Forgotten Lands and Disputed Territories

-

Well, I've done it again: cooked myself something - Jane wanted something different, anyway - and then decided it would be better left overnight to eat tomorrow. As it is a chicken and tomato curry - jazz, naturally; no recipe for this one - I'm probably right in letting it steep in its juices overnight, anyway. And so it was a very fine cheese & ham toastie for me.  Earlier today for some random reason, I was pondering on the definition and scope of The Black Country: that amorphous expanse of geopolitical/economic/demography sat plonk in the middle of the UK mainland.

Now, I, like my dwindling cohort of peers, was born a Brummie. And one thing is absolutely for certain: we were not born or raised in the Black Country, as Brummagem ay in it, despite the contemporary characterisation that The Black Country extends from somewhere just north of the Watford gap to Stoke-on-Trent; that ay true, my friend. Although, to be fair, I'm misappropriating ay as the contraction of is not: as a Brummie, born & bred [and specifically from Winson Green: the Shadowland between Brum and Smethwick], the normal currency would be 'ain't' with a suitably strangled diphthong at its heart.

When I was around ten or so, my dad took us on a Sunday drive for a tour of The Black Country in a car he'd just bought - can't exactly remember which one, but I suspect it was the Riley 1.5, our second motor car - pointing out exactly which bits of the Midlands, in his view, were parts of The Black Country, and which bits were most definitely not. The thing is that even among those born and raised in The Black Country proper - and dad took the view passed down to him by his mom, that Smethwick was not in The Black Country - there is no firm agreement as to this mythical land's scope and boundaries.

Suffice it to say, Brummagem ay, and Rowley Regis be. Smethwick? Hard to say, but I ain't arguin' with either me dad or me nan on this one, God rest 'em both... 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Of Feedback & Wobbles

-
Image
Many years ago I came up with an analogy for poorly damped feedback loops. The feedback loop that prompted this frankly tart analogy was indeed a horror. Anyone who remembers shame-faced their first attempts at clutch control resulting in the good old kangaroo launch across the lights only to stall in the middle of the crossroads will have some idea of the kind of data transfer lag involved in said system. The analogy I made was that of a large blancmange. Untouched, a model of stasis and eminently stable and predictable; but prod the bugger and the resultant chaotic behaviour needs a very complex physical model and some very decent computing horsepower to predict its outputs, if at all. The system in question was a large and complex audio-visual display at what eventually became 'The Electric Mountain' in Llanberis. We were ultimately contracted to maintain the thing having been witness to and peripherally involved in its installation. Certainly not involved in its des
Read more

Sister Ray

-
Image
Ray Keats - aka Ann Key - local artist & family friend, died this morning. She'd been ill for some years, but never let it get in the way of her work or of tending to the massive network of friends, colleagues and fans she had accumulated over the decades. Her house on the High Street of Rachub, just below where we live - a former cockle factory(!) - bought many years ago when she and her late husband Ronald moved here from Manchester to set up home in Yr Achub, is currently still home to her paintings and drawings, and the front window displays her work, including the last drawing she made in hospital, just days before she died. Her good friend Colin has been a diamond in her latter years, looking out for her and just being there when she needed him. She will be much missed by this tiny community of ageing bohemians up here in the hills, but suffice it to say, George, her cat, will be well looked after now she's gone.
Read more

A Time of Connection

-
Image
I was just reflecting on the vacuum of continuity that's left behind when someone dies: that sudden sense of disjoint, of fracture, in one's personal history that takes one completely by surprise at the oddest moments. These pinch-points in memory can often yield some surprising revelations of fact about periods in one's past. One such occurred to me tonight, tending my rather lazy meal of pizza in its journey from shrink-wrap to mouth via the oven. Al's recent demise still catches me out from time to time: the space he left bounded by forty plus years of friendship. But the thing that struck me tonight was just how much change was happening on a personal and social level in the very early years of our acquaintance. Between moving here from Birmingham in September 1980 and our buying our first proper house eighteen months later, all manner of things occurred that would chart the course of our lives to the present day. At around the time of our meeting Alan & Irene [
Read more