The summer arrived this weekend as far as we are concerned as the swifts are back, complete with full on screeching and unmistakable sickle shaped silhouettes streaking across the skies. Some people talk of swallows heralding the summer but for us, while they are certain a welcome site, they like the martins, arrive a little earlier and it is the swifts that come back last to enjoy what we laughably call a summer. I do not have high hopes for a good one this year. It seems to have been quite a dry spring so I am expecting perpetual rain through the summer months, but let’s see.

The swift boys being back in town though made me think about the signals and rituals people have to measure the passage of time. Because they keep coming around at a terrifyingly fast rate it seems. I have lost count of the number of times people have commented on ‘it’s not that time again, already!?’ and the expression of disbelief that time is flying. I’ve discussed before how it is most likely a perception based on the way your life is going through that period of time and what you are really focused on at any point which warps the view of how fast time is passing. For example, recently I have realised just how difficult it is to answer the question ‘how are you guys, then?’ when we meet friends that we may not have seen for a while. I do not really want to use the cop outs of ‘fine’ or ‘well, enough’ but frankly most times I do not have much else to say. At the moment are lives are, well, being lived. Mostly they are devoid of drama and concerns are mostly about how to fix the leaking tap, and whether the war against the ground elder is one that can be won. It is quite amazing how busy you can feel while not apparently achieving very much or undergoing any major life changes. Let us be clear, I am not after drama – we all know that in the next moment something could happen that make us wish for the simpler situation. But I feel now that while perhaps not in the prime of life, we are in second book of the trilogy of life, building on what was established in book one and before the endgame of book three. The early part of my life was marked by schooling, exams and First Times. Graduation, first job, moving out of home, first broken heart, finding the Lovely Wife, marriage, failing to have children and having to deal with that… It’s all pretty exciting stuff. But I have done all of that.

Looking forward now I see vague thoughts of retirement, getting more involved in volunteering for things that matter to me, enjoying the achievements of people I have known as children going through the kind of stuff that I did (but, hopefully, better). At the moment we are reasonably fit and healthy and long may that continue, but that will bring changes inevitably as we age.

But for the moment, most of the big changes have happened or are not on the immediate horizon. We are in good enough health to pretty much do what we like and have the time and resources to enjoy things like the theatre or go to gigs. We have a family schedule and it is booking now well into 2018 between work and social responsibilities. No wonder I feel time is flying. But I have come around to not worrying too much about that because I like busy and this is the time to enjoy life day to day as the ship sails on a reasonably steady course, as there are icebergs to come and we might be too busy steering to avoid them to live the frenetic but enjoyable life we are currently gifted with.

I think it is time for a nice cup of tea and a short break before attempting the next thing of the very long to do list.

I’m now back after a break for the Lovely Wife and I to enjoy our anniversary and reflecting on a very enjoyable week in Bruges. We were self-catering in a very central apartment in possibly the least Bruges-like development (i.e. post 1600 in style) that the owner of the flat euphemistically referred to as ‘The Project’. Any disappointment at the frigid modernity of the accommodation was quickly dispelled by proximity to the centre and the patisserie over the road.

I had been to Bruges once before many years ago and remembered enjoying it and to the Lovely Wife it was a completely new deal, a heady mix of water and cobblestones, lots and lots of cobblestones in fact, the only thing more numerous being the hordes of tour groups in certain areas of the city at certain times. Afternoons in Bruges, when visiting, seem to be a lot more pleasant sitting in a bar drinking the local brew rather than fighting the hordes following people with flags. Alternatively, walk one street away from the main sites and see no one at all, something we previously experienced to our delight in Venice. The old part of Bruges is terribly pretty throughout, with lots of interesting medieval buildings, random bits of canal and quiet courtyards of alms-houses. We especially were taken by the prevalence of crafty little wisteria plants that seemed to be inserted at fairly regular intervals, making even the most ordinary of streets just look a bit more scenic and worth promenading.

