10 Months On

A little under a year ago we got notice to leave the legendary Bournville Flat in Bournville and went our separate ways. Dr Andy moved around the corner, Andy and Alex moved to Erdington and I moved to Kings Heath. And then my life started going a little crazy and, other than a couple of accidental meet ups, I haven’t stayed in touch with that lot. So when Alex and some of the old gang turned up at the Curates Egg gig tonight it gave me cause to pause and reflect on how things have changed this last year as we tried to summarize our respective news.

The first thing that struck me was how I was at the gig. A year ago I would have turned up, probably on my own (I went to more gigs that my friends could manage so it became a necessity), take a bunch of photos and then blog about it. The likelyhood of chatting to anyone would be slim. Tonight I had conversations of varying lengths with Pippa from 7 Inch Cinema about what she and Ian are looking to do this year, Sandra from Friction Arts about how to deal with awards, Harry Palmer about his Victorian Gents Toilet art excursion, Little Chris of Brumcast about how the likes of us can get into education, and, of course, Al Hutchins of The Courtesy Group about his strategies for keeping the Curates Egg gigs going by bringing in more hands so he can step back and get on with the music, as well as a project he wants to do with his late brother’s photographs. Oh, and I also talked to Alex about the possibility of coming into her school to do some digital media-type work with the kids. I think that’s it. There may have been others but the point is I was just there for the gig. None of this was premeditated.

Now, I’m not saying this is a big deal. These people aren’t superstars or anything and it’s not that you need to be in a certain social group to talk to them. They’re just people who are doing interesting things who I’ve gotten to know over the last year, people I can work with, exchange idea with and mutually learn things from. I don’t feel like I’ve “made it” in any careerist way but I do think this is a nice illustration of where I’m at right now compared to where I was when I started messing around with blogging about the city. And all in a year.

I’m at that stage in writing this post where I can either get into an embarrassing gush about how grateful I am or I can get all defensive about it all and neither of them are really right, so I think I’ll leave it like this – a milestone post, nothing more. This year is moving so fast with so many things passing through my head that it’s good to take stock once in a while. And the stock, it looks to be fine.