Burn's Night

This is by way of comment on Stig's Burn's Birthday blog (and probably won't be seen by anyone other than Stig and Cameraman anyway, but I'm fine with that).

Here's a couple of supermarket haggises for anyone who ISN'T Stig or Cameraman:

Popular!

I'm not sure whether I should be pleased or not...

Perving on Sunday

It's amazing what conclusions can be drawn from looking at statistical data...

BBC

Picture Post (Selfridges)

(Blogger has done something strange with the picture links in this post. I'm in no condition to correct things right now so I'll leave things as they are for the time being. All my photos are on Photobucket)

All the blogs I follow on a more or less regular basis appear to be preoccupied with pictures of cocks this weekend, so I'm going to buck the trend.

This is sort-of inspired by Stig's exposé about his geekery. One of my own geekish weaknesses is architecture. I can't say I'm particularly knowledgeable about it, but few things are as likely to make me hold my breath or stop me short as a striking or beautiful building.

Well-designed, well-constructed and properly functional buildings really are works of art in the truest sense of that word. I live in a city which was famed for a lack of taste or foresight on the part of its planners and architects in the 1960s, which brought about some of the ugliest and badly-built major developments in the UK and wider.

More recently, the Birmingham skyline has seen some stunning additions to its skyline and this post is about one such building. It's famous in its own right, has won all kinds of awards, and is well-represented all over the internet (a google images search results in 19,000 pictures).

So here are some more pictures of Future Systems' Selfridges department store. I am particularly mindful of it this week, as its designer, Jan Kaplický suddenly died last week and this is my little insignificant tribute to a great man.

I fell in love with the idea of this building before I ever saw it, as various impressions of the designs were floating around long before construction began six years ago. One of the many wonders of this building is that there are no flat surfaces outside - everything is curved; sometimes very obviously, sometimes less so. At the time, one of the statements made about the building was the promise that the Selfridges name would never have to appear on the outside: the building would be striking enough for a name-plate to be unnecessary. Regrettably, a few years down the line the Selfridges people clearly decided that wasn't enough and they put a huge neon sign in the only street-facing window, which I think sort of spoils the effect.

Anyway, enough of my jabber-jabber, here's a load of photographs, all taken by me over a period of about two years, arranged more or less in order from the Moor Street point of connection with the rest of the Bull Ring Centre around to the St Martin's Square point of connection. It's built on a hill and of the many entrances, there are three at street level, and they lead to three different levels!

Hat-making your way out of poverty

Last week, a film came out here in the UK which, despite technically being a UK production by most criteria, has been out for a while in several places around the world (most notably the USA, whose public acclamation precedes it here).

The film features a television game show from which it would appear that hat-making is a popular (but no less competitive) route out of poverty in India.

Or am I misunderstanding the show's catch-phrase title of Who Wants to Be A Milliner? ;-) (At least that's the way it sounds when Anil Kapoor says it!)



(For the record, I recommend Slumdog Millionaire very heartily)

If it swims like a duck and it quacks like a duck...

I expect Stiginthemud to have something to say about this but I'd like to get my version of events out first! And so, rather oddly, to my first actual blog here despite having set up this account ages ago.

Stig and Camerman, with whom I have been communicating online for close enough to two years, are visiting my town for a couple of days and I finally got to meet them today. Expectations and/or preconceptions were met, shattered and/or exceeded as far as I'm concerned, but that's not why I'm writing this (although I am of course curious about their expectations and/or preconceptions; one thing I will say is that I don't think I have ever met anyone whose eyes SHINE the way Mr Cameraman's do. Then again, he could just be hitting the bottle more than he admits!).

We had a very enjoyable meal in Wagamama (first time for me, they are regulars back home; thanks for footing the bill, Cameraman!) but then we decided we'd like a proper pub drink. I asked whether they wanted the quick or the interesting route back to their hotel, which made Stig visibly perk up (not that he really needed perking up) and jump at the chance of having something interesting happen.

Little did any of us know...