As well as visiting (and the obligatory eating and drinking – we were on holiday after all) we did a surprising amount of talking, or rather listening. Because I am not sure I have been away somewhere recently where, after an initial reticence, complete strangers opened up to us. There was the Australian lecturer who, having sat next to us in a bar, knocking back the Leffe and cigarettes while listening to podcasts (about Marilyn Monroe, we later learned) turned out to be rather chatty (she was from Melbourne, speaking at a conference in London and had taken to opportunity to nip across the channel for a bit of exploring). Waiting staff were also good value, providing the restaurant was not too busy. It turned out, for example, that a restaurant which (according to the guidebooks) specialised in playing the works of Mozart as a background to the obligatory mussels and fries (Belgium fries, as it was pointed out in several places, this being very much Flanders territory; the misappropriation of thin strips of deep fried potato to the French clearly still rankles) was now specialising in 1980s British electronica was because the head waiter was a massive fan of the genre. I do not even know how we started the conversation about that but soon we were regaled by his impressive list of gigs he was going to and possibly more impressively his list of ex-wives and associated issues. Normally this is the kind of download that I expect from bored ladies of a certain age that I often run into when visiting churches, but it certainly added amusement to our evening. It did not seem to be served up to everyone, but maybe we just have the kind of faces that makes people want to tell us about themselves. If so, I’m grateful for that because as a species we simply do not do enough talking to each other, especially conversing with complete strangers. If we did, maybe the world would be in a better state. As it is, one of the things that will stay with me from this week will not just be the beer, art and aforementioned cobblestones but the middle aged waiter so excited that he was soon going to see Depeche Mode play – for the umpteenth time, apparently.

In the last few days there has been a lot in the news about mental health issues, especially in relation to their prevalence and the impact they may have on younger people. I was pleased that this is now getting more recognition and maybe even getting some kind of action to something that has often been overlooked.

First off, I’m going to have a little bit of rant on this specific area, but please do not think I am any way promoting this over other age groups that can have difficulties (including my own, and I mean that very personally too) or the different types of mental health issues that many people suffer. This is vast, and I just cannot cover everything in few hundred words so I’ll let other people talk about that. Or maybe I will give my thoughts some other week.

Anyway, my own epiphany in trying to understand this came from some very interesting TED talks which challenged me (there are quite a few, I particularly like this one https://www.ted.com/talks/guy_winch_the_case_for_emotional_hygiene )

The challenge partly was why society tends to treat issues with mental health in a very different way to physical health, in terms perhaps not so much as the level of effort put against it (and I say that because there are many physical conditions which are underfunded/not given the same level of support as others) but in the stigma that is often consciously or unconsciously attached to them. This is also true to the point that most people, myself included, do not know how to help manage our mental state when it is put upon by something that knocks us out of kilter, whether it be a temporary thing or something we have to live with for an extended period.

Where I live, in a nice and relatively affluent English town just outside the M25 it all looks pretty good on the surface. I would say that in many areas most of the young people growing up here are really lucky. It is certainly a very different from where I grew up in the North East of the England. There is more money, more obvious opportunities and certainly I feel very blessed now to be living here (and if we had been able to have children I would have been happy to see them grow up here). However, at the same time, there is a side to this that increasingly worries people and it latches onto one of two themes with youth I feel passionately about. One of those themes is potential, which I have touched on before. But this week what worries me is the pressure to succeed and be seen as a success, which drives a distressingly large number of young people in the area I live to suffer a range of issues up to and sadly including suicide.

It seems something quite intense to me possibly because I do not recall having the problem. As the first person in my family to get into university the only pressure I felt at school was self-imposed – my parents where incredibly supported but as they left school with no qualifications anything I achieved they rejoiced in. I wanted to do well to justify the sacrifices they had made but they, and the environment where I lived, did not place expectations on me, consciously or unconsciously.

