Recently in Lifestyle Category

Move over Birmingham Forward, cast aside the Chamber, dispense with the IOD. I've discovered a hot new networking option for the city.

Forgive me if I'm terribly behind the times. I suspect I came to this rather late as I was clearly not a regular when I popped in this week. The good news is that there's no membership fee and you pay just £4.50 to enter during the day, and less in the evenings.

Before Richard, Jerry and John choke on their morning coffees, I should reveal that I'm talking about the services on the M6 Toll which is clearly the networking venue of choice for some of Birmingham's professionals.

I did feel like a stranger walking into a Wild West saloon to be greeted by stony silence and worried looks, but I suspect that was more do to with one group of people who were clearly having a clandestine meeting.

It all made Starbucks on Colmore Row look very tame...

Heinz meanz beanz - not baked beanz any longer. Yes, that's the latest from the only news front that seems to matter at the moment, the wonderful and increasingly expensive world of retail.

Appropriate really, because as an increasingly financially beleaguered pensioner (well that's how one of those latest surveys characterised us) I've decided to become a bean counter as well as a hypermiler.

But Heinz won't figure in my calculations - haven't for quite a while.

I've been a bit quiet on the blog front for the last few weeks as I've been on the road. There was one week when I managed to visit three of the four countries which make up the UK, missing only my birth nation of Scotland. And I can now categorically say that if you've seen one Travelodge, you've seen them all.

In each town or city I've visited, I've had to introduce myself to new people or groups, and mention that I live in Brum.

And something remarkable happened. For the first time, I've not had to defend our city from jibes or jokes - and to be honest, it was a relief. Times, they are a'changing.

Comment of the week went to...well, I'd better not name him for fear of reprisals from elsewhere in the region:

"Birmingham's great. Lovely friendly people. Great shopping, and good for music too. Shame about all those folk with odd accents from the Black Country who claim to be Brummies. Y'now - like Lenny Henry".

Now that's a spin on the city/region debate I hadn't heard before!

I was at a conference a few weeks ago, which was debating the essence of identity for Brits and Americans. It was run by the British American Project, an organisation which exists to build relationships between the two countries.

I've been to a few of their events previously and always find them to be enormously stimulating, not least because of the cast lists they assemble. There can be few places where your dining companions include a professional poker player, a young female Church of England Vicar, a National Lottery Commissioner, a whistle-blower on Ken Livingstone's administration, and a Scottish Chieftain. Oh, and Trevor Philips as the after-dinner speaker.

In trying to define what it meant to be British, all the usual hackneyed definitions were wheeled out by conference delegates: "if you can explain the rules of cricket and sing Jerusalem, you must be British" being my perennial favourite. Well forgive me, but being brought up in Scotland, neither cricket nor 'England's green and pleasant land' was high on the curriculum choices at my school.

A weekend of beef and Buddhism - the contrast could hardly be wider!

At the Royal Show at Stoneleigh we caught the judging for the Burke Trophy, the country's top beef prize for a male/female pair from a breed. Interesting for the kids and townies like me to see a whole range of cattle on display, from Herefords to British Blues, Limousins to Charolais and more, with an excellent and informative commentary.

Since the age of about 18, when I found an old copy under my then boyfriends bed, I have been an ardent reader of Viz comic. Yes, it has been viewed as sexist and politically incorrect, but the humour is dry and satirical, something which you rarely find anywhere else these days, and something that I crave once every now and then. Having been in China for well over a year, I have felt a massive void when it comes to humour. And so, with a pleading email to my father every few months, he nips down to the local newsagents and hastily posts me a copy of the latest Viz. Good old Dad. Why is his 25-year-old daughter more interested in reading an adolescent boy's comic and not Heat magazine, he must wonder.

