NYE Express #1: Recovery and Retrospective

A traveler blows in the New Year

After having a very long, marathon sleeping session I think I’ve just about recovered from my 12-hour New Year sit-in in the new Birmingham Coach Station. It was a great night and surprisingly good fun – I cannot recommend enough that everyone spends a little time watching the world go by in the nearest coach or train station, to experience where you live as a traveler. You’ll see a truly different side to your area and get to talk to some very interesting people passing through it, who all have their own stories to tell.

Midge passes through before going to a Sheldon house party

I’ll be writing up some of the stories I got to hear here under the heading NYE Express, a title thought up by Midge, who kindly popped by to see me with a little something to see me through the night.  He wasn’t the only one:

• Ben Mabbett was at the station waiting for me when I arrived with a little bottle of bubbly in a brown paper bag, which was ever so thoughtful.
• Mark popped by with some Jameson’s and his own story to tell (more on that later).
• Our very own Carl came along before seeing in the New Year on the balcony of his Digbeth apartment so he could watch the fireworks.
• Seeing in the New Year at the station with me were Pete Ashton, Fiona Cullinan and Alan Colson (follow the name links to their very interesting Flickr photos).  As were photographer Karen Strunks, Karen Canard and her mother Ada.

National Express Information Desk staff

Thanks to the lovely press office people at National Express, my night there also got a bit of press attention:

• A New Year’s Eve article in the Birmingham Mail.
• On the morning of New Year’s Eve I was on BBC Radio WM chatting to Daz Hale – you can listen again here for one week (I’m at the tail-end of the show, roughly 2:18 in).
• Roughly  twenty-two hours later I was back in Radio WM studio chatting to Brett Birks about the experience.  The programme is not available to listen again but Alan Colson took a sneaky audioboo:

I managed to collect quite a few stories during the night. Watch this space for future NYE Express posts to read all about them.