My home town now is very different to this and manifests that atmosphere of high expectation in a way that makes people feel they must succeed and succeed all the time and that one misstep might suddenly destroy some conceptual version of their future life and career. With experience, you know that while things might get more difficult or your plans might have to change, there are always possibilities. But the ‘it’s all over if you don’t get your grades’ mentality remains. It is reinforced at every turn, by families, peers and in social media – often acting with the best of intentions. Many times everything is fine, I am blessed to know a lot of young people who have learned to cope; but when it does go wrong it can be catastrophic.

The good news; people seem to be talking about this now, which is always a good start if you want to get somewhere. I am hoping to be involved in at least one local project that will try and be a support group for local youth to try and mitigate some of that anxiety  that can be harmful – I hope it is at least able to help save some kids from suffering necessarily. That would be a success for me, or perhaps I should say a good place to start.

Are you confused by acronyms? I certainly am, and as an employee of a large corporate organisation this can be a bit of a problem as the cliché is that this is one of the acronym’s finest breeding grounds, and like many clichés it is unfortunately true.

What scares me about acronyms is the ease which we create them and the ease they can become so prevalent throughout an organisation. This is not necessarily a problem initially; they become a new language (or perhaps dialect) and providing everyone speaks the same dialect there is no problem understanding each other.

The issue comes when you start trying to talk your new dialect with those who have not been exposed to it before and the fun and games that result afterwards.

I feel it more acutely these days as my work means I spend a lot of time dealing with organisations other than my employer, whether that be other companies, regulatory authorities or Non-Governmental Organisations (or NGOs – exactly my point, an acronym you see quite a lot but few people outside my professional sphere understand what it means and the wide range of organisations covered by those three letters). It is terribly easy to use acronyms you use every day with your team back home in a new discussion and see the blank looks of incomprehension on the person you are talking to. Worse, perhaps, is when the person on the receiving end of your stream of gobbledygook is good at hiding the fact they have no idea what you mean and will not ask you to explain out of embarrassment. Of course if someone has not bothered to explain their terms first any lack of comprehension on the part of the audience is pretty much their fault, but it never feels like that, we all feel that we know everything.

One thing I am not entirely sure of, and which gives me a little hope, is whether things are getting better or worse. I am not talking about texting language or Twitter technique, as that to me is a different medium for communication in its very principles and therefore has its own language. I am thinking about whether when we actually talk to each other, whether or not in a business context, we have gotten worse in our unqualified use of acronyms and that consequentially we are set on a course of increased mutual bamboozlement, or whether only the acronyms themselves change. I feel that actually the latter may be the case, considering people have been pointing out the issues for some decades at least.

There are many more important things to worry about of course, and this little whimsical ramble is principally to give some respite on a busy Tuesday from having to decipher yet another impenetrable business report. But then again, anything that stops us from understanding each other these days has to be watched, so I am going to try harder to not use acronyms without reason, or at least provide a glossary.

Finally, it is only fair that I reveal my favourite acronym; there was quite a lot to choose from, especially for a geek like myself and the entire history of SF and fantasy to trawl through for those acronyms so painfully manufactured to make a cool name for an organisation or character, stand up James Bond’s nemesis SPECTRE, or in more long winded fashion the Special Executive for Counter-intelligence, Terrorism, Revenge and Extortion. However, for me personally it is pipped at post by a character from the 1979 Disney film ‘The Black Hole’ heroic robot VINCENT, which is somehow contrived from Vital Information Necessary CENTralized, which is truly terrible. But he was voiced by the late Roddy McDowall, so that makes up for most sins in my book. I’m interested in other people’s favourites, from any sphere…

We had the pleasure of attending an odd little gig recently, one of those events where you kind of hope everyone there are in on the joke, because otherwise they would be very confused indeed. I was not even sure about going in the first place, as largely all I knew about the artist was regular surreal appearances on BBC 6Music’s Radcliffe & Maconie show.

