Where I'm coming from

By Paul Flower on Mar 11, 09 02:52 PM

Passing a Wembley scrap yard on a train this morning I was reminded of a regular run I used to undertake along the Birmingham canal side. Leaving BRMB in Brindleyplace I would head left along the towpaths and pass under the Dudley Road by City Hospital and towards Smethwick before having to turn and come back.

Within 20 minutes it was possible to witness the past, present and future of the City and its environs. I would leave the posh bars, cafÃÂ©s and apartments and pass empty industrial factory shells, motor wrecking yards and turn around by still existing foundries, motor mechanics and boatyards.

At times the acrid stench of the scrap yards would leave me wondering whether I was doing more damage to my lungs than good, but overall the jog provided both an escape from the stress of office work and a glimpse into a not-so-distant past - how the wealth of a City was built and how it is currently being spent.

I was always slightly bewildered by the sheer quantity of new-build apartments that sprung up around what might once have been called the 'arse-end' of Birmingham. I can see the benefits of living close to a vibrant, re-vitalised city but probably not at the prices originally quoted. It always seemed to me that developers were using the field of dreams philosophy - if we build them, they will sell.

For a few years on this route, heading either left or right from the sea life centre sent me alternately into Smethwick or towards Selly Oak, past the new-builds and into decay. It seemed that the population were moving away from the industrial bases to the financial heart of the city, a pattern being repeated all around the Country.

In a sense it is a cyclical process. At one time life may have revolved around the commercial potential of the canals, it moved to the rails and roads. As the latter became too congested or costly, logic dictates that we move to where the work is. The empty factory shells were a sign of the decline and disappearance of UK manufacturing, surrendered to globalism, Thatcherism or market forces.

I am old enough to remember Broad Street before the renaissance. The empty or burned out shop-fronts bordering a street so sparsely populated that it was possible to illegally fly-post for my gig nights at the Cod Club, which sat in a bar next to the Central TV building in the shadow of the already dated Alpha Tower. Way before the bright lights and the ICC no-one would notice me, Lloyd or Chip carting a bucket of paste and posters around the area, although a police car with loudspeaker did once pull me up short as I crossed from what is now Centenary Sq.

That was how I earned some pennies back in the latter years of the 80's, although it was more about creating entertainment - for me and others. The financial rewards were never that great, but it eventually led to other things. In a sense it helped me move from West Bromwich and Sandwell Council employment to Aldridge and then Walsall, unlikely locations for one of Europe's most successful concert promoters.

They're not there now of course, having been bought by an American company and merged into a European hothouse of promoters and agents they're now logistically based in London. We all went to where the money was. My mates flitted all over the place - Lloyd went to Barnstaple then Bristol then Manchester and now Selby (sequence shortened and some steps removed). As a result of the mailbox development Chip swapped the city centre for Aston at roughly the same time as I did the opposite journey with BRMB and Borat went from Sandwell to Redditch or Alvechurch before coming back to Birmingham and accompanying me on those runs.

My dad died in November 2007 at the age of 80. He'd held the same job in the same area of Bearwood for over fifty years, gravitating from horse & cart to an electric-powered 'float'. By the time he'd retired I'd already had a greater variety of jobs than he had. I was never sure which of us was better-off from this arrangement. I'll now work anywhere that'll pay me, which sadly rarely seems to be the place that I've chosen to live.

Things change. Where wealth once existed may now be a home for poverty, the opposite is equally true and conversely cyclical. What we used to do and how we used to earn has altered, it will inevitably change again - and again. We switched from manufacturing to service, from production to finance; we may have to switch back. Is this evolution or the global marketplace? Think global, act local they say - alternatively if you want to live you gotta work, wherever that might be.

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