I scratched my metaphorical head (I may well have scratched the literal one too) wondering where there might be an interesting pub somewhere fairly close. Most pubs in Birmingham have a reputation - Ale-drinkers' pub? Foodie pub? Gang pub? Chav pub? Rockers' pub? Gay pub? Cross-dressers' pub? Awful boring chain pub selling factory-produced donkey-piss and labelling it lager? All the pubs within walking distance are renowned for being at least one of those things, sometimes more than one, and none of those monikers is really helpful when all you want is a quiet, warm corner in which to sip a decent drink or two. And of course all the decent pubs would be full at 8pm on a Sunday evening, so I was limited to choosing from the second-best.

I settled on the Crown. I'd been there a few times before during the daytime and while the décor is a bit dated, it was clean, didn't smell, served a decent pint and was just enough off the beaten track to be fairly quiet and probably with space for three at a table.

We walked in and I got the drinks, while Cameraman and Stig chose a table, right next to the door. Clearly they had their doubts and thought we might need to effect a quick getaway.

I almost sprayed poor Stig with my Greene King IPA when as soon as I sat down, he surprised me with "Do you think she's a tranny?"

"Is WHO a tranny?"

"Her", pointing in a nonchalant non-pointing-kind-of-way towards the barmaid who'd just served me.

And then it struck me that he had a point. OK, admittedly I'd got a closer look at her ample cleavage than he had done, but, I had to admit that like Michael York's mum in Austin Powers, she looked rather mannish, despite her long flowing bottle blonde locks. And so for the next while, we debated, Stig, Cam and I, whether or not Lorraine Mills (I have since discovered that we were talking about the premises' licensee) had a cock or not.

Then things got more interesting and we made further observations. Such as the two gentlemen propping up the bar, hugging each other in a most unmanly fasion ("They're a couple, they are", volunteered Cam, rather unnecessarily). Or Stig's observation that the two middle-aged men at the bar behind me were having a snog.

Or the small of stature (but large of level of alcohol consumption) older gentleman whose English was heavily tinged with something I assume to be Portuguese who had gained control of the karaoke machine and seemed to be expressing undying affection to someone we couldn't see from our vantage point. But not before another man joined him on the stage and removed his shirt and t-shirt and then his trakkie bottoms, and started making provocative moves with his underpants-clad groin and was clearly up for removing them too.

Much to Stig's visible horror, the diminutive gentleman came over to us and started talking. I think that Stig was horrified not of what the man might do, but what he might say ("I can't understand anyone unless they speak R.P." - thankfully, I come pretty close, although strangely enough Cam is, well, let's just say he's not R.P...) because he'd appear rude by not answering properly.

How, indeed, do you communicate with a drunk Portuguese guy? The answer, is, it seems, you'll do fine if you have a Cameraman - although whilst Cam seems to have understood what the little guy asked him, I'm not entirely sure he was as successful in making his Scottish burr comprehensible to the poor Iberian...

The long and the short of it is that the little man assumed that Stig and Cam are a couple and whilst it's obvious to me, I'm not so sure anyone in a normal pub could jump to that conclusion without further information. He also assumed that I hunt for cock rather than clit, too...

Once we'd somehow managed to get the little man off our backs and Cam had translated their conversation for our benefit, all of this started a further debate between us: was this (shock, horror!) a GAY pub? Despite my protestations that as far as I am aware (and my awareness of these things is fairly accurate) the gay village is some way away and there's no real reason for a genuine, titled, gay pub at this location, they insisted that there's no other solution. And I must admit that yes, gay things happened there and apart from the rather mannish bar lady, there was only ever one other female (albeit also quite mannish-looking) on the premises at any point.

But, does that really make it a gay pub? Or is it just proof that Birmingham's reputation for tolerance, and our live-and-let-live approach to people with alternative lifestyles are well-deserved? Do we really need to have gay pubs? Or are pubs just pubs and anything goes?

Several hours later, I was talking to a friend who is local, is something of a pub connoisseur and happens to be gay. In his words, I don't know that it's officially gay but when I was in there it was decidedly gay-ish. So it seems our experience wasn't exactly an aberration, but the question remains, just what makes a pub a gay pub?