Other Stuff: Birmingham New Street

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If you could get all the cities of England in a room together, they'd be a class of teenagers just about to take their GCSE's. Look at the end of term photograph, and the first one you'd notice would of course be London - sat in the middle, looking much older (or, rather, much more mature) than the rest of the class, obviously destined for greater things, with a big smile and a grown-up haircut. London's the one that half the rest of the class really fancy and the other half really hate. There'll be a gang of other kids around her too, with little in the way of personality except for the constant yearning to be her one true best friend without knowing that she doesn't actually even remember their names. London's that annoying kid who always comes top in all the exams, plays in all the school teams, has a boyfriend two years above and knows all the coolest bands a fortnight before everyone else. She's also the one who, underneath it all, is utterly and completely vacuous, and would dump every single one of her friends in an instant as soon as anyone better came along.

Then you'd notice the rowdy kids, Manchester and Liverpool, the ones who always get in fights, are suspected of robbing the tuck shop, and are in a band together, albeit one banned from ever playing at a school assembly again thank you very much. York's the mother of the glass, slightly overweight, prone to cardigans, while Leeds' dad owns a factory, Bristol's listening to something You Wouldn't Understand on her walkman, Hull has a part-time job, and Nottingham and Leicester, The Twins, are really annoyed that no-one can tell them apart.

And then there's Birmingham. Poor old Birmingham - keeps on coming second in exams, works really hard, stays behind after school to help tidy up, and yet nobody ever seems to notice her. If London was any kind of friend at all she'd take her to one side and tell her that all the she needs to do is sort herself out a bit. Stop wearing those drab clothes that your mum bought at the jumble sale, learn to talk to other people a bit more, get yourself out into the world, and things'll improve no end. Birmingham might not listen, might prefer to go back to her books and nudge her Dame Edna specs back up her nose, but given time it might sink in, if only London could be bothered to think of someone else for a change.

It sounds horrid to say that a change of image is all that's needed - when you make the effort to talk to her, she's lovely, caring, warm and generous, but anyone who's ever visited Birmingham would have to agree that she really ought to do something about her looks. If you visit by car you go by enormous flyovers, gliding above disused factories and what appears to be mile after mile of storage space for every single pylon that will ever be needed, in the world, ever. It looks grim, and it's not helped by the constant sight of the city centre rising up like a benign but hairy mole on the city's forearm. At least you get to leave whenever you like though, which is more than can be said for the other means of getting there.

Birmingham New Street Station is absolutely and without doubt the worst place in the whole country. Yes, there's loads of run down estates and suchlike that probably have more crime more desperation and less amenities, but to be honest most of us can simply not go there. Birmingham Bloody New Street, however is unavoidable if you ever go on a train, and seems to be sponsored by car manufacturies to put you off ever using public transport again. At Birmingham New Street you're treated like a Jobseeker, with vinegery pity and more than a little contempt. It has a vast impersonal concourse where vile 80's brand shops sell terrible food at enormous prices, where you have to sit on seats purposefully made to small to get comfortable on (hey, make way for the next customer!) at tables far too small to be of any use, where the modern innovations of screens that Actually Give Information have been done away with, where 12 extra service windows have bene provided to highlight the fact that there's only ever one person there to help you. Any rational person would have buried the whole damn thing underground, if only they'd not already done that with the platforms themselve, which are officially the most vile, degrading places on God's own earth. There's no smoking, no drinking, no light and you have to pay to have a piss. It stinks of trains and boredom, everything's delayed (to really rub it in they'll occasionally force you onto a "special bus" instead because they couldn't be bothered to mend the line properly last time they did it) and the tannoy sounds like a gangsta rap record with all the interesting words blanked out. Can you imagine anybody ever having an emotional farewell on one of these shite shelves? In somewhere glorious like York, where the station is a temple to transport, a cathedral of ingeniuty and adventure, every action becomes somehow larger, every emotion run through with the oily blood of the kind of determination and verve that could build such a mighty edifice to contain such glorious machines. Birmingham New Street, in comparison, is a back street clap clinic, except that backstreet clap clinics tend to let you get in and out as quickly as possible, and will occasionally keep to the time of your appointment.

Birmingham New Street - it's shit.

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