Simon