It makes me sad, too, Lyn. When I was a sprog my mom and I would spend the best part of a morning along Birchfield Road, and if I'd been good she'd buy me the latest Dinky Toy at R Watts toy-shop. Later on in life, I'd spend hours in Birchfield Library, one of my most favourite places. Trouble is, the car took over everything. Birmingham made cars, and so the powers-that-were thought it right and proper to encourage them. Twenty years ago I'd have argued that the destruction of Birchfield Road, as you and I knew it when we were young, was progress, but now I'm not so sure. I think with the benefit of hindsight that there may have been other ways around the problem of every-increasing numbers of cars. Maybe.
But let's not miss out on looking at your photos and taking huge and perhaps sentimental pleasure in a brief look back at how life was in a slower-moving, perhaps more sensible, world than the one we're lumbered wit now.
Big Gee