Birmingham Home Choice: Fill & Download for Free

WHEN I STARTED WRITING THIS… I intended for it to be a short post and it’s turned into a bit of a rant. So I beg your pardon…I live in Bradford, and during the week I work in an office in the city centre. On an evening, I’ll often walk the 3.5-ish miles home - being all uphill (go in any direction out of Bradford and you’re pretty certain to go uphill at some point) it’s a decent workout for the legs.Given that we’re only a couple of weeks away from the winter solstice, it’s completely dark when I walk home. My route home is a choice between:1. West Bowling - Manchester Road - Wibsey Bank2. Little Horton Road to St Enoch’s3. Great Horton road and then onto Moore Avenue.Anyone familiar with any of these routes would be able to confirm that any one of them would take me through areas where I would be very much in the minority as a white man. But at no point, even in the dark, do I feel that I am not safe or welcome.Now as for Birmingham being a no-go area for non-muslims… what the actual fuck?!! Things that go on in Birmingham at night would make the inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah blush. In my youth I went to parties/nightclubs/raves in Birmingham and witnessed (and maybe partook…) in things that are strictly forbidden for a muslim. Some of the nightclubs had thousands of people in attendance, dancing until 6am, then most people would walk down the street to the afterparty that would go on until 2pm…Just have a look at this screenshot I’ve just taken of Birmingham city centre on Google maps. Go on - humour me - click to make it bigger if you need to:Search terms were “Birmingham Nightclubs”. There are plenty more than this if I were to zoom out, but I think this demonstrates my point pretty well on its own. This is the very centre of the city - around the Bullring shopping centre, the main train station, the museums, the cathedral (not marked but it’s just the the right of Bushwackers) etc.So let’s see what we have.PRYZM - “a glitzy superclub with 4 vast rooms”Mechu - cocktails and champagne (not very Islamic?)The Tunnel Club - this hosts, amongst other events, Drum and Bass and Happy Hardcore raves with gurning drugged up ravers dancing all night to very fast music while chewing their glowsticks/lips and hugging their friends (I don’t think muslims are allowed to do this but correct me if I’m wrong)Reflex - this is where hen-dos often end up. Cheesy 70s/80s pop and lots of alcohol:… I could go on (and on, and on) start talking about the strip joints, “massage parlours”, domination dungeons where you can get whipped and told you are a very naughty boy etc., “head shops” (that sell drug paraphernalia and legal/grey-area drugs) that operate discreetly but quite openly in the area… or the “opportunities” you have in this city to gamble away all your money - but I think you get the point.Oh - actually - one last thing. Have a look toward the bottom-right of the map - there’s The Nightingale - “well established gay superclub”. That’s right folks, in this supposed islamist no-go area we have a “well established gay superclub” operating openly. That would be this place:And this is what happens once a year outside:No go area???? My fucking arse it is.

No. It's only ever happened to me once, and I wasn’t at all worried.It was January, and I had driven up to Birmingham the previous day to return my son to university. Then I drove on and spent the night staying with my brother and his wife and small son. The following afternoon, I set off for home, and after only a few miles on the motorway (I thought I was still on the M54, but it later turned out that I was now on the M6) my little car suddenly lost power and coasted quietly to a halt on the hard shoulder side of the road, where it expired altogether. I couldn’t restart it, so I called the RAC, my breakdown company, and they promised to send someone out. Apparently I was a priority case as a woman on my own, something I wasn’t going to argue with (being an independent-minded woman is all very well, but it has its limits).You are advised not to stay in the car on the hard shoulder; the danger of something shunting into your car by accident is too great. So I had pulled a warm jacket out of the car, climbed over the Armco and then a few yards up the grass bank above it to watch for the RAC’s breakdown vehicle. The daylight was fading, with the sky turning a chilly shade of dusky pink. Then it clouded over, and started to snow a bit; the wind was cold, and I was very glad of the warm jacket. Finally (somewhat delayed by the confusion over precisely which motorway I was on) the breakdown truck arrived, and my car was loaded onto it.My insurance cover didn’t run to taking me all the way home (about 150 miles) but I could ask to be ferried to any garage I liked within about 15 miles. So I phoned my brother, and we agreed on one which suited everyone best. The driver was fine with this choice - it was slightly outside the official limit, but was only a mile from his home, and I was his last call-out of the day! So he delivered me there, and my brother came and fetched me. He took me to the nearest main-line station, and I went home by train. No problem.And that was the end of my little Peugeot. But no worries, at any stage.

It’s hard to say what any one person’s experience at university will be like in advance, but leafy the Edgbaston campus in south Birmingham, under the reassuringly solid clock tower ‘Old Joe’ (Joseph Chamberlain), is definitely a good choice.If you want to pick up an idea of what the campus atmosphere is like, you could do worse than read David Lodge’s novel Changing Places, which heavily features ‘Rummidge University,’ a fictional campus that, well, is basically the University of Birmingham by another name.Onto of some impressively grand buildings (The Great Hall was where the 2010 leaders debate was before the general election), the campus has a good amount of green spaces; the central quadrangle is leafy and pleasant – certainly nothing like the Birmingham many from London or elsewhere might imagine.The university also has a station with trains every 10-15 minutes into the city centre, and the Guild of Students is home to a good number of great nights out (there are a few bars and eateries in the building, and a statue of a mermaid you probably shouldn’t climb on).