The artist in question was the redoubtable John Shuttleworth, out on his farewell tour. Basically, this titan of the music business has decided to hang up his Yamaha organ on health grounds – 2016 having shown just how dangerous it was to be a famous person had convinced him that, regretfully, it was time to step down from the limelight and the lucrative gigs at Nursing homes and keep his head down for his own survival.

John Shuttleworth, for those do not know, doesn’t really exist. He is a comic character created by a chap called Graham Fellows (who was also responsible for one hit wonder punk star Jilted John, for those who like such trivia).  Shuttleworth is stuck in the 1970s in terms of attitudes and dress, and is entirely deluded about his own level of talent. Which of course is the point and as the performance goes on the carefully scripted mistakes in playing the organ, or forgetting the words just underline the point.

John is a buffoon, albeit a likeable one – none of the comedy is cruel or rude, very much certificate U material you could take your granny to. In fact, as I said to the Lovely Wife as we were making our way home, it was a real shame that my Nana is no longer with us, because she would have found this sort of thing hilarious. This kind of stuff is antithesis of satirical comedy. Nothing is relevant to the present situation, nothing is of any importance at all. The character exists in his own micro world where the worst thing that can happen is that you wife has opened another pack of margarine so there are now two open in the fridge (I mean, which do you use? It’s a ‘nightmare scenario’), or that he has started on his pudding when there was still shepherd’s pie to eat (the classic ‘I can’t go back to savoury now’ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L8eh72REd_s ). In place of weighty discussions about the state of the world and society you instead have a tirade – well, a gentle grumpiness – on why Mars removed the piece of cardboard from around a Bounty bar. After all, that fragile coconut bar needed protection and it made a good bookmark or sturdy shopping list afterwards. Sadly, his campaign to have it reinstated (‘Mutiny over the Bounty’) has yet to bear fruit.

I love this kind of comedy, because it is terribly clever while appearing to be amateurish and simple. The absolute key is that the character never slips so the illusion is never disrupted. That happily allows the audience and the performer to share the joke, and it actually gets quite weird later in the performance when he starts to play a melody of his ‘greatest hits’ and you do find yourself singing along as though it were an actual gig, which I think is the moment I realised how good Fellows actually is.

Do catch John Shuttleworth if you can, just remember to relax and let the man quite deliberately fail to meet your expectations for musicianship and professionalism hilariously.

There comes a point I think, and I feel I am definitely close to that point, that you stop understanding new technology and just accept that it is possibly magic and maybe if it is either a good or a bad thing dependent on what it is and how it fits within your own warped world view. That does not mean that you do not use new technology; just that you do not really understand how it works any more. You kind of give up on trying to work it out and leave it to the young ones to do it for you. Certainly this is how I felt at the weekend as I was given an impromptu lesson in how to use my smartphone correctly (I thought I knew how to use the thing; I clearly was incorrect in my assumption) by a twelve year old. I was able to follow up to a point, but when he started talking about hacking into it to fundamentally change the settings I kind of gave up and began to have the same worries that lay behind ‘War Games’ in the 1980s. Hopefully the Defence super computers these days still play Tic Tac Toe.

For me, the eye opening thing is not that the kids understand this stuff, but the matter of fact way that they deal with it and the blank incomprehension that people like me do not get it. I think that it must have been the same when I was young, and certainly it was me who would program the video recorder and not my parents. What interests me is as the pace of technology development accelerates, which it certainly seems to do, is that being reflected in the way that we respond to it. Some twenty something friends of mine have confessed that even they cannot keep up with the pace of change for example. Which kind of makes me feel a little better I suppose and not quite as much of a Neanderthal; or at least that as one I am in good and numerous company.

