I should know, I live here. Luckily that’s what Pete Ashton thinks so, after creating the new blog site Digbeth Is Good, he decided to let me blog on it. Which is what I’ve been doing for the past week or so, and having lots of fun with it. It’s basically a blog about arts, culture and life in general in sunny Digbeth. I’ll be covering the myriad of arty stuff going on around here and possibly slipping in the more bizarre aspects of Irish Quarter life when I think I can get away with it.

I’ll carry on posting things about beyond the Digbeth borders here on The Getgood Guide (probably mostly rants that would better off staying inside my head), but from now on posts concerned with my stomping ground will be on Digbeth Is Good. Hope you enjoy it!

It seems Grumpy Joe has spotted a new income stream, and built himself a new website, on the back of his chicken-shit catapult. You can now protect your home with one of your very own for just £75. ‘Simply load with rotten eggs, chicken poo or any other suitable noxious substance and aim at intruders.’ Oh my.

Even more shocking is, that if you read his Biog page, you’ll discover one half of the source of Joe’s misery, Mr X, is actually his own son Michael (his partner in crime being convicted fraudster David Sharratt). The plot thickens into one that’s positively Shakesperian.

Following my previous post applauding Grumpy Joe’s unique marketing techniques, he has recently featured in one of Channel 4’s 3 Minute Wonder films: Living With Surveillance. It seems Grumpy Joe is now fighting the good fight armed with a canon that fires chicken shit at prospective vandals, having adapted the home-made human canon he used to use to fire his wife over the River Avon. Bloody brilliant.

Further clips of him arming his property with weaponry Wile E. Cayote would be proud of can be found on BBC Nottingham, who interviewed Joe.

According to Will Pavia’s article in The Times, ‘Nottinghamshire Police said…that they would send an officer to offer advice on “conventional security techniques” and on the use of “reasonable force”’. Yeah, best of luck with that.

As an administrator I handle an awful lot of junk mail. It’s pretty annoying and, unless it happens to fluke and arrive at a time when I’m getting quotes for that particular thing anyway, invariably goes straight into the recycling bag. This is why I personally think direct marketing is a bit stupid. It’s not direct, far from it - it ends up in the hands of gatekeepers like me who throw it straight into the bin before a decision-maker lays eyes on it.

But one that caught my eye and imagination this morning was a letter from Grumpy Joe’s Flooring Sales, who deal in entertainment flooring and furniture. The name got me first of all. And beside his name on the letterhead was his logo, an old bald man illustrating his grumpiness with hands on hips and a deep scowl. I found it a bit odd - what the hell did this have to do with flooring? Not exactly doing what he says on the tin.

It intrigued me enough to read the letter, which got even more bizzare. ‘Despite all attempts to stop us, and despite vandalism and arson, the Gluing Ladies DID have a good Christmas….’ What?! You’re trying to sell us flooring but veer off into casual mentions of violent crimes.

This aroused my interest enough to follow his link to his website: ‘Anyone still not sure about why I’m Grumpy and what happened…look at the press release on the website www.portableflooring.co.uk/grumpy.pdf.’

It’s thrillingly shocking. There’s betrayal and back-stabbing, a deeply sinister Mr X and Mr Y, one brave man’s struggle against adversity and the mob’s attacks on his and his family’s property. Who would have thought the world of flooring could be so cut-throat?

But what really grabbed me is that, as a piece of direct marketing, this seriously worked. The letter grabbed my attention enough to read it fully. What was in the letter motivated me to visit their website. Probably exactly what a piece of junk mail is meant to do.

Now I’m no marketing professional, but I’m guessing if I spoke to one they wouldn’t advise a business building a publicity campaign around getting shafted by a couple of gangsters with a mob of thugs at their disposal. But that’s what Grumpy Joe’s done and it’s brilliant. If I or anyone I know needs a portable dancefloor Grumpy Joe is the first person I’ll think of. I’ll keep his details on file, even if it is for novelty value. And he’s definately achieved one aim in that I or anyone I advise won’t touch Portable Floormaker Ltd with a bargepole.

Now either Grumpy Joe is a genius or he’s unwittingly hit upon promotion gold. From today, in my head specialist portable flooring = Grumpy Joe. Surely that’s any advertiser’s dream?

Photo by Stephen Dedalus

Whilst on holiday in Dublin a couple of years ago I discovered the National Library of Ireland. It’s a grand old building that houses exhibitions on Irish authors and literature. My idea of heaven.

