• Welcome to this forum . We are a worldwide group with a common interest in Birmingham and its history. While here, please follow a few simple rules. We ask that you respect other members, thank those who have helped you and please keep your contributions on-topic with the thread.

    We do hope you enjoy your visit. BHF Admin Team
  • HI folks the server that hosts the site completely died including the Hdd's and backups.
    Luckily i create an offsite backup once a week! this has now been restored so we have lost a few days posts.
    im still fixing things at the moment so bear with me and im still working on all images 90% are fine the others im working on now
    we are now using a backup solution

Commonwealth Games, Birmingham 2022

Status
Not open for further replies.
Wow. So proud of my home city. Watching from Australia, the whole ceremony was so professional and spectacular enough to rival any recent games of any note. For us on this forum it also covered so much history of our city, the things we made, ' from pins to a ships anchor' my Dad reckoned. Was that anchor for the Titanic made in the Black Country? God bless 'the chain mekkers', covered our social and literary history too. Back in the day we embraced those who arrived from around the Commonwealth, in my day we lived and worked happily alongside one another. Congratulations to those behind the production. Only minor gripe- I would have preferred Jeff Lynne and ELO to Duran Duran
 
Pedrocut said:
Test Match Special, compulsive listening for many. Your mom would have enjoyed listening to this years record breaking Test at Edgbaston. Bet she loved old Jonners !
Click to expand...
My Mom (RIP) would have been glued to the TV while standing at the ironing board in the living room!

mikejee said:
And still damn boring
Click to expand...
Honestly, I'd rather watch paint drying! To each their own though. From "inside" any given sport, it provides a very different perspective of the competitive moves and strategy. Others view motorsports as watching cars go round and round.

No matter the sport, there are skills involved that are rather invisible to the uninformed observer, which is about the level of my knowledge of cricket, although I did play a little in my school years.

Swimming and cycling and rugby union were my interests during my teens and far more interesting to me than football (soccer). I've never been remotely interested in American and Canadian football.

FWIW, I raced motorcycles and cars and one day walked away and quit cold turkey and started growing my own plants and vegetables, which still seem to grow faster than the pace of any game of cricket. VBG.

Still, it's all about strategy and the play, no different from high speed events in other sports, where millmetre perfect nets the victory!

My Father in Law Ron Sanders (RIP), used to play cricket regularly in full whites. He was a manager at Smith Stone and Knight and dearly loved the game. He would be thoroughly "miffed" to see any colour uniform but white and with logos to boot! Is nothing sacred?! VBG.
 
John L said:
I think it's each to his or her own, as far as sport is concerned and particularly as far as televised sport is concerned. I myself, having played football, cricket, golf and rugby, now only watch these and other sports. I could probably watch them on television until the cows come home, but I don't (I tend to record quite a bit to watch later), because I can appreciate that having to sit through it, would drive my wife to distraction (as would watching some of the programmes that she enjoys, do for me :))!

Having looked at the BBC 1 schedules for Friday (the first day of the Games), it does seem they have gone way over the top with their coverage (particularly hot on the heels of Wimbledon). The games are on air from 9.15 - 13.00, 13.45 - 18.00, 21.00 - 22.00 & from 22.40 - 23.40. That's ten hours in total. I feel for Mike's boredom threshold in the coming days....;) Let the Games commence, along with the battles for the remote!!
Click to expand...
LOL John! As I sit here typing and watching the F1 Hungarian GP practice 2, my wife has vanished into another room to read. Qualifying is on tomorrow and the race on Sunday. I used to get up early to watch it, but record the racing these days so that I can choose when to view.

It's "pay back" for wifey watching the Hallmark romance movies that are nearly all filmed in Abbotsford outside our daughter's apartment. "Mart, look what they've done with this or that store!" "Uh huh", snore.

She enjoys the familiarity of the landmarks and the "mush". The plot is always the same with guy getting the girl or vice versa. I think that I've seen the same woman get married about 50 times already! ZZZZzzzzzzz!
 
FNQBRUMMIE said:
Wow. So proud of my home city. Watching from Australia, the whole ceremony was so professional and spectacular enough to rival any recent games of any note. For us on this forum it also covered so much history of our city, the things we made, ' from pins to a ships anchor' my Dad reckoned. Was that anchor for the Titanic made in the Black Country? God bless 'the chain mekkers', covered our social and literary history too. Back in the day we embraced those who arrived from around the Commonwealth, in my day we lived and worked happily alongside one another. Congratulations to those behind the production. Only minor gripe- I would have preferred Jeff Lynne and ELO to Duran Duran
Click to expand...
It definitely appears that the Titanic anchor was made in Netherton according to this and other articles. https://www.worcesternews.co.uk/news/15136049.titanics-worcestershire-links-revealed/

You may well be right on the nature of people in all walks of life in work and play these days. The competitive nature of sports these days is so tightly tied to sponsors, unlike those earlier days of more friendly competition. With the stakes so high, focus is intense.

Regarding the Titanic fitments. As with many old cruise liners, there was a lot of brassware on the Titanic that began life as raw materials in the Midlands. We visited the Titanic exhibit in Royal BC Museum in Victoria, on Vancouver Island a few years ago and viewed many pieces. The same goes for the Queen Mary, docked in Long Beach California. A walk through tour of the ship shows just how many pieces were made in Birmingham and the surrounding Midlands.

