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Archive for the ‘Inner city’ Category

Complaining – in the paper!

Posted in Family, Kids, Lads mags, Wolverhampton, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on 13 February, 2009| 3 Comments »

The success of my complaint to Asda about their lads’ mags display was written up in our local paper this week. The article was pretty fair, although I’d hardly call a five minute queue at customer services and a five line complaint a ‘battle’, as they headlined it.

As the Express and Star have an online version people have the opportunity to comment. The commentators seem to fall into two camps – the ‘good on yer’ set and the ‘you’re a prude, haven’t you got anything better to do with your time, you leech on society you’ group.

So far, all the ‘vicar’s wife=prude’ comments have been from men. Interesting, but sadly not that surprising.

Meanwhile, my friend Mrs Starcook has complained about the same thing in the Wolverhampton Asda. They, however, phoned her and said they couldn’t do anything about the position of the magazines because ‘head office decide where everything is placed’. Sounds like buck-passing to me. The Asda I went into didn’t have the same problem.

Maybe they just need a few more people to complain. Any takers?

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Pigeons – a rant

Posted in Inner city, tagged , , , , , , on 28 January, 2009| Leave a Comment »

The other morning I got really aerated about pigeon food. As I’ve mentioned before, people put food out to feed the birds in our local shopping precinct. Unfortunately, they overcater, so this was the sight that greeted me on the school run. This food will either turn to mush for folk to slip over on or will be snaffled by greedy rats.

Overcatering for the pigeons

Overcatering for the pigeons

It’s such a nice touch the way that the food is laid out beneath the sign which reads ‘THE FEEDING OF PIGEONS IS STRICTLY PROHIBITED’.

Pigeons not interested in the food

Pigeons not interested in the food

And here is a shot of pigeons taking no notice of the food but making a lot of noise for the occupants of the house opposite.

Then yesterday morning, on my way back from my mums’ coffee morning I noticed a not-so-delightful pile of torn chapattis and chips, also intended for hungry birds, just by the church hall entrance. This encourages the massive rats that we sometimes see lurking around the infants playground.

I felt like roaring at the bird feeders rather than the birds themselves. But I couldn’t see them so instead I’ve just ranted at the internet. I feel a bit better.

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The Beautiful City

Posted in Inner city, tagged , , , , , on 7 January, 2009| Leave a Comment »

Beautiful City 1

Beautiful City 1

The Curate remarked that my artistic shot of a beer can might give you the wrong impression of the lovely place where we live. Empty beer cans are a fact of life here, where excess alcohol is the cause of many troubles. But you mustn’t think that discarded beer cans are all there is to life in the inner city.

The picture above was taken in our local country park on New Year’s Day. We can get there in ten minutes in our car and you can see our church spire from the top of this hill, if you look in the right direction. About twenty of us from church climbed the hill and enjoyed seeing our breath in front of us and feeling our legs beneath us as we walked off some Christmas calories.

Beautiful City 2

Beautiful City 2

This shot I took last night from my kitchen window as the light faded on a bright and cold snowy day. This magnificent tree lifts my heart when I do the washing up (so that’s nearly every day).

There is much beauty where we live, as well as brokenness. And not just in the scenery.

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A Snowy View

Posted in Alcohol, Inner city, tagged , , , , , on 6 January, 2009| 1 Comment »

Here’s a snap I took in the snow on the way home from our mum’s coffee morning today.

Snowy Days in the Inner City

Snowy Days in the Inner City

You may not be able to read the strapline across the pale blue at the top of the can: ‘Enjoy Extra Cold’. I guess the drinker who deposited this with the fag end was probably extra cold. Not sure about the enjoyment part in this weather though.

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An inner city advantage

Posted in Inner city, School, tagged , , , , , , on 22 December, 2008| Leave a Comment »

In the last three weeks of term the Curate and I attended three school Christmas productions. The first one we attended was performed by the morning nursery.

The Engineer was dressed as an elf and had to work in Santa’s workshop, rather gruesomely using a saw on the teddy bear he was carrying. The nursery children enthusiastically sang along to Bob the Builder’s ‘Can we fix it? Yes we can!’ as the Engineer and his friends ratherly sullenly appeared on the stage area. The Engineer looked like he felt it very much beneath his dignity to perform for us.

The Engineer looked about as grumpy as this elf

This elf looks cheerier than the Engineer did

As well as Santa and the elves, we had a snowman dance, a Christmas tree dance and and a full nativity scene, complete with a laughing angel and Mary broadly smiling from ear to ear. The children sang ‘Happy Happy Happy Birthday to the Baby Jesus’ and the nursery teacher reminded us that the Baby Jesus is the most important thing about Christmas. There were children of many different colours, nationalities and religions in the show and everyone there was very pleased with the performance.

My friend Sunshine, who lives in a beautiful university town, has a daughter who is also in a nativity play this Christmas. Her school, however, thought it should send an apology and explanation, I guess because they were concerned that parents would object. They reminded the parents that the nativity play happens only rarely, and asked for the parents to indulge them this year.