I was able to exact some revenge, however, or since revenge is probably a little aggressive, recapture some credibility. Being able to have a detailed and informed discussion on the history of Batman and surrounding mythos proved to be a bridge across the thirty plus year gap between myself and my new IT consultant. Because simply put, I have had time to read and watch all that stuff over that lifetime and he is only just old enough to actually watch some of it. For once age wins. Or at least age gets to be on a level playing field. Because suddenly you can advise on which parts of Batman’s history to concentrate on (for example, Frank Miller) and warn the poor lad that, in the quest for more cinematic Bat fun he should, on no account, watch ‘Batman & Robin’ which I foolishly re-watched recently and was even worse than I remembered it (any movie where the best thing about it is Arnie’s terrible ice related one liners really needs to be consigned to the waste disposal; that said it is still not as bad as Highlander 2, the only movie I have ever seriously considered walking out of and which commits the dual sin of being both terrible and utterly pointless).

In the end, a happy conversation, where I get to learn something about the technology that seems to increasingly run parts of my life while discussing masked vigilantes. A proper adult/child exchanged I think.

Spring, apparently, has sprung. This is supposed to fill me with delight, although if I was honest I find this a time of trepidation in the garden as we see what has survived the winter and what has not, and the inevitable rigmarole of the mowing of the lawn; one of those things I have always been put off on doing since it was decreed that this chore particularly was mine as a child. One of those moments that you parents conspire against you as neither of them want to do it and walking the dog did not quite cut it as sufficient to earn pocket money. I hated doing it and still do, much as it is satisfying to look out on a nicely mown lawn as it makes the garden look neater no matter what else is going on in it. That is assuming that we can still call it a lawn; after some years of neglect – or I prefer letting nature take its course – the percentage of grass seems to have been reduced somewhat to a minority population among the mosses, wild flowers and various other invaders. Sometimes it is a shame to even mow it, and we do try and let the bees get at the clover flowers for at least a week so they are not totally wasted.

I am more delighted with the birds and the level of activity – a friend of mine complained when sleeping in our front room after a late night gaming session that the birds in hedge just outside the window were making a tremendous racket from very early in the morning (not something we notice as much as our bedroom is diagonally opposite). It was our local mob of sparrows, who we think might be nesting under the eaves of the house on the other side of the road but seem to spend a lot of time in our hedge during the day… and even more so since I have started a feeding station there. They are cheeky, lovely little birds, but they sure are noisy buggers. And this is from someone like me who is not at home in the house unless there is some noise in the background. I may have to take calls when working from home from a different room if they continue to generate the same level of noise.

But they make me smile, and goodness knows with the world as it is, sometimes you need to have that kind of thing, whether it is birds, small child antics, flowers, a good book, or in the last 24 hours Radio 2 presenters dancing to 1980s tunes for Comic Relief. It was an extraordinary silly thing and probably not on a par with swimming the channel or something, but I have to admit that every bit I saw made me grin and feel just a little happier with the universe; of course the 1980s are my formative music years too so that much of helped and at the time of writing it looks like 24 hours of endurance and nostalgia has generated the best part of a million pounds for good causes and I think that deserves a pat on the back for all concerned. Well done Sara Cox and if you wondering what I am going on about go to http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/1Fqd8B8RcPCd3ZLL7CzFXDT/the-best-bits-from-sara-coxs-epic-danceathon  for some highlights (and if so possessed, consider donating).

Enjoying a smattering of snow (would not call it much else) here in Cincinnati, Ohio. Also enjoying being a mad Englishman wandering around in the cold dark early morning listening a recent birthday present, the BBC radio adaptation of Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman’s ‘Good Omens’ and once more marvelling at how it is actually possible to make the Apocalypse genuinely funny.

Hells Angel:        “You’re Hell’s Angels, then? What chapter are you from?’
DEATH:                 ‘REVELATION. CHAPTER SIX.”

Well, it is isn’t really… It’s more the observations of people and things and how they might relate to such a thing being a very wise and sharply observed deconstruction of human nature at its best and worst. As Crowley the demon points out, nothing that the forces of Hell can come up with is a patch on the bad things we can do to each other.