I bought a piece of coal that was guaranteed to be removed from inside the Titanic coal bunker, not from the debris field. It was $40 CAD with guarantee of authenticity, but just a little piece of history that I deemed worth having. It's probably the most expensive piece of coal that I'd ever buy! VBG.
 
MartinS said:
My Mom (RIP) would have been glued to the TV while standing at the ironing board in the living room!


Honestly, I'd rather watch paint drying! To each their own though. From "inside" any given sport, it provides a very different perspective of the competitive moves and strategy. Others view motorsports as watching cars go round and round.

No matter the sport, there are skills involved that are rather invisible to the uninformed observer, which is about the level of my knowledge of cricket, although I did play a little in my school years.

Swimming and cycling and rugby union were my interests during my teens and far more interesting to me than football (soccer). I've never been remotely interested in American and Canadian football.

FWIW, I raced motorcycles and cars and one day walked away and quit cold turkey and started growing my own plants and vegetables, which still seem to grow faster than the pace of any game of cricket. VBG.

Still, it's all about strategy and the play, no different from high speed events in other sports, where millmetre perfect nets the victory!

My Father in Law Ron Sanders (RIP), used to play cricket regularly in full whites. He was a manager at Smith Stone and Knight and dearly loved the game. He would be thoroughly "miffed" to see any colour uniform but white and with logos to boot! Is nothing sacred?! VBG.
Click to expand...

Smith, Stone and Knight appear in several posts on the Forum.
 
The aircraft which flies over the Tour de France is presently flying over Brum relaying all the feeds from the event cameras to a central station. It will stay up for hours at 27,000ft going round in circles.
games.jpg
The yellow aircraft in the pic is a Ryanair at 37,000ft
 
i was hoping there would be a call by brummies to save this magnificent mechanical bull....i have to admit i shed a tear when he appeared at the opening ceremony..i quite warmed to him...as the creator said this morning on tv some of it contains foam which wont last long outside but surely it could be adapted in some way..after all we are supposed to be a forward thinking city...he represents birminghams industrial history and of course the bull ring and looks great standing in centenary square...fingers crossed

lyn

www.birminghammail.co.uk

Save our Bull! Battle to save the Games showstopper from scrapheap

The instantly iconic Raging Bull that stole the show at the opening ceremony of Birmingham 2022 seems destined for destruction after the Games - but Brummies say it has to stay
www.birminghammail.co.uk www.birminghammail.co.uk
 
Last edited:
Astoness said:
i was hoping there would be a call by brummies to save this magnificent mechanical bull....i have to admit i shed a tear when he appeared at the opening ceremony..i quite warmed to him...as the creator said this morning on tv some of it contains foam which wont last long outside but surely it could be adapted in some way..after all we are supposed to be a forward thinking city...he represents birmingham industrial history and of course the bull ring and looks great standing in centenary square...fingers crossed

lyn

www.birminghammail.co.uk

Save our Bull! Battle to save the Games showstopper from scrapheap

The instantly iconic Raging Bull that stole the show at the opening ceremony of Birmingham 2022 seems destined for destruction after the Games - but Brummies say it has to stay
www.birminghammail.co.uk www.birminghammail.co.uk
Click to expand...
Couldn't agree more. It could be another King Kong, that would be on display for many years in the city. It would mark the Games being held here, as well as how locals, and some folks from further afield, got behind the event. How sad that in the link "a local entrepreneur and activist" chooses instead to link it solely to the city's "problematic history" and gives that as the reason that we should not want to keep it on display :rolleyes:.
 
John L said:
Couldn't agree more. It could be another King Kong, that would be on display for many years in the city. It would mark the Games being held here, as well as how locals, and some folks from further afield, got behind the event. How sad that in the link "a local entrepreneur and activist" chooses instead to link it solely to the city's "problematic history" and gives that as the reason that we should not want to keep it on display :rolleyes:.
Click to expand...
i must be a bit thick then john...as i thought the bull represents the citys working history...not sure what you mean by "problematic "

lyn
 
Astoness said:
i must be a bit thick then john...as i thought the bull represents the citys working history...not sure what you mean by "problematic "

lyn
Click to expand...
I think John is referring to the quote in the article you linked to about the Bull representing oppression.
 
Astoness said:
i must be a bit thick then john...as i thought the bull represents the citys working history...not sure what you mean by "problematic "

lyn
Click to expand...
Far from it lyn:). I suspect that it's only "Dr Tru" in the article that seems to see the bull as being "problematic".
 
The commentary last night said the same, that it represented oppression and when the 2 girls took the 'pieces of metal' (Sorry can't remember how they described them) from his face it was releasing him from oppression. He was breathing fire until that happened and then he became peaceful.
I thought he was fantastic and I hope he can be in the city for a long time.
 
Alberta said:
The commentary last night said the same, that it represented oppression and when the 2 girls took the 'pieces of metal' (Sorry can't remember how they described them) from his face it was releasing him from oppression. He was breathing fire until that happened and then he became peaceful.
I thought he was fantastic and I hope he can be in the city for a long time.
Click to expand...
well said alberta

lyn
 
Exactly Alberta. That’s as I understood it. Very important part of the ceremony. To me acknowledging the past, warts and all, is part of the process of moving forward and learning from questionable past behaviour. Don’t think we should rub out our dodgy history, let’s learn from it and do better. Viv.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top