How long since you were on the map for anything,
small hamlet off Dogpool Lane,
squeezed between Stirchley, Selly Oak
Edgbaston, Moseley, and the Bourneville dark,
it is hoped
that W.H Auden drifted and mused along
the once leafy roads as he conjured
a rhyme of two along the Pershore Road
or dreamt of ducks at the top
end of the old potato fields
where children would force the Rae
to go round a makeshift dam.
Chinese Burn in make shift
Playground and the illegally drunk
The long Bristol Road opens up before me like an exotic river,
one that as a child was out of bounds to the
future Oxfordshire estuary Selly Park boy,
living in the tributary that fed the equally
impressive cod feeding grounds of the Pershore Road mainstem
and yet one that became enticingly familiar
as I encroached down the affluence felt of Tiverton Road to go swimming,
or take up the football cause on the open space
of the wild and hauntingly beautiful ‘rec, daring myself
to venture into this other land plagued by family members
Ian McNabb, Birmingham 2014. Photograph by Ian D. Hall
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
When worlds collide…the sound of an audience seemingly made of people from all over the Midlands’ city centre and its outlying areas such as Kings Heath, Selly Park, Edgbaston and Harbourne, their distinctive and homely twang ringing out inside the hall of the South Birmingham College called The Crossing declaring with an assuredness that you would only expect to hear in the venues of his home town that there is only one Ian McNabb, worlds don’t just collide become a brilliant hybrid of Birmingham audiences natural love of rock and the pure music devotion and Scouse allegiance that Ian McNabb brings to every show.
Last night I dreamt of the potato fields again.
The early Sunday mornings, the damp mist creeping over long grass
from the River Rea and finding breathing
space in the surrounding mud of the neglected bank and glistening dew filled
spider webs that criss-cross and weave
through the rusty ailing railings in which many a leather football found its
untimely end.
The Sunday mornings in which my dad would don his early 1970’s style
Aston Villa top, the era of undisguised dejection for many a fan