However, inbetween Viz comics I have found a satisfying relacement. The English language Chinese newspaper. The 'fillers' are my favourite. The fact that these are true stories that the Editor has selected out of all the happenings in China, I find delightfully amusing. It puts me in mind of the 'Letterbocks' pages from Viz, where readers write in with their own ridiculous tales.
Yesterday's paper entertained me with such newsworthy stories as the following, "a yellow-billed grosbeak slammed into a shop window and died in Taiyuan, capital of Shanxi province.
A second bird settled on the ground near the dead animal, appearing to keep vigil.
A woman passing by surnamed Liu tried to explain to the lingering live bird - which of course did not understand her flurry of excited hand signals - that she would give the dead grosbeak a proper buriel."
- Shanxi Evening News

How that didnt make front page, I will never know.
I like to imagine that lady frantically doing sign language to a bird, trying to tell it that she will give it's mate a plush funeral. And in my imagination, the bird is looking back at her with one of those "she's mental" expressions on it's little furry face.

Another one of my favourites from the same issue, is...
"A woman in Hankou, Hubei province, did not see her husband when she woke up on Tuesday morning. He did not answer her calls all day.
Worried that he might have been kidnapped, she alerted police that he was missing.
Later, officers found the man camping out on the roof of their home.He said he was hiding from a gang of criminals who had recently threatened him at the small grocery store he owns.
Both police and his wife wondered why the man, 42-year-old Huang Liang, had not informed his spouse."
- Chutian Metropolis Daily

Fabulous. Have I been away too long, or are these the kinds of newsworthy stories we find in western papers too? Perhaps it's the way that the stories are worded that amuses me.. Or perhaps i've just been eating too much street BBQ food this week.

I thoroughly enjoyed Michael Palin's diaries of his years in Monty Python, he's amusing, literate and as has been widely noted very very very nice, but reading them made me feel somewhat inadequate. Here's a man that was writing and performing not only in Python, but films, his own Ripping Yarns series, and various theatre appearances, he was on the board of Shepperton studios, partner in an arts publishing business, father to three small children, having "rather nice claret" at lunch with various luminaries of the day, but the killer was that he still found time to be on his local residents committee.

You can easily imagine the hopelessly amiable Palin, bumbling though life painlessly overachieving in all of his chosen fields, as well as the feeling of inadequacy it also inspires you a little that nice guys don't have to finish last. Especially if they don't consider they're racing anyone.

I'm glad I read it thirty or so years after the event though, imagine how wearing it would be to read Palin's blog each day or worse hear about every effortless triumph on twitter.

OK, I am about to out myself: I am a huge fan of BBC Radio 4.

Before you start thinking "But I thought she was supposed to be a young professional?", I am fully aware that I probably lower the average listener age by at least a decade, but for those of you not yet hooked I would urge you to tune in and listen before you mock. It is my broadcast news provider of choice, and would be a hot contender for my luxury, were I ever to be invited to be on Desert Island Discs.

However, even I have been struggling with Radio 4 recently. They've been running an extended series of programmes around 1968, including 1968 - Day by Day which has been compiled and hosted by the eminent broadcaster and former Managing Director of the Barbican Centre in London, Sir John Tusa.

Being born in 1972, it's hardly surprising that I didn't 'get' 1968, and I felt it was a bit of an own goal for Radio 4 which is trying to lower its listenership to include 30-somethings. Why, then, run a series of reminiscences which are most likely only of interest to those aged 55+?

The irony was not lost on me. At the point at which I heard that it was 'National Work from Home Day', it was 0600 and I was driving to the airport for an 18-hour daytrip to Belfast to deliver a training course.

In the same news bulletin I learnt of the Government's wish to introduce the right for flexible working for parents of all children up to 16 years of age. Great, I thought - but why stop there?

How long ago did punk splutter out? Remember all those safety pins and slits? What about the New Romantics and hefty blokes slapping on the lippy and eye shadow? How about the much, much earlier Teddy Boys?

I recall going in my early teens to an old tailor working from the front room of a terraced house in the back streets of south Lowestoft to get some trousers narrowed to the cool 14-inch bottoms that everyone wanted in those days. Drainpipes, they were, my cheapo attempt to emulate my fashion idols of those days, the young fishermen (pictured) who were earning loadsamoney every week and getting suits hand made at Edwards in the High Street. They were in outrageous colours and combined Teddy Boy styles with cowboy touches.