"the Birmingham thing"
Created | Updated Mar 7, 2002
:..The Birmingham thing..
The focus of this first self opinionated piece of prose is on the West Midlands, I make no apology for that.
More specifically, Birmingham.
The very name is laden with connotations, and most of them are negative.
Birmingham people are -for some reason - often portrayed as slow, or rather simple people. London has always been fashionable, and- in its insular ”No life beyond the Watford Gap” sort of way- will always be so. Liverpool and Manchester have each had their "cool renaissance", and in latter years, even the far thrown reaches of places such as Newcastle-Upon -Tyne are beginning to bloom as cosmopolitan places.
Not so, Birmingham.
It has tried, several times it has tried. International Conventional Centres have been built, internationally renowned artists have raised monumental sculptures, café society has tried to open its arms to the cappuccino-devouring masses, and yet to little effect.
I do not really understand why, given the geographical situation of the city, which was established by the Romans as both a meeting place and trading point, conveniently placed in the middle of the country. However it seems to fall over every time it tries to re-launch itself as a cultural centre of excellence. People simply don’t take Birmingham seriously, and one of the reasons, superficial as it is, I suspect is mainly to do with the accent.
Now part of this I think we can blame on television companies. Writers when in need of comic relief throw in a "Brummie" for good measure. (A "Brummie" for those of you folks in USA who don't know what on earth I am talking about is a slang term or colloquialism for a native of Birmingham) . The accent has become firmly established as a joke,
Not the national joke, because there are others... but I am not going into that one yet...
In its lifetime, this single area of the UK has managed to spawn such things as British Leyland Cars, Duran-Duran, Black Sabbath, and many other cultural and socio economic triumphs- however, the infamous eyesores of the Bull Ring Market, and Spaghetti Junction are also products of this area...which brings me to the first point:
To say that the architecture of Birmingham is curious, is an understatement. The novelist Mervyn Peake, in his acclaimed 20th Century “Gormenghast” book, wrote of the castle that houses the dramatic content of the novel, that “it had a ponderous architecture” and it is a statement that one can attach to Birmingham with the same sense of bafflement and amazement.
There are many instances. Easy examples are The Bull Ring Shopping Centre with its equally hideous Rotunda tower, The Birmingham City Public Library, and the high rise monstrosities that one sees on approaching the city on the M6......But I have a theory about the "look" of this city:
Architects spend a long time in training. Seven years. Eight if you include the foundation course; now that is a longer period than a doctor.
During this period, they are trained to create. As their years of intense training pass by, many of these architects envisage changing the horizon with their beautiful Frank Lloyd- Wright inspired mega-cities, brightening our futures with their light airy spaces, creating an architectural Utopia where we can all live well adjusted and modern lives. Then they enter the real world. It is at this point that they get a job working for city council planners. All the artistic ideals are swept away in one fell swoop, and soon, after a while designing inaccessible multi- story car-parks that nobody wants, or can get to early enough in the day to actually use; these architects become bitter. This is when they say to themselves: “right, this is where I get something back” and come up with something really hideous.
On a personal level, I would say that one of my pet-hate buildings is an institution that I was forced to frequent on a daily basis for a period of seven years of my young life: its name: Lordswood Boys Comprehensive School. The reasons for my dislike of this place are manifold, and I will digress to give you some examples of my time in this place in due time, however the point we are looking at in this moment in time is the aesthetic of this nauseating place.
The building looks like a 1950s biscuit factory, three floors high and clad in faded cracked fibre-glass panelling. As if to draw attention to this feature, which alone is bad in itself; the fibre-glass is coloured: Blue, Yellow and Red.
The Neo-plasticist painter Mondrian, an artist who popularised this colour combination in many of his works, would surely have thought again or started cutting off fingers had he seen this abominable use of these tones; which in their faded, weathered and eaten away outlines served only to hi-light the horror of the building.
In a moment of madness, I took my Australian fiancée to visit this building- well, after my numerous re-accountings of terror regarding this establishment, she had to see it - and I was amazed. The place had had a makeover. Well no, actually it hadn’t. But the sign that I had seen thousands of times upon entering the place had.
Gone was the graffiti-scrawled, spittle-stained name that at one point, someone had, in their fury, written ” arbeit macht frei”- and if you don’t understand the reference I will not expand further, less it becomes offensive. In its place was an (almost) tasteful purple and gold affair bearing an ornate crest and the school motto ” service”.
“Damn them” I thought as I peered through the high blue metal posts that marked the boundary of the entrance. We never got a new sign…all we got were detentions. As the gates we bolted firmly shut, were unable to proceed down the scarred tarmac that was the driveway to the grimy edifice, but in a way, I counted it as a blessing; as you should never go back.
I have often wondered if the feelings that I had about my school were largely paranoid delusions just born of an unhappiness of being there. However, on speaking to the few friends that I stayed in contact with, after leaving this place, I found I was not alone in my theories. One particular associate, who at the time was an academic year below mine, has told me that “nobody that he knows emerged from Lordswood without serious problems”
We are talking about the ’80’s here. I was a student at the institution from 1980-1987. Most people got out in ’85 after completion of their O-levels whilst others, like me, endured another voluntary sentence of two years in order to complete their A- Levels and/or put off the joys of the dole queue.
