Milestones

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Being having a tidy-up today, in the absence of any other inspiration or weather decent enough to venture forth in. It's interesting what you find in boxes: in this case under the bed. Three documents, two personal and one, well, nicked from school. My first bank account was a childrens' savings account with as you can see, the Birmingham Municipal Bank (Rotton Park Branch). This later became part of TSB and is now again, after disappearing for a while, part of Lloyds TSB. Intriguingly, my first adult bank account was with Lloyds Bournville branch. The pass book shown informs me that my account held, as of March 21st 1963, the princely sum of two pounds, fifteen shillings, or £2.75p in decimal currency (for those too young to remember; yes, we used to have a monetary system that was duodecimal: that's base twelve, folks!) With compound interest, that could be worth about oh, eight quid, now? I'll hang on to the book as a keepsake, anyway.

The other personal document is my first passport, from 1979. Looking at the photograph I look about 16 or 17, where in reality I was twenty-four. It contains the only two entry and exit visa stamps I've ever had; as Greece in those days was not part of the EU (EEC, Common Market, whatever) and accordingly, you got stamped. Subsequently, I've never travelled anywhere outside the EU (that's now changed: thanks, Brexiteers) as I've not really any particular interest in travelling further afield than that. It's enough.

The third thing in the photograph is the slim book produced by the Cadbury brothers about the City of Birmingham: 'Our Birmingham'. We had this at my junior school, and I filched this one from my secondary school library. What's intriguing about the thing is how much better the city centre looked before they started buggering about with it. True to form, the flagship civic/architectural statement, which still features the fountain and the Hall of memory, was only half completed: I take it they either ran out of money or the contractors ran out of town. Pity, because the original scheme was not a half bad design of its kind.

There we are then, another random trot through the archives. I think I might put something up about that aborted civic scheme at some point, it could be interesting to research that one.

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