When I was there they were hosting productions of short Yeats plays. In the one I saw a young Irish republican makes his escape after the Easter Rising by hiking under cover of darkness. Whilst walking he meets two masked figures, the ghosts of a strange man and young girl who are locked in a weird purgatory where they can see but not touch each other. They beg the young man to release them from their torment by forgiving them for their crime of falling in love, but he finds he cannot.

For some strange and stupid reason I got my ancient Celtic love triangles mixed up and, with the passing of time, became convinced the ghosts were those of the legendary Tristan and Isolde, an Irish princess who had an affair with her husband King Mark’s adored nephew.

It’s funny how your head plays tricks with you and replaces gaps in your knowledge with the nearest thing to hand. I was totally wrong, they were actually the ghosts of Diarmuid MacMurrough and Dervorgilla, historical figures in 12th Century Irish history. Diarmuid, chieftain of one of the Irish tribes, stole Dervorgilla from another prince. When the offended prince threatened to retaliate, Diarmuid called upon the assistance of the Normans. This turn of events worried the English and Henry II sent in colonizing forces, thus beginning 800 years of oppression. Which means the play makes far more sense.

When racking my brains and the internet years later to try and find out what play it was I saw I inevitably hit a brick wall. Googling ‘Yeats + Tristan + Isolde’ and similar proved fruitless because no such thing existed. But this is the beauty of the internet – I stumbled across a Yeats Discussion Group, joined, emailed them my query and got a full explanation the very same day: the play was The Dreaming of The Bones and my memory’s shot.

This was a real revelation to me – I could source something that I had scant and just plain wrong information on by finding experts within something as obscure as a Yeats Discussion Group. When I wondered aloud people looked at me as if I’d only just seen a mobile phone and went, ‘yeah, so?’ I feel like Rip Van Winkle waking up. At 31 years old, I’ve just discovered how bloody brilliant the internet can be, undoubtedly years after everyone else.

I still get emails from the group and, despite having an answer to my Yeats question, can’t bring myself to leave. The subject headings are things like “The Torso of Apollo”, ‘as the leaves of autumn wither and fall…’, ‘That knowledge increases unreality…’ and my favourite so far: ‘Like yourself, Annette, I also am haunted by lines and images of The Statues, “l’ve lips pressed against a plummet measured face”’. I’ve the most beautiful spam in the world clogging up my Inbox.

But where I see the light, others inevitably stumble in the dark. I met a maker of quality rocking horses last Saturday who said the internet had killed his business by opening up the market. Try as people present did, there was no convincing him that he could somehow convey his superior craftsmanship to online customers, who would all buy the cheapest, crap rocking horse they found on Ebay. Which is as insulting to online consumers as it is harmful to his business.

It seemed so sad that someone who should have thrived in a new marketplace did the opposite because he just wasn’t ready for the world of possibilities the internet opened up. Go on! Go forth into the wilderness, on your handcrafted wooden steed, and conquer. And if you come across a young Irish republican on the run, offer him a lift.

Hula Hoops may be armless fun, but it seems Councillor Deidre Aldren doesn’t feel the same about Loldeidre. Captioned photos of her have been disappearing from the Flickr Loldeidre account, hence the ‘FAIL’ picture vanishing from my previous Surface Unsigned post. Boo.

But it seems she can still be accessed via http://loldeirdre.tumblr.com/. Hooray for the internet! Loldeidre does not die, she just moves about a bit!

loldeidre gives her verdict on Surface Unsigned

Okay, so NOT a good week for Surface Unsigned. On Created in Birmingham, Danny Smith highlighted the fact that bands performing in their competition had to sell at least 25 tickets each in order to qualify for the next round, concluding that bands effectively had to pay to perform. Instead of entering the discussion, Surface Unsigned tried to put a stop to it, sending scary legal emails accusing Created in Birmingham of breach of copyright in reproducing a part of their contract.

Birmingham bloggers went nuts. Pete Ashton put out a call to arms, saying ‘you know what to do’, with a handy step by step guide for us novices that don’t. This was answered by the likes of Stef Lewandowski and Surface Unsigned ended up with shit all over their faces.

My favourite episode in the whole drama is Created in Birmingham, in order to avoid the supposed ‘breach of copyright’, translating the contract extract into LOLspeak. LOLspeak is a new revelation to me, which just goes to show how seriously behind the times I’m getting because ‘lolcat’ on Google comes up with thousands of images of fluffy animals saying cute things in this odd language. It’s like a cross between text, dyslexia and a 5 year old with a speech impediment. I love it and my own furry bundles of joy, Samson and Floss, are in grave danger of joining the trend.