Nobody likes school uniforms, and I think it is a universal trait of school kids everywhere to challenge and subvert the convention.
Our uniform was predominantly black. In latter years black has become a favourite of mine, however as a practicality it was a nightmare. Boys get dirty. There is no avoiding this factor, and the combination of playground gravel, chalk dust and the general filth that comes from rolling around in school corridors; had hundreds of mothers despairingly reaching for the clothes brushes on a nightly basis.
“How do you get so dirty?” my mother would continually ask me. It was something that at the time I couldn’t really answer. It is only with hindsight that I can look at the situation realistically. The school had two yards or ‘playgrounds’, North and South with the main mass of the building dividing the two. Years 1-3 would occupy the south yard whilst years 4 and 5 would run riot in the other. The school was built on a rise, and had a precipitous drop to the vast acreage of playing fields that spread out from the building like a muddy rash, and served as a fair division between us and the equally horrific Lordswood Girls School.
This drop was known as “the bank” and it had become a well-known sport for bigger kids to hurl smaller ones down this slope for variety of excuses. If you were particularly unfortunate, the momentum might carry you as far as the water-jump in the running track, but this was only achieved by well practiced throwers.
Another feature of the yard was the narrow area of land that divided the “bank” from the main body of the yard. This was a 3 meter wide strip of red grit that sometimes acted as a running track for hurdling or as a run-up for high jumping; and terminated in a filthy sand-pit in which such other athletic nightmares such as discus, javelin and hammer throwing would occur.
Despite the numerous warnings and threats by staff to keep out of these areas, it always seemed impossible to stay out of them. Therefore the combination of these hazards, and the general dirt of the grit strewn tarmac that served as the surface of the yard itself proved a perfect recipe for the general coverage of daily muck that would cling to the black cloth of our blazers and trousers.
Teachers are a breed apart. If any of you out there are practitioners of this hard and often misunderstood profession, please take note of what I say here. You may learn something.
Now I know that this was nearly a quarter of a century ago, and that teaching methodologies have changed since then, but I have to say that the Lordswood method does seem to have been a very special case indeed. I will again allude to the writings of Mervyn Peake. His “Gormenghast” novels contain an array of bizarre characters that are comparable to Dickens in their composition, yet have a much darker edge; and in fact are more caricature than believable.
Had Mr. Peake visited the Lordswood environment and experienced the teaching staff for himself, I am sure that the novels would have continued further than the trilogy that was written, for there was enough source material to keep his leaden dagger scribbling away for many a book to come.
I shall not name names, for it is potentially expensive to do so, but if any of this is familiar to you…well you know who you are.
On my induction to this establishment, an embarrassing affair which involved the 120 new students and their respective parents sitting down in the main hall and listening the virtues of the school being recited from the stage; I was introduced to the man who would be my personal form tutor.
The year group was split into four groups, or “houses” each named after a particular scientist: mine was Faraday. There was rivalry and so-called healthy competition between the houses, but more of that later.
My personal tutor, let’s call him Mr. H, was an early forties middle sized man with enormous sticky-out ears, glasses that had to be a quarter of an inch thick, and an accent that suggested some hideous cross between London, and Birmingham.
I knew from the moment that he opened his mouth that this was going to be difficult.
“Oi am a haaard mairn” he warned, looking down at me, his eyes seeming to fill up the lenses of his glasses to the point of overflowing.
He was right, he was a hard man, but eventually after about three years, we saw the cracks beginning to show, and by year five we broke him. This man it turned out, was even tormented by his fellow staff members.
Mr. H’s subject area was history, he was head of department no less. In year four, I opted to take history as a subject choice, and by some miracle or another managed to find myself in “top set” which was taught by Mr. H.
By now of course, we had been at Lordswood for several years we were braver, and would see just how far we could push the patience of this man by spending the duration of the lesson trying to move him away from the actual subject matter.
On one occasion, he let slip that he was an avid model train hobbyist, which was the beginning of much hilarity. The other point of weakness of which we took advantage was his car. It was an ancient rusting VW Estate, which he said was in a state of restoration, though in the seven years that I attended the school, I never saw any progress or development. This vehicle, became a target of our schoolboy pranks, and I do believe that if we had actually spent as much time on our History as we did on the car; then we would have all probably passed our History O- level examinations with straight A’s. My history O- level was a disaster. When the question of the” type of methods employed by Bismark in unifying the states ” arose, all I could think of was ”why didn’t I listen?”
The addiction to Mr. H’s car began when one student tied a large number of old soft drink cans to the rear bumper, and resulted in much hilarity.
As a follow-on piece, the same student wired the car to the old rusting set of cages that was once the school aviary, thus effectively demolishing it and a small outbuilding when Hr H pulled away for home that night.
Another incident involved filling the car to the very brim with screwed up newspaper, which had been collected religiously by the whole class for four weeks previously.