I’m really looking forward to the new BBC TV adaptation after listening to Gaiman speak in London recently and talk about having written the scripts himself partly as tribute to Terry Pratchett, who died before he could give his approval; when you listen to someone talk that way, you can be fairly certain that whatever else, the script will be as good as it can be.

As with the likes of the ‘Life of Brian’ (for me the best thing the Pythons ever did) I am struck that sometimes the best way to think about some of the most serious subjects is humour. Yes, you can be offended, but it is a good thing to question and to take a step backwards from some subjects and actually use this amazing ability we have to actual think. Then if we step back or step further away from whatever ‘it’ is – and to be clear I am talking about anything someone might find a bit difficult, of which things I find many in the world – at least that movement is a conscious one. Humour provides a real gift here, and something I personally think is unique to us humans (although I have met plenty of cats who attitude seemed to drip with dry sarcasm). It is the sugar to coat the pill that we need to take if we want to be honest with ourselves, the sofa that we can hide behind to watch the monsters in a way that we would find difficult without its supposed protection. I know whenever I am embarrassed or unsure of myself I am most likely to try and hide behind some humour and I know I am not the only one. It is one of the least convincing part of many thrillers or horror movies for me is the lack of humour at the darkest points as that’s where I expect to find it if there was some kind of reality lurking there along with whatever ‘nasty is waiting patiently so it can have your heart’ (to quote Bucks Fizz. Incidentally, once you look at the lyrics of ‘Land of Make Believe’ in detail you realise just how dark and sinister that song is, and not just because you might hate that kind of eighties vocal pop).

I like my humour to have an edge and preferably a sharp one. But this kind of humour can easily cut and wound too, so I continue to admire those that can wield such a weapon with skill and panache and originality. They are to be treasured.

In a somewhat unusual moment for me last night – unusual due to the lucidity – Sir David Attenborough, dressed in trademark blue shirt and slacks, conspiratorially informed me to ‘look for the code’. He then, unfortunately for me – who would have much rather spent additional time with one of my greatest inspirations he then vanished in a bit of an Obi Wan fashion into the ether.

Obviously this was a dream. I do not usually remember dreams, unlike the Lovely Wife, and I have talked about them before because it is something I find endlessly fascinating, at the fictions our brains come up with while we sleep. In this case I can remember that what followed was what seemed like a long and convoluted mystery in some kind of secret research establishment/gothic mansion where a family was conducting mysterious – and almost certainly nefarious – experiments on something with something. The only detail was that some people were developing horrific lesions that at first I thought were some kind of disease but eventually realised were some kind of radiation burns. There must be a monster in there somewhere. I always love a good monster. I do not recall seeing it though, and they are the best and scariest kinds of monster.

Oh and I found the code, hidden away on a tiny sticker in mass of photos on a wall, a bit like the kind of sticker that you get on the back of a router with the password on it.

Annoyingly, I do not know why I needed the code or what I was supposed to/did with it, but if Sir David said it was important, then it must have been.

So I am going to make the assumption that I succeeded in my mission. After all, this is my brain’s story, it ends the way I want. Admittedly, this story was being ‘written’ unconsciously for an audience of one who largely forgets it later, but at least my brain is indulging in some creativity. I have not been able to translate that much in a conscious state recently.

