By Christine Swan

Sorting through papers recently, I found a form that I had completed early in my teaching career, when I was under threat of redundancy due to reorganisation. I had always believed that a job in teaching would have meant a job for life but, my career has proved that it can be anything but. Apparently I was “seeking a post of responsibility” but I had a very outside chance in the reshuffle, and may have ended up in a less favourable position. So I packed my metaphorical knapsack and headed north to seek my fortune.

I applied for posts in a number of different schools before successfully securing one in the City of Birmingham. I had previously driven through on my way to a Midlands wedding, and remembered it being a drive-through city with dual carriageways to transport you in, through, and out, swiftly. Working in Birmingham provided an opportunity for this Londoner to try something new.

Brummies are warm, friendly, and proud of their city. London is a vast metropolis , but I regularly travel from one side of Brum to the other. The transport network, however, is quite different to London’s. Londoners huff and puff if a tube train is further than five minutes from their station. Birmingham commuters, freeze in the wind tunnel of New Street station for up to an hour. Many areas of London have become gentrified and totally unaffordable for Londoners. Birmingham is more gritty but even it has its desirable postcodes, and many are still far more realistic to live in.

In the bowels of Birmingham New Street during rush hour

Birmingham has fantastic museums and art galleries , theatres, and its own distinct culture. Birmingham brought us the Balti, Heavy Metal, more canals than Venice, the Bull Ring and the rag market, the Rotunda, Pigeon Park, Peaky Blinders, Bournville Village, and a thousand trades, including making chocolate.

Birmingham has many iconic buildings. It permanently seems to be popping up lift shafts like mushrooms, ready to grow another tower block. Even some of its more recent buildings didn’t survive the march of development.

Out with the old (library)

And in with the new

There have been many notable Brummies who have made a significant contribution to our industrial, sporting and creative heritage. The city boasts its fair share of citizens of note, Matthew Boulton, James Watt, and William Murdoch, stand in permanent conversation, swathed in gold leaf.

Statue of James Watt, Matthew Boulton and William Murdoch

Tributes at Black Sabbath Bridge summer 2025

During the 2022 Commonwealth Games, Birmingham showed its metal, Black Sabbath, some of its favourite sons, played an iconic closing set, and proved that it could still rock the world. From the tiny red brick streets of Aston, came a noise that nobody could ignore.

On a summer’s day last year, I was in Birmingham getting my car MOT and annual service carried out at a specialist garage. The day coincided with the day after Ozzy Osbourne had died. I cannot claim to be a great heavy metal fan, but the atmosphere in Birmingham on that day was surreal. Just a few weeks previously, fans from around the world had enjoyed a farewell concert at Aston Villa Football Club’s ground, and yet now, on this day, the farewell was real.

Other famous residents are less well known by their names, and more by their deeds. The Peaky Blinders have been made icons by the popular television series although the gangs that roamed Birmingham’s streets in the end of the nineteenth century, were less romantic criminals involved in extortion, racketeering and illegal gambling. The West Midlands Police Museum is situated opposite the old courts and was a lock-up for criminals awaiting trial. There is a small Peaky Blinders exhibition that is particularly interesting as it tells the real tales of some of gang members.

Peaky Blinders cap at the West Midlands Police Museum

It does not take long to find natural spaces in the city. The canals act as a nature corridor. I have seen kingfishers less than a mile from the city centre. Numerous wild plants grow on the canal banks, including some that are rare and unusual.

Pyramidal orchid on the bank of the Worcester to Birmingham Canal

My regular friend, the heron

Autumn on the canal

Winter light

One of my favourite things to see on my walk to work from University station, was to watch the seasons change and how this affected the landscape. In the city, the festive season brings the Frankfurt Christmas Market, although this has definitely become smaller in recent years. I always try to take a detour to breath in some of the festive spirit on my walk back to the station.

Frankfurt Christmas market

Nearly forty years on since my move to the Midlands, I remain very fond of Brum. London still feels like home, but Birmingham also has a piece of my heart. There is something unpretentious and authentic about Birmingham. It doesn’t appear to be on many tourists’ agendas, but that’s OK, we’ll keep it for ourselves. It rains…..a lot, but it is a city where you can arrive by rail, shop until you drop and yet remain perfectly dry, exploring the delights of Grand Central, the Bullring and the iconic wibbly-wobbly Selfridges building without so much as a drip landing on you.

When it rains, it pours – on the Soho Road

The Selfridge’s owl and the building in the background. Yes, it was raining again!

A quick Google search presents me with a whole range of reasons. Urban decay, bins, confusing roads, too much traffic and not enough public transport, rubbish ,rats and crime, are enough to put off most people. However, with its diversity, amazing cuisine, nature in the city, friendly people and innovative architecture, it’s time to stamp out cynicism and start singing its praises. Although, Birmingham even has the capital on cynics.

“Stone me, what a life!” Another of Birmingham’s cynical sons, Tony Hancock

More information

Visit Birmingham – https://visitbirmingham.com/

West Midlands Police Museum – https://museum.west-midlands.police.uk/

Bullring shopping – https://www.bullring.co.uk/