By far the most bizarre, and therefore best example I’ve seen is loldeidre, Birmingham City Councillor Deidre Alden’s alter ego. Deidre Alden, like many suited executive types, is under the false impression that they are the most newsworthy thing about their work so must illustrate it with staged shots of them planting trees, cutting ribbons, reading residents’ association’s magazines with feigned delight, etc. The reason I like it so much is that I used to work in communications for a local housing association, so often found myself having a hand in staging this crap.

We had a cupboard full of photoshoot paraphernalia that housed matching small shiny spades, reams of wide ribbon, big posh scissors to cut it with, massive cheques (I always had the urge to fill one in and take it to the bank) and boxes and boxes of balloons to launch en masse into the sky.

Unfortunately I could never master getting the right helium levels in the balloons so they would pop within a half mile radius, littering the shiny new streets with deflated rubber attached to optimistic ‘Return to…’ tags. This meant for every balloon returned from further afield there was a correlating stamp in my passport. I must admit to a tinge of guilt when the local rag featured a picture of a smiling child proudly pointing to Paris on a map, where I’d just been for a lovely city break, but we had to have a photocall for the housing director and local politician sitting next to her.

Why is it Deidre and her ilk think this is the best form of publicity? The work they do, the people that thrive because of it, that’s what’s interesting. Not them, in their shiny suits, beaming next to uncomfortable looking, lesser mortals whilst pointing to a Newsworthy Object. Luckily the people behind loldeidre have done the only thing they could with Deidre Alden’s wealth of material and given her the personality of an over-eager primary school prefect.

Cult of Personality is for the mad and bad, and becomes just plain stupid when done on a small, localised scale. Mussolini was a big believer in it, and look what happened to him. However I just cannot bring myself to type a plea to end this madness. That would stop the whole joke, which it seems the more mischievous amongst us just can’t help expanding on.

Photo by Tim Ellis

On Saturday The Guardian featured Kate Burt’s blog Save The Boozer, dedicated to pubs that offer ‘a slice of real British life, where real people still drink. Think dodgy jukeboxes, patterned carpet, photos of the Queen Mum pulling a pint…’

Save The Boozer rewards the best of Britain with STB Awards, which has categories such as The Ultimate Jukebox, The Terrifying Pub and The Sticky Carpet. What I love about Digbeth is it’s a great cluster of these places. For our last birthday me and Tone did a Digbeth Pub Crawl and fitting them all in was a difficult job, we even had to cull The Old Crown from our list. Digbeth should win an award in its own right. Sticky Village. Or something like that.

Anyway, here we are – the ten best boozers in Digbeth:

1. The Spotted Dog

Had to come first by virtue of its rebel landlord John Tighe and his fight against the Noise Abatement Order. John is assisted by his harem of beautiful young barmaids, all carefully chosen to appease the older male clientele. The bar feels as homely as your living room whilst the spacious back garden hosts family parties and the like. It also has a great live music line-up. I never could have imagined The Pogues sung in the style of Johnny Cash by a guy with a head like a baked bean, but now I know. Dir-ty-old-tow-nnn…..

2. The Lamp Tavern

A compact and cosy pub with a lot of lamps. This was the culmination of me and Tone’s pub crawl and we didn’t get out until sunrise. Landlord Eddie seemed to be in a race with us to drink the stock dry. If he takes a shine to you he’ll invite you upstairs to “share the cot”. I somehow resisted. The Lamp Tavern is the regular home of Friction Arts’ Pub Conversations.

3. The Big Bull’s Head

Had to miss this off the pub crawl because a fight broke out in the back bar. As I’ve mentioned before, does great grub for very reasonable prices. I’m not sure if they still do it, but they used to have a He Man’s Grill that consisted of what seemed to be a plate of fried meat (steak, sausage, bacon, etc.) with a separate bowl of chips and beans. Typing about it makes my mouth water with hunger and nausea at the same time.

4. The White Swan

A lovely pub with a large, long front bar and nice back lounges, it’s one of the few older pubs where recent ‘improvements’ have not meant the opposite. The last time I was there in the evening following a Birmingham City home match so it was crowded with loudly slurred arguments, declarations of love and an elderly couple who, despite being very unsteady on their feet, were still managing to chew each other’s faces off. Who said romance was dead?