I’ve been – and I appreciate what follows is a slightly strange thing to say – I’ve been reading about writing (mostly from people I admire very much and are far, far cleverer than I could ever be, such as Neil Gaiman). It is now a few years since I completed my Humanities degree and I have missed the creative writing that was a major part of it, knocking out one or two short stories a week at one point. I just have not seemed to be able to get back into the swing of things, which is sad for me as while hardly anyone read any of those stories, I found the act of creating them pretty satisfying in itself; like a picture you paint for your own pleasure or perhaps for you and a loved one, it is fun to create for the sake of creation, especially when you have the luxury of not having to rely on it being successful for a living and do it for your amusement. In particular I find going back to those stories in something of a state of surprise; aside form wincing at the naivety, poor turns of phrase and grammatical errors – proof reading, as any reader of these blog posts will know – is not my strong point – it was as though I was reading something someone else had written, not me. I suppose, being literal about it that is true. Some of these stories are now five years old, and the person who wrote them is five years older, and not quite the same. It reminds me of a comment someone made about a story I had struggled with finishing and where there had been a considerable gap before I knew where it was going. That comment was that it felt like two, different, half stories that had been sewn together (I have a sudden image of one of those Victorian fakes where a monkey’s body was sewn onto a fish’s tail to form an unlikely and ugly mermaid, although that could be because I am feeling a bit Gothic today or suddenly remembered the rather creepy short story about such a thing in my dog eared copy of ‘The Jon Pertwee Book of Monsters’ where of course the ugly looking thing… Well that would be telling). The comment was correct of course, if I was serious about it I should have gone back and revised the first part to fit in with the second.

I do not know if Sir David will appear in any future fiction (‘Animal Magic’ star Johnny Morris has appeared before, alongside one of my favourite heroines – the one that won’t take no for an answer and will be more than they say she will as a result – and a talking penguin that was a reincarnation of Jean Paul Sartre) but I wonder if I need to find the code that will allow me to unlock the current block and start having some more fun creating impossible lives.

It has been a busy old couple of weeks with Cardiff and most recently Birmingham to explore on the back of a concert. I do not think I had ever been to Birmingham before other than to change trains at Birmingham New Street. I found it a pleasant experience. Not only was the cheap hotel we were staying in next to a canal – whose towpath proved a very pleasant way of walking, albeit briskly considering it was dark, too and from the gig, but also I had managed to completely forget about the cities connections with the Pre-Raphaelite movement and especially Edward Burne-Jones. In addition to the fine collection of work in city art gallery the stained glass Burne-Jones designed for the cathedral was, for me at least, breathtakingly beautiful. Do pop in to see it if you have the chance.

The other thing that I found to be a good use of time was a tour of the last remaining set of Back to Backs in the city. For those who do not know, and I confess that I didn’t, Back to Backs were one room wide houses built back to back so one faces out into the street while the other, separate  dwelling faces onto a courtyard. Put bluntly they were thrown up as the cheapest possible housing and would have been pretty overcrowded, dirty and at least in the nineteenth century little more than hovels. Things improved as time went on, one of the themes of the National Trust’s presentation of the site, with improvements in availability of clean water first outside and then inside the homes and technology advances from candle to gas to electric lighting. But disease was always a problem and the sanitation always pretty basic even into the 1970s.

Listening to the stories of the people who lived and worked here was a sobering experience. These were talented, skilled people in many cases – the families who lived in these remaining houses were clockmakers, glass blowers and locksmiths – the last resident was a master tailor who made britches for the Queen’s Horse guards. Sometimes they made enough money to get out and – and this seemed a bit like a running joke akin to the phenomenon in Neighbours that everyone leaving Ramsey Street ends up in Brisbane – they moved to the posh district of Edgbaston. But in other cases they lived and died in these tiny little houses and got on with life as best they could.

The shop on the corner of this little time capsule of how people used to live is a sweet shop selling pretty much everything I can remember as a kid, bless them in ¼ pound bags. I have not asked for a quarter of Cola Cubes or Sweet Peanuts for a very long time. It is also very busy so I was not the only one it seems feeling nostalgic. Visiting a place like the Birmingham Back to Backs does remind you of how much nicer life can be these days compared to what it might have been back then, but there is a danger of forgetting that people were touch and proud of what they did have, even if it was not a lot. The lady who was our guide had grown up in a similar kind of property and to my mind seemed to be proud of that fact and not at all looking back with a shudder. These were communities that made the best of what they had; in a time when the highest level of ‘community’ in the street that I live in is perhaps a nod and smile of recognition, I do not think everything has improved.