I have just returned from my Spring
Break which was spent partly in Baiyin and partly in various
locations in England. I considered writing a detailed, coherent
description of the trip, starting with sitting on, and breaking, my
umbrella, on the bus from Yangshuo to the airport and finishing with
fireworks all the way back from the airport to Yangshuo which were
not, it seems, in honour of my return, but rather in honour of the
Chinese New Year.
I considered it and rejected it.
Instead, here are some random
observations from the five weeks in no particular order.
Before I left Baiyin Theresa asked me
if I could take some pictures of my home town as she'd like to see
where I grew up. With that intention I went out one morning with my
camera. It rapidly became obvious that Bilston is not the town it
once was. If I had to caption the pictures that I took they would say
things like “The empty space where the swimming baths used to be”,
“The fence around the empty space where the shops used to be” and
“The fence around an empty space where I'm sure there used to be
something but I can't for the life of me actually remember what it
was”. There would of course also be “The new leisure centre where
there used to be an empty space” but that looks like it landed from
another planet yesterday and might well fly off home tomorrow. You
will doubtless be pleased to hear that I don't intend to post the
pictures. You'll just have to go to Bilston and not see the sights
for yourself.
Wolverhampton isn't my home town,
though the powers that exist in that part of the world seem
determined that Bilston should be absorbed into it (and
Wolverhampton itself absorbed into some weird nebulous entity called “Greater
Birmingham"). In the centre of Wolverhampton is their large shopping
development “The Mander Centre”. I, of course, am old enough to
remember a time before the Mander Centre, a time when the shopping
there consisted of the Queen's Arcade. I walked around it for a
couple of hours and now fully expect to see the demise of the centre
in my lifetime too. There appear to be a very large number of a new
chain called “To Let :Retail Opportunity” though none of them were
open when I visited.
Moving up (or possibly down depending
on your point of view) I had a look at Birmingham's new library which
hadn't yet opened when last I visited. Jolly nice it is too. I've got
used to the odd, wedding-cake exterior and quite like it now and the
interior is really very nice indeed. A fine job. It opened in 2013.
The city now plans to reduce its opening hours – and its staff –
by almost fifty percent. Who needs boring old books anyway?
Next door, and now part of the same
complex, is Birmingham Rep where I took in a Matinee performance of
Harvey where every seat was full and, at a childlike 57, I was
clearly the youngest person in the audience. A very nice performance
it was too, with James Dreyfus turning in an unexpectedly assertive
variation on the Elwood P. Dowd role. It is the only time I have seen
an audience give a loud and very enthusiastic round of applause when
the curtain call cast are joined by an invisible rabbit. I expect they'll find a reason to close the Rep too if they try hard enough.
I was startled when watching Sky News
at a friend's house to discover that a fictional soul band were
expected to play a leading role in a current military crisis. At
least that's how I interpret the ticker tape item that said “UN
Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon expects the Commitments to end the
crisis in the Ukraine”. (In the interests of full disclosure, there
may not have been a capital C.)
I was equally baffled, though
thoroughly unsurprised, when watching a quiz show I heard the
question “Which Simon is the country 'Bolivia'” named after?”
answered with “Simon Cowell”.
Speaking of odd comments on television
I watched a financial analyst say, with a completely straight face,
that the take over of the 99p shop by Poundland would inevitably lead
to price rises. Either he had the most perfect line in deadpan comedy
or he was serious. I hope it was the former but can't rule out the
latter.
My poetry performance at Wolverhampton
went down particularly well with praise being received from almost
everyone. Even better was that, as well as the poetry I read from
assorted Chinese poets, they actually seemed to like my own work too.
No one had told me it was themed for Saint Valentines Day but
fortunately, and purely by coincidence, the set I'd selected included
a couple of love poems so that worked out OK. The other acts were the
usual accomplished mixed bill. I expect it will still be there
waiting for me to join in next time I visit, though that might be
some considerable time in the future.
Of course before I went to England I
went to Baiyin which has had a bit of an explosion in the coffee shop
industry since I lived there, with the four that I previously knew
being joined by at least another four. Staff training, as in England,
appears to have been a bit hit and miss, though, as in two of them I
was disappointed to discover that the sole person who knew how to
operate the coffee machine was absent. The shops were still open but
a coffee shop that offers a dozen different types of coffee all of
which it is unable to prepare sounds as if it should be in a Monty
Python sketch.
It looked for a while as if I would be
getting rather more chance to not sample the coffees than I intended
as a few days before I left the province had the same light dusting
of snow that closed all roads to the airport last year. It closed
them this year too. Then they opened them again as it started to
clear only to have another light dusting (so little that you would
sprinkle more icing sugar on a cake) on the morning I was leaving.
Fortunately this time the airport road wasn't closed and I managed to
get away OK.
OK, that's enough for now. I will
doubtless think of another random sampling as soon as I het sen on
this one. If I do, I'll add them later.(See thought of one already - I haven't mentioned the roadworks yet. Lead item in the next bulletin.)
