I took a stroll down Cheapside today to take a look at what was left of the D&P Textiles warehouse after the massive fire yesterday. As you can see from the photos, quite a bit of damage has been done – the roof of the storage area has completely gone.
One of the guys clearing up said, “It’s made a lot of mess. But it’s made the news, it’s made this area famous.” Although I’d like to think Digbeth can be famous for a bit more than a fire, he’s not wrong:
BBC News reported on the ’suspicious’ nature of the fire and the building’s asbestos roof, which apparently ‘poses no risk to the public’. Good to know.
The Birmingham Post quoted a lot of numbers – ‘45 firemen tackled the blaze…ten engines, three main jets and a hydraulic platform had been used to douse the fire.’
The Express and Star disagreed with the Birmingham Post and said there were 60 firemen. They’ve got a picture of three of them squirting hosepipes at the blaze.
The Birmingham Mail predicted Monday morning ‘commuter misery’ due to resulting road closures, which I was surprised by as the Bradford Street entrance to Rea Street was open by the end of Sunday and Cheapside is not a major route road. Did anyone experience any problems this morning?
According to an update report on BBC News today, Managing Director of D&P Textiles Phil King has promised the factory will reopen soon, and ‘he hoped his workforce of 35 women would be back at their machines within the next couple of weeks.’ Let’s hope the mammouth clean-up operation he faces goes as smoothly as possible.
Thank God the only casualties were clothes. However, I did manage to find one surviving item – a lone piece red and gold ribbon. This now has a new home in the DiGpuss Shop of found items.
It seems some dirty, lowdown thief has gone on a shoplifting spree in the DiGpuss shop – my rather unusual shop that doesn’t sell anything. My special shop of things people have lost that I have found and bought home to DiGpusss….my cat DiGpusss…
The thief stole the following seven items:
But all is not lost. It seems the thief made his escape through the Custard Factory and was pretty careless, dropping the items in the shops there that he visited (no doubt to nick more stuff).
Please help me find the seven stolen Precious Things. There’s a reward in it – if you find a picture of one of the above items in a Custard Factory shop take it to the person behind the till, who will give you something nice to say Thank You.
Once upon a time, not so long ago, there was a little girl and her name was Nicky. And she had a shop. Here it is.
It was rather an unsual shop because it didn’t sell anything. You see, everything in that shop window was a thing that somebody had once lost and Nicky had found.
Yes, the random crap I keep finding and photographing on the Digbeth streets can now be seen through the window panes of my very own DiGpuss shop. Please go and take a look. If you hover over the window panes and click on the image within it will take you to the Flickr photo page.
The above image is my favorite find so far – a discarded photo of a biker girl. In my head it was thrown away by the owner of the second helmet, an embittered ex-lover. The truth of how it ended up on Bradford Street is probably a lot more boring than that. Does anyone know who this girl is, and how her photo came to be there? Are you she? Please comment if so.
Many thanks to Shona McQuillan for a grand idea and Michael Grimes for making the magic happen. There are a few browser issues with DiGpuss (it’s a big fan of FireFox and Safari, but doesn’t seem to like Opera very much). But as poor Michael, who put a lot of hard work into it says, ‘please appreciate that all the work here is voluntary and time is scarce; and head-scratching hurts.’