5. The Anchor

The place to go for real ale in Digbeth. A great big pub with four rooms surrounding the bar in the centre, so has lots of nooks and corners for drinking, chatting and snuggling, with a new outside patio for smoking.

6. The Woodsman

This one’s off the beaten track on the other side of Digbeth near the Millennium Point. When I was last there the traditional old pub style was wonderfully mismatched by a DJ playing deafening, thumping hard house. I didn’t know whether to buy a round or get the pills in.

7. Cleary’s

Bit of an obituary this, as it sadly closed in January. A small and snug place on Cheapside. Every weekend it would have a bad loud disco for young ones to get down and get off to, which was inevitably popular.

8. The Adam and Eve

Another good live music venue with bands that range from blues to rock to acoustic. Visit their website if only to play their keyboard of a navigation bar. Kept me amused for hours.

9. The Market Tavern

Yet another obituary and proof that Save The Boozer really has its work cut out in trying to save ‘a fast disappearing breed’. Rumour has it the owners plan to turn this former lively punk venue into a gastro pub. Which is a pity, as it would have been a worthy contender for Boozer Bogs of the Year Award. Not to put too fine a point on it, they fucking stank.

10. The Fountain Inn

Not one of my haunts as this old man’s drinking hole comes under the category Terrifying Pub. But makes the list thanks to West Midlands Police, who mistook it for another The Fountain Inn, Wrentham Street, ‘one of Birmingham’s busiest gay bars catering to skins, bears, daddies, scallies and leather & denim guys’. I’d love to have been there when the police raided The Fountain Inn, Cheapside and accused the Irish bar of dealing in drugs and gay porn. Feckin’ ace.

Photo of Polish Millennium Centre by Pete Ashton

You probably think all there is to do in Digbeth is drink Guinness and view luxury show apartments but yeah, that’s right, you’re wrong. With fun-packed weeks like this to be had, there’s no excuse to be sitting around your new-build flat getting fat on Stirchley Bacon.

Mondays
The Monday before last I got to see Roger Shannon, Executive Producer of I Could Read The Sky, introduce this gorgeous film in The Spotted Dog. Author Dermot Healy plays an elderly Irish ex-labourer immigrant who pads about his pokey bedsit, remembering his tough life whilst he waits for it to end. It sounds really depressing and it wasn’t exactly a barrel of laughs but it was beautiful. Poignant memories are shot in what look like sepia super-eights and jump drowsily back and forth and back again like a lovely, confused dream. It isn’t an easy watch but well worth it. Director Nicola Bruce put a soft feminine touch on a very harsh male experience and a story that if told by anyone else would be embittered was turned into something strangely soothing.

Gerald was sorry to have missed it, but was otherwise engaged teaching his weekly Irish language classes at The Irish Club. I never knew CRAIC was an acronym. You learn something new every day. Luckily he never misses the Irish music nights on alternate Mondays at The Spotted Dog as they start just as he finishes.

Tuesdays
On Tuesdays get up and get down with ACE dance and music’s open African dance classes for adults. It’s really fun and, because traditional African dance seems to involve a lot of squatting and lower body stance, should be good for your bums and tums. It certainly felt like it was the next day. Ouch.

ACE dance and music also have a programme of dance activities for ages 2 and upwards – see their website for details.

Wednesdays
On the first Wednesday of each month the Irish Heritage Group meet at The Irish Centre. I must admit to missing more of these than I should because I’m lame but they seem to have a very interesting programme of talks and events for every month and do a mean Christmas quiz, where I won some utterly disgusting alcoholic chocolates.

Thursdays
The Custard Factory – we all know it’s there but it’s worth mentioning. At the tail-end of the week I find it hard to pass Rooty Frooty’s in the morning without popping in for a coffee, which is like rocket fuel. And if that doesn’t perk you up, everyone’s favourite barman Rod certainly will.

Fridays
Last Friday I tried out Polish folk dancing at the Polish Millennium Centre. It turned out to be mainly teenagers doing it but if you’re between 11-19 and fancy discovering Polish culture through song and dance then it’s great. A lot of the young people were second or third generation Poles and Wiesniacy are doing a good job of carrying the Polish language and culture forward. You can see the group perform next year at the Polish Folklore Festival in Symphony Hall next February.

