Recent content by Godber

There are certain people I always tip when I use their services, my barber, mechanic, tailor, whoever serves me food when I dine out and the first barman/barmaid who serves me at the beginning of an evening in a pub. I know it was common to tip your bin men every Christmas but mine seem to...

Does anyone remember another one called Forrest? It was either a pools or spot-the-ball type thing. It’s bugged me for years, I’m 100% sure it existed.

I can remember being told not to answer the door if the insurance or Provident man knocked due to lack of money. Regarding the electric meter, a chap told me a story many years ago when this very subject came up in conversation. “Ah, the Dinky toy and the stick” he reminisced. In an effort to...

Oh…don’t start me off, Keith. What is it with the graffiti in Digbeth? Not the inevitable “tagging” by the feeble minded which is the equivalent of dogs urinating on lampposts to mark their territory, but the enormous, garish, childish, seemingly professionally applied abominations that deface...

A poem he wrote has stayed with me ever since I read it (I think it was in a text book called Touchstones) at school some 45 years ago. Being something of a night owl it struck a chord in me and I think it’s a wonderful vignette of nocturnal tranquility. MOONLIT APPLES. At the top of the house...

It just gets better and better https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/czex3lj077xo Over ONE HUNDRED BILLION POUNDS in today’s prices??? Jesus wept…

I agree with you both, Mike and Morturn, it certainly does seem to be a partially dismantled gasometer. The O.S. map from 1902 indicates the nearby Windsor Street gasometers with the same pattern, a disk with dots around the circumference. What puzzles me is that a large portion of it looks to...

By the look of it that’s a Crusader tank, apparently they were built primarily at the Nuffield factory on Drews Lane. Can’t find any evidence that Crusaders were assembled at Longbridge.

I only go “up Town” if it’s unavoidable, if I want to see a live performance like a comedian, a ballet, a group etc sometimes it’s the only option. That the city has changed is inevitable, I suppose, but that’s not why I avoid the place. It’s the people. Not long ago I was in A&E and the police...

From 1987, a video of the 37 bus route from Birmingham to Solihull.

I’m glad you enjoyed it. I find the opening shots of empty city streets on a hazy summer morning absolutely mesmerising, I can almost smell the place. The familiar shops and buildings…almost painfully nostalgic. Sometimes I think I understand how someone from the old East Germany must feel now...

Because it’s the equivalent of fitting diamond encrusted alloy wheels to a rusty car that’s just failed its MoT on a dozen serious faults, or installing a swimming pool outside a house that’s collapsing through neglect. Use that money to repair then improve what ALREADY EXISTS before spending it...

Filmed at Forshaw Heath, Earlswood, ELO’s lovely “Can’t Get It Out Of My Head” from 1974. Apparently, Jeff wrote it in the living room of his parents house at Shard End

From 1980, Mirror in the Bathroom by Birmingham band, The Beat. Filmed inside The Rum Runner nightclub and at 0:41 there’s a shot outside C&A on Corporation Street.

A wonderfully atmospheric snapshot of the times. My, how things have changed