What a blessing to have kids in a church school in a happy city, where many cultures are able to celebrate Christmas without anybody feeling the need to apologise.

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Credit Crunch Snapshots 2

Posted in Inner city, tagged , , , , on 3 December, 2008| Leave a Comment »

The house next door has been sold at auction after it was repossessed. Our neighbour who is on the case with these things found out the price from the auction house. It went for less than half the price that was originally paid.

This is bad news for neighbours who want to rearrange their mortgages after coming off fixed rate deals. The value of the houses has dropped so much that they can’t go anywhere else, but have to stay with the original mortgage companies on the (most expensive) variable rate. We are thankful for living in a tied house, even if it confuses people when we fill in surveys and applications.

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Credit Crunch Snapshots 1

Posted in Inner city, tagged , , , , on 2 December, 2008| Leave a Comment »

After the recent repossessions on our street, we are seeing the recession in action in our neighbourhood:

Yesterday I met my neighbour at the pedestrian crossing. He’s lost his job so he and his wife are going to English lessons. He’s an Asian, who previously worked in Europe as a skilled parts machinist, but has been on a factory line here because his English isn’t as good as his other two or three languages.

I wonder how he and his wife are going to manage to pay their mortgage if he doesn’t get another job soon.

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Pigeons

Posted in Family, Inner city, School, tagged , on 21 October, 2008| 2 Comments »

The Queen is in the juniors now. This is a big thing because

  1. The juniors is on a different site
  2. The Engineer is in nursery which starts earlier than the infants, and at the infant site
  3. So we have to leave twenty minutes before we used to last year
  4. And we don’t cross with Mr Goldtooth any more.

This makes our mornings a little more stressed and a little less jolly. But the upside is the pigeons:

Pigeons

Our pigeons are fatter than this

I confess: I have encouraged my children to do something terrible on a regular basis.

Whenever they see the pigeons, they make big roaring noises and run at them, sending the pigeons up into the sky, or across the pavements, depending on how lazy the fat birds are feeling.

We see the pigeons nearly every morning, as local Asians, believing the birds to be reincarnated relatives, feed them daily on torn chappattis, bread, birdseed, rice and beans. Sadly, they don’t do this in their own gardens, but in the shopping precinct, which is then covered in bird poo, mouldy bird food, and later on, with rats picking up the leftovers. The instructions in English and Punjabi indicating that feeding the birds is against the law have no effect.

I’m not sure whether my kids roaring has any effect either, but it makes us all feel better.

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A Trip to the BarBars

Posted in Family, Inner city, tagged , on 1 October, 2008| 3 Comments »

On Monday, on the way home from school, I decided that the Joker and the Engineer could do with a haircut, so we called in at the BarBars (their pronunciation).

We like going there. The haircuts are swift and cheap, although I seem to have no control about the final look. I am trying to go for the slightly long-haired-sweet-little-lad-who-surfs effect, the sort you might find in mini-Boden – I am middle class, after all).

But stepping into our barbers is stepping into an Indian barber’s in Delhi, Karachi, Kuala Lumpur or Singapore. A telly showing cricket or Bollywood movies, a picture of a Hindu god/a Sikh guru/a verse from the Koran, a pungent smell of some strong cologne, some tatty newspapers in a swirly-lettered language I don’t understand and some magnificent barber’s chairs, upholstered in vinyl. The barbers themselves have elegantly coiffured hair, gold chains around their necks and a gold tooth or two.

Our barbers know how to cut hair and they don’t get the Boden catalogue. So despite my attempts to describe the look, my boys always come out with the hair cut that the barbers like. And what they like is a traditional short back and sides. The only variation (after going a good few times now) is that it gets left longer at the back. This time only the Engineer got that version. And they both got gel.

Last time we went I took a few photos of the barbers at work. And this time I took a shot when we got home to show why my boys would fail to make the Boden catalogue but are still gorgeous. Enjoy.

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The disconnection of Radio 4

Posted in Inner city, Radio 4, tagged , , , on 2 July, 2008| Leave a Comment »

This morning I was running a bit late, so I heard ‘Thought for the Day’ on Radio 4. Dr Mona Siddiqui was talking about how the slowdown in the housing market makes people feel frustrated because

“We have taken the buying and selling of property as a costly but essential part of our lifestyle choices.”

This is one of the reasons for all the repossessions in our neighbourhood: people bought into the lie that everyone should own their own property and then just couldn’t afford it. Where families are still managing to pay their mortgage there are difficulties here that you don’t see in middle class neighbourhoods.

Our neighbours, the Jollies, very rarely spend their annual leave together, as they can maximise the free childcare by taking it in turns to take their holiday. I see Arthritic Granny, obviously in much pain, struggling with the pushchair to the school gate, as her son and daughter-in-law are out at work all day and she is left with three little ones to watch.

But mainly I don’t think it wouldn’t occur to most of the people in our parish that having a mortgage was ‘an essential part of our lifestyle choices’. People don’t have that choice in the inner city. But then, they don’t listen to Radio 4 either.

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