The final incident that ended the torment involved the car being wheeled into the middle of the mud-soaked playing fields and bedecked with the contents of the art room store cupboard. Several of my fellow students were expelled for that one; and a harsh talking to from the headmaster informing us that “if anything of that nature was to happen again, then the police would be involved” ensured that Mr. H’s car would hitherto remain untouched. Still, it was fun whilst it lasted.
Amongst other characters of note was Mr. W, the English teacher who spent most of his time pushing his glasses up his oddly shaped nose; whilst reading Jane Austen’s “Mansfield Park”- hey, and what a great choice of literature for a class of fifteen year old males.
Short person syndrome is a well documented condition, and a classic example of it was embodied in the tiny frame of Mr. M, the head of the Science Department. This man was a nasty little piece even by Lordswood standards, and such was the hatred and intolerance levels in this man, that you could almost see it in his eyes: tiny pin-points of hate that glared out his mousy little face
Whether his height was the reason behind his venom, we never knew, but he wasn’t much over 5’ tall. He also wore metal tips on his shoes: a classic example of a little man wanting to sound heavier. Mr. M had one of those voices that penetrated any airspace, not that it was loud-it wasn’t, but it had this droning whining quality that could inspire adolescent frustrated rage at distances of over a hundred meters.
Each of the staff had eccentricities that one would be hard pressed to find in any other environment, but to go through each one would make a novel all of it’s own; so I leave the best to last: the Lordswood mathematics department.
This was a collection of five individuals that on a day to day basis displayed behaviour that brought new meaning to the adage: “ the lunatics are running the asylum”. Their true intent was hate, and they used mathematics as the medium.
I was lucky. I ended up with one of the comparatively milder members of this choir of evil: a softly spoken man from the Black Country region of the West Midlands. Mr. S. However this didn’t mean he was easy. He wasn’t.
The second in command of the maths department was a maniacal giant called Mr. C and he dealt out humiliations and punishments like they were going out of fashion. He frequently threw board rubbers, books, chalk, staple guns or anything else that he could find on his desk in the direction of anyone who dared to let their attention wander. A particularly regular occurrence was to snatch up a boy from his seat, hold him upside down and shake him. If any sweets fell out, these would be confiscated and eaten.
Victorian schooling made much use of the cane as a means of dealing out corporal/ physical punishment. The Lordswood way was “the pump”: an old gym -training shoe that was regularly used upon the tender backsides of any who dared to trespass against the iron rule. The Maths department would bring these out on a daily basis, sometimes taking a run-up to administer the beatings, and on occasion writing messages in reverse and in chalk to emblazon an almost indelible message upon contact.
On one occasion they nearly went too far: they hung a lad from an overhead beam by his school tie, and got him to recite his logarithms, whilst moving the desks upon which he was standing further apart upon each incorrect statement. Disaster was avoided by the timely arrival of another member of staff, who was clearly alarmed by the carryings-on. The staff laughed it off as being a joke, and for a while there was a respite in their outrageous behaviour, but I have to say that I am surprised that no disciplinary action was ever taken.
However, despite the way that I may rant on about the downside of Lordswood Boys school, I did find sanctuary in the art department. Here I found that I was allowed to while away my lunchtimes and thus avoid the torments of the yard. The art department was run by two more eccentrics who clearly weren’t exactly happy about being there, but were so relaxed and distanced from the rest of the school that they put up with the chaos around them by locking their doors and ignoring it.
Art was something that the school seemed to tolerate through necessity. The schools main push was science and sport: if you couldn’t do one, you did the other, and if you could do neither you were resigned to the scrap heap. However, the art department did see to the staging of the bi-annual plays and musicals, and so had a sort of purpose. Incidentally, I took over the design and construction of the scenery for the productions in my time in the 6th Form. Inspired by my discovery of Wagnerian staging and the sets of rock concerts I tried to bring this sort of grandeur to the boards of Lordswood. Who cares if I caused near irreparable damage to the structure by building in concrete and creating health hazards with chemicals, the sets looked great, and I left my mark.
Permanently.
Funnily enough I ran into my art master about 2 years ago, on the steps of Birmingham Public Library. I was amazed, for he didn’t really look any different (right down to the sweater) and was still teaching at the place.
The same green and grey sweater with the horizontal lines…I was amazed. Don’t these people buy new clothes?
Still I looked past the matter of the same clothes thing, concluding that it was probably a matter of institutionalisation that had affected the man in some way. Either that or he just happened to like that type of sweater. I know this happens…especially in Birmingham, because my father does exactly the same thing.
One of the first sentences he said to my fiancée was “ I’ve had this jumper for nearly forty years.”
So maybe that was it. I can't hold onto clothing for that long…maybe it’s the cosmopolitan fashion thing that I have, or maybe it's because I have in my life two things that one should never really combine:
Black clothes and a penchant for doing the household bleaching wearing said garments....
And here dear reader ( As Henry Fielding would have said) I must leave it- for I have wandered FAR off the track, and l fear it may become a novel.
All questions and commentaries to my email. If you have an opinion, or beg to differ my recollection of the events and persons alluded to in this particular excursion please email me at [email protected]
