Deutsche Markt

Saturday night. The coldest November night so far, shortly followed by snow on Sunday morning. Nonetheless, we trekked up to Victoria Square for Gluhwein and Berliners.

It wouldn't be Christmas in Birmingham without the Haribo stall, the phallic chocolate cakes with wafer bottoms and liquid mallow centre, the decorative wooden merry-go-rounds, the vintage Victoriana corkscrew slide, the crowds gathering around the Deutsche bars for a weissbier, and the garlic-bulb shaped 'Knobi Brot' stall selling garlic bread topped with a healthy sized portion of garlic sausage and drizzled with garlic sauce.

It's the one occasion we all forget who won the war and embrace a currywurst and a pint of Erdinger.

The Park

Went to the park on Sunday lunchtime to fly the kite. As soon as we got out of the car it started to rain, and there was absolutely no breeze to fly the kite on. So we ran from one end of the park to the other, using occasional gusts to take the kite off the ground. Nonetheless, we played about in the rain, got drenched and made a swift exit back to the Megane.

Jamie & Oscar

5th November

Halloween at the Ikon & Naked Lunch

The Ikon Eastside warehouse party was incredible, with an electronic film score from Black Galaxy as the backdrop to 1920s b&w unedited shorts. Broadcast came on later, but were less atmospheric, humming melodic white noise to unexciting and unrelated shorts.

There were a few awesome amateur films to close the evening off and Naked Lunch turned out to be a bit of a letdown after all that. Same old kids that would have been at Snobs otherwise, with the same old excuses to get drunk and wear as few clothes as possible.

We got some great looks on the train, and for as long as we kept the gas masks on people were constantly gasping and either telling us we looked sick, or telling us that we were actually sick.

Welcome to Birmingham.

Final Year

After realising this was my final year in Birmingham, lying-in on weekdays till 11am and justifiably being able to drink bottles of wine costing £2.39, i decided to lay down some shots of my final undergraduate year.

We've stayed in the same house as last year, stuck with the same insect infestations, tempermental shower and contaminated kitchen. Yet as much as I complain, it was almost refreshing to come back from a 4 month summer break at home (where the kitchen is pretty much at Barrett show-home standard) to find the boys had neglected to clean the tin-opener for the whole of last term, leaving the mechanism clogged with a mixture of rancid tuna juice, fruit cocktail syrup and Heinz bean sauce. I always get a juvenile feeling of satisfaction at coming back to our Harrow Road house to find the recycling box filled with the dregs of last weeks binge and enough Fosters cans to earn a fiver from the aluminum yard.