This is my last one of these. And I’ve saved my favourite thing until last. Now I have a great affinity with the River Rea, that runs right the way through Digbeth. So much so that with John Mostyn, Adam Crossley and a few others I attempted a walk from the source (in Rubery) to confluence (in Gravelly Hill).
Unfortunately our unfit legs and failure to walk past a pub without stopping for a pint meant we only made it as far as Digbeth, where it resembles a drain more than a river. Director of Planning Clive Dutton promised to ‘give Birmingham a river’, Moses-style, but as yet this hasn’t happened and shows no sign of doing so before he moves down to London. So Birmingham’s river is largely hidden after it hits Highgate.
Belfast also has a hidden river, the River Farset, which busts through the city’s floor in jets for teenagers to play in.
It also has a much more visible one in the shape of the River Lagan. Me and Karen Strunks got a lovely sunshine boat trip along this courtesy of a Titanic Boat Tour, seeing Belfast’s boat-building heritage in all its glory. It was here we met Alan, who invited us to his home, a boat called The Confiance for the evening – where ‘culture is our cargo’.
It’s the fantastic Homeplace Project set up by the Lagan Legacy – they’ve bought an old Dutch barge to Belfast and are transforming it into organisational headquarters, a floating gallery and creative space for Belfast’s city centre on The Waterfront.
As a platform for current and future Lagan Legacy projects it seemed logical to equip the vessel, not just as offices, but as a venue to cater for as many types of projects as were likely to be included within the aims of the organisation. Hence, the Lagan Legacy Board decided to create a venue which would house a digital maritime heritage gallery and an extremely versatile and multifunctional Arts performance space with the potential to support a whole range of cultural events and programmes… Music, Theatre, Cinema, Art Exhibitions, Workshops and Conference and Seminar facilities.
Meanwhile, as work on developing this gets underway, lucky caretaker Alan gets to live on it.
Spending the evening on a boat, watching the river light up as darkness descended and drinking 45% whisky, was a lovely high-note to our weekend, made all the better for me by getting to drive a highly historic tug-boat at 4am. I’ve never driven a boat before – navigating a path between the foundations of bridges was a little hairy but I did fine and went to bed as the sun was rising feeling a little proud, not least because we worked out I was probably the first woman to have gotten behind the wheel of the 85 year-old vessel.
So, because it gave me a night to remember, I’m afraid the River Lagan wins it for Belfast. Yes, I know we have beautiful waterways with more canals and Venice, with their cute old barges and narrow boats. But we don’t have boats that look more like spaceships.
A Tasmanian designer obsessed with Star Trek designed the Enterprise, Voyager and Discovery vessels, the last of which is above. Lagan Legacy Director Derek Booker took great pleasure in telling us the man at the helm of the Voyager is a Mr Kirk. Yes, that’s right. Captain Kirk, who, upon entering any harbour has to say over the radio, “Captain Kirk requesting permission to enter.” You can imagine the responses.
We also don’t tend to have hot sailor-boys like this one:
Birmingham did have one cute man who lived on a boat in Birmingham in the shape of writer Steve Coxon, but artist Melinda Schwakhofer went and enticed him down to Devon like a siren after her special Digbeth holiday here. And they’ve gone and created a love-nest lifestyle for themselves down south.
So that’s where I’m off to this weekend, to see Melinda and Steve in his new habitat, and find out what he does and doesn’t miss about his old stomping ground of Digbeth.
Oh yes. You’ve had #brumvsbelfast. Now it’s time for #digbethvsdevon.
Andy Mabbett asked how Belfast Social Media Surgeries and Cafe’s are doing. Now, I don’t know much about Belfast’s social media scene but I was lucky enough to meet someone who did – Phil O’Kane, a Belfast photographer who took part in the 4am Project, met up with Karen Strunks and I for a drink (and didn’t make it home until the following morning after falling asleep on a sofa, but that’s another story). He seemed to know his stuff, so I took the opportunity to milk him for the information Andy wanted.
Seems their social media cafes are more commonly known as OpenCoffee Belfast, ‘an informal meet-up for people with an interest in technology, the internet, business and startups’ in Charlie’s Coffee Shop every other week.
Rather than our Barcamps, Belfast has San Fancisco export Cupcake Camp, ‘an ad-hoc get-together where participants bake and bring cupcakes to share and socialise. It’s organised primarily over the internet, making use of the most modern communications to get people involved.’
For the more tech savvy, there’s Build, ‘a leading-edge event covering design, standards, best practice and accessibility on the web.’ It’s organised by Andy McMillan, who seems to have a bit of a habit of organising good stuff like events, fringes and photo walks in and around Belfast. Good chap.
There’s quite a bit going on down south too, which many from Northern Ireland make the effort to go to. Phil feels because there’s more money and people in southern Ireland, the scene seems to be growing a lot more down there.
There’s also Blogger/Twitter/Whatever meet-ups, ‘an informal gather of people who are interested in (but not limited to) blogging, social media and the web’ that sound not unlike our Brumbloggers meets. BTW’s have popped up in Dublin and Cork. They’re organised by an Irish blogger called Jason Roe, an interesting man who caused a very heated debate after he noticed a little ‘bug’ in Ryanair’s online booking system and blogged about it. Rather than thanking him for highlighting the error, staff proceeded to leave some pretty angry coments on the post. Ryanair’s official response to this bad behaviour?:
“Ryanair can confirm that a Ryanair staff member did engage in a blog discussion. It is Ryanair policy not to waste time and energy corresponding with idiot bloggers and Ryanair can confirm that it won’t be happening again. Lunatic bloggers can have the blog sphere all to themselves as our people are far too busy driving down the cost of air travel.”
So it seems Ryanair don’t like bloggers half as much as BMI Baby, who are itching to fly us to their destinations.
I’m loathe to say Birmingham wins this one for being awesome, for fear of sounding far too self-congratulatory, so I’ll leave the outcome up to you. But it is nice to swap notes with people from other places and see what’s going on elsewhere. And it was lovely to meet Phil, even if he was unconscious by midnight. Lightweight.
Now, there’s actually a bit of debate around this in Belfast. McHugh’s, near the Albert Clock, boasts of being the oldest pub as it opened in 1711.
Me and Karen Strunks had a peek whilst we were there and to be honest, the funky interior makes it pretty hard to tell its old age until you look at the walls.
However, the more traditionally decked-out White’s Tavern lays claim to being ‘Belfast’s Oldest Tavern’, proudly sporting the date 1630.
Photo by mikemuryn1
Not nearly as old, but lovely all the same, is National Trust owned Crown Liquor Saloon, which opened in 1885. Me and Karen had lunch in one of their famous snugs and sank a pint or three of Guinness. Here’s my bad photos, which don’t really do the gorgeous interior justice:
The Crown is next door but one to Robinson’s Saloon, established in 1845, which my Uncle Ernie seems to spend every possible waking hour in, so I’m guessing it’s good.
Of course, Birmingham has its fair share of old pubs too. By far the oldest is The Old Crown in Digbeth, which claims to date back to 1368. However, there are worrying rumours that The Old Crown isn’t as old as it says it is.
But even if it isn’t quite as ancient as it purports to be, The Old Crown is still a ripe old age having opened in the late 1400’s, and older than any of the pubs in Belfast.
In this video clip Ben Waddington talks about the vast array of old Digbeth pubs, some of which still remain – like The Spotted Dog, Big Bulls Head, The Anchor, The Lamp Tavern and The White Swan.
So the pub telling little porkies wins it for Birmingham. It’s not that old, but it’s still bloody old.
I have a cat called Samson. Here he is, next to my Flip camera:
He’s a lot sweeter than he looks and makes a great size scale. Using cats as size scales is my patented Genius Technique, which has been embraced by others. One day it will make me very rich.
Belfast has a Samson too – a ruddy great big old Harland & Wolff crane who, with his brother Goliath, dominates the Belfast skyline.
Well, that’s just silly, isn’t it? At 308 feet tall, Samson Crane is far too tall to be used as a size scale – he’d just dwarf everything put beside him and make it all look teeny. Samson Cat is a far more sensible size and proof that small is beautiful. He wins it for Birmingham, but seems pretty nonplussed by his victory.
There’s a surprising amount of animal life on the urban streets of Digbeth. So much so, I made a map out of it with the help of Pete Ashton’s photography:
I wasn’t expecting to find much faunography in Belfast. How wrong I was. Imagine my delight at discovering Belfast Castle’s Cat Garden, a testament to an old story that a white cat has always lived there. It’s a beautifully kept garden with 9 felines – mosaic cats, sculptured cats, hedge cats…
It was upon visiting this garden and getting near deafened by mine and Karen’s high-pitched squeals that our poor taxi tour driver learnt the difference between us lesser-spotted bloggers and the more common-garden, journalist-on-a-press-trip fodder. It’s a garden full of cats.KITTEHS. Belfast wins.
I’m answering Shona McQuillan’s question here. Regular readers will know I’m no stranger to these. I was a tad ill after my Digbeth Week of Breakfasts, done with local historian Richard Trengrouse to bring to you the world of Digbeth’s cafe’s.
Now in Belfast they have something a little different to the Full English. They have the Ulster Fry:
According to Wikipedia ‘A traditional Ulster Fry consists of bacon, eggs, sausages, soda bread and potato bread…Other common components include mushrooms or wheaten bread. All this is traditionally fried.’ Oof.
However, even that is not as likely to bring on a coronary as this gargantuan number:
Michael Grimes was served this in Birmingham’s wholesale markets after doing the 4am project outing on 4th April. What he managed to eat was a full platter of 4 fried eggs, 4 plum tomatoes, 4 sausages, 4 bacon rashers and mushrooms all floating on an unseen bed of beans. With toast and tea. I can’t imagine anywhere else on the planet that would see fit to serve that for breakfast at 5 o’clock in the morning. Birmingham wins the Stroke Inducing Breakfasts round for the most ridiculous portion size I’ve ever seen.
As far as I know, Birmingham currently only has 1 Getgood – myself. There was a guy called Adam Getgood who went to Birmingham University but I think he’s moved away since graduating. It seems I’m on my lonesome. (Let me know if you know different.)
Belfast has loads – Uncle Ernie, Aunie Margaret, cousins Ian and Jude. Not to mention all those lovely little Getgoods:
Uncle Ernie likes to pass down the family traditions to them:
He also has the Getgood eccentric streak. Look what he did to Chez Getgood’s oil tank:
So Belfast wins on having more Getgoods. Whether or not this is entirely a good thing, I’ll leave up to you to decide.
She’s also known as The Ring of Thanksgiving, Nuala with the Hula or The Doll with the Ball. Whatever her name is, she’s a bit scrawny, ain’t she? I prefer my sculpture women a bit more curvaceous, just like me. Birmingham’s Floozie in the Jacuzzi wins for having a more meat on her bones.
Both Belfast and Birmingham have iron men on the steps of a central square. First up, we have Belfast’s ‘The Speaker’ in front of the Custom House on Custom House Square:
These steps were traditionally a platform for public speaking up until the 1950’s and it’s said this was Ian Paisley’s first gig venue (a dubious honour).
Now The Speaker’s good – he’s full of spark and shout. But the heavy-duty loungecore that is Thomas Attwood appeals to me more. So there we have it – Birmingham’s Thomas Attwood wins it on my whim.