I’m glad I went as I got to discover what a great secret the Polish Millennium Centre is. If you spend more than £7 in the restaurant you get a free beer, who can say fairer than that?

If your dancing tastes lie a little further west then St Anne’s Community Centre host very a popular salsa night every Friday, where you can learn and practice some latin moves in a relaxed atmosphere.

Saturdays
Hang out at The Edge on Cheapside from 3pm. I love Friction Arts, in an age when the arts are becoming structured there’s something wonderfully anarchic about them that hints at smashing it all up for some chaotic creativity.

Sundays
St Anne’s is a lovely little church for mass on a Sunday morning, if you’re that way inclined. And instead of a polite tinkle the priest’s entrance is marked by a doorbell’s ding-dong.

If you’re hungry after that nip to The Big Bull’s Head, one of the few places where you can get a three-course roast dinner washed down by a pint and still have change from a tenner. Rumour has it that if you manage to finish their hearty (or is that heart attack?) He Man’s Grill you get to ring the bar’s bell to a round of applause from the punters.

So there you have it, discover Digbeth and you’ll end up smarter, fitter and multi-lingual. If you hurry you might get lucky and bag a new apartment.

Photo courtesy of Keep Digbeth Vibrant

I used to live in a flat in a really badly converted house in Moseley. The flat was awful, with glossed-over woodchip walls and black mould. Even worse was the noise insulation – there was none. When the couple downstairs argued, not only did I know when but why. I often woke up to the girlfriend of the lodger opposite loudly faking her orgasms. We could all hear each other go to the toilet in graphic detail.

However it never occurred to me to ask my neighbours to put a sock it in it (well I did think about asking the guy opposite to put a sock in his girlfriend’s mouth before taping it over, but I’m into some pretty weird shit). I just accepted the fact that my landlord, typical of his breed, had well and truly botched the job he was making a mint on.

The unfortunate tenants of the new Abacus building in Digbeth seem to be in a similar situation. In fact not only can they hear each other, they can smell each other. One poor girl told me how she lives above someone who smokes fish, I doubt she’ll ever eat another kipper again.

And when they are not bothered by each other, they are bothered by their older neighbours The Spotted Dog and more lately The Rainbow and The Custard Factory. But instead of blaming Abacus for selling them an overpriced, under-insulated tin-shack or Birmingham City Council for letting them, they are complaining about these colourful local venues and Birmingham City Council are listening, slapping a Noise Abatement Order on The Spotted Dog and threatening its license and livelihood.

Thank God The Spotted Dog, a gorgeous old Irish pub with a warm welcome (even for Abacus tenants), hasn’t taken this lying down. Its landlord, the very vocal John Tighe, was crowned 2007 Brummie of the Year by Brirmingham It’s Not Shit for fighting the good fight (with often hilarious consequences – the spoof stella ad is just classic).

Their cause has been taken up by The Stirrer. Many people posting on here are of the opinion that if you’re after a quiet life, what the hell are doing in the city centre? Which is a fair point. An even better one is why were these flats were built at all, at least in the condition they’re in, with long-standing live music venues so nearby?

When Crosby Homes first applied for planning permission to build ‘executive apartments’ (they’re fucking flats) near The Nightingale nightclub off Hurst Street, they were refused on the grounds that the area was too noisy for residential building. Upon appeal planning permission was granted, under the provision that Crosby Homers install sufficient noise insulation and triple-glazed windows.

Why were no such terms enforced upon Abacus? It is no exaggeration to state that this oversight threatens the very culture of Digbeth, Birmingham’s ‘Irish Quarter’ and home to a myriad of music pubs and clubs.

One can only hope that Birmingham City Council have learnt from this mistake and are balancing carefully the many planned and proposed new developments that are part of the ‘Eastside regeneration’ with the need to preserve the area’s individuality. Their insistence that new apartments being built on Connaught Square be fitted with sufficient noise insulation seems to indicate so. Now let’s hope that they will take steps to ensure the Abacus flats are bought up to standard, rather than blaming The Spotted Dog and others for the building’s shortcomings.

The term ‘regeneration’ means renewal and restoration. It does not mean wiping an entire area clean, throwing the baby out with the bathwater, and turning it into an identikit city living complex. Rendering the place completely unrecognizable to loyal natives will only cause resentment and suspicion of future regeneration projects. That’s no good for Brummies or their City Council, who are apparently ‘a global city with a local heart’. Come on, with a slogan like that, you can’t be ripping the heart out of a locality we love.