Okay so I haven't actually blogged for nearly 2 years, oops. I have a really good excuse, okay maybe not good but acceptable, hmmm right it's just an excuse. So after my last blog I got asked by a company that were moving their head office from London to Birmingham to start blogging for their internal website to promote the city to their staff. The plan was to transfer about 1,000 jobs from London up here and they wanted some of their experienced staff to relocate.
It was a very exciting time I can tell you, not only was I blogging about the city I love but I also got to host visitors thinking of relocating around the city for a couple of weekends and go down to their offices in London to promote the relocation package (wearing a fetching T-shirt with "Want to know more about Birmingham..............Ask me I live their" on it).
The weekends were fascinating we got to meet families and show them round. On the Saturday there were walking tours of the city centre focused on different aspects Families, Culture, Shopping and another one that I can't remember now. On the family tour we went to the Sea Life Centre, the Library, the CBeebies roadshow that conveniently was on and a canal boat tour. Culture involved a lot of the Jewellery Quarter, St Paul's Square including St Paul's Gallery on Northwood Street that I wasn't aware of, they specialise in Album cover art they had a David Bowie exhibition on at the time 😢😢😢. The Shopping tour including a trip to the champagne bar at Selfridges and a tour round the inner workings of the Bullring. Then on the Sunday it was a coach tour around the city and suburbs (including the requisite stop at Cadbury World) and it was this that was the real eye opener for most people, they had all heard Birmingham was a concrete wasteland of 1960s shopping centres and council houses. So to go around Edgbaston (south of the Hagley Road obviously), Bournville, Lickey, Barnt Green, Wythall and then round to Solihull was to say the least a surprise.
Ultimately most of the families I got to see did actually relocate. I remember one family with 2 of the cutest little boys ever who had been told the best places to look for property were Handsworth, Smethwick and Small Heath?!?!?!?! I really do wonder who by? I mean seriously, the Mom was definitely a Solihull type and wanted the boys in a good school, I gentle steered them away and in the end they settled in Stourbridge.
It was however challenging to talk to people who did want anything to do with Birmingham and were going to be negative no matter what. I made a big mistake with one of those people once, he went straight on the attack "Tell me what's great about Birmingham then." I realise now that I should have quizzed him a bit more about what he does for fun and what he wants in a place to live. But I didn't I started off the with usual statistics youngest city in Europe, 513 parks, gardens and open spaces, more canals than......blah blah. When this failed I tried commuting distances because not everyone that works in London lives in London right? So I started on about how close to the countryside everything is and how you can live a beautiful village and still get into the city in 30 minutes, but the guy picked up on this and exclaimed "Ha so the best thing about Birmingham is NOT living in Birmingham" he roared with laughter and then just shut me down if I tried to say anything else. You win some, you lose some. I can't change the world on my own.
But anyway even though I haven't been doing much blogging here I have been out and about on Instagram making sure people get to see the city at its best and find out about hidden treasures. So I intend to blog weekly now going forward and I hope you enjoy it.
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