Yellow Chair

Digbeth, Feb 11th

My photos from Sunday’s Flickrmeet are up. Here’s the set. Not a huge turnout but I’m not worried. Winter will do that, even though we had lovely weather again. There are now 95 members of Birmingham Flickrmeets which is quite incredible so the summer should be good.

The big find of the day was an open abandoned warehouse in Digbeth full of dead pigeons, broken glass, water and shit. It was great. My personal high, however, was finding the above yellow chair. There’s something about a plastic chair in the wild that really gets my juices flowing. I’ve got three now (one white and another yellow) and while that’s not many it’s the quality that counts.

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Blogging on my two other blogs is going well. It’s interesting how I approach each one. Created in Birmingham is a lot more formal as befits a paying gig and while I’m trying to inject in more personality it does take a while to get things right before posting, like they mean something. There’s no shortage of material for it though. If anything I need to cut down on posting news and get back to profiling people. On the whole I look at the archives for the last couple of months and I’m happy. Proud even. There’s still a hell of a lot to do though. My feeling that it’s going to take a good 6 months to a year to properly bed in seem realistic.

Brum Blog is proving a lot of fun, especially since I decided to abandon doing proper posts with titles and everything and just whack whatever crosses my path on it. It’s something of a return to old school blogging and I think my decision to use Blogger was a wise one from a psychological standpoint if nothing else.

Reaction to the blogs has also been good. The most interesting thing has been people asking me for advice on blogging, which kinda blew my mind at first. It makes sense though. You can do anything with the blog format, anything at all. So where do you start? What tone should you strike? What subjects should you cover? These things don’t really matter if you’re gradually evolving your blog but if your site exists to sell you and your services then it’s important to get it at least partly right from the outset. Is there a market for a Blogging Consultant? Did I actually type that last sentence?

Another nice side effect which I may or may not be able to take credit for is a small but noticeable increase in activity in the Birmingham-centric blog world. This is my secret agenda with these blogs – to provide a bit of substance on which an ecosystem or conversation can build. Early days still but I’m hopeful.

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I’m sure people are curious about the quilt. It’s coming together slowly. Very slowly. I’ve got four pieces now of a projected 49. More news as and when it becomes interesting.