Down to the Bull Ring they trotted, past Smiths, waited with Brasso, then up to the cathedral where for some reason they did two circuits – amusing the park’s higher than the national average concentration of crap goths.

A canny rider, Mick, held Airbiscuit up and came second in his heat – qualifying for the final with a bit to spare. As long as frostbite didn’t set in he was in with a chance. It was tense, but they soon belted off through to Chamberlain Square and we stood around hoping for the best.

You couldn’t see what was going on round the back straight, Airbiscuit was second coming up to the water jump, but somehow made it into the lead for the torturous climb to the finish. Squirming through the last jump he was free and clear. Barring a Devon Lock, we’d won!

We did – all that remained was to pick up the cup! Councilor Ray Hassal, who has some experience in this area, being a Liberal, presented the third prize trophy, some bloke from the sponsors did second, then it was the turn of the Mayor, Councillor Mike Sharpe, to hand Mickey the magnum of champagne and the title of Pantomime Horse Grand National
Winner 2006.

No word on whether the Mayor is a fan of the site, but he’s certainly got a nice necklace.

Mick went off to celebrate, we’re told with 2006 Brummie Of The Year Jason Furnell – there’ll be some tales for the tabloids, well the Mail perhaps, in that booze session.

Well done Airbiscuit, and well done Mick, we’ll be back next year.

And with that all that’s left is for Big Chief Busks-with-Recorder from down by the ramp on New Street to play us out with the theme from some TV programme featuring horses, er, the Lone Ranger, de de dum de de dum
de de dum dum dum.

There’s loads more pictures on flickr, including some of the fillies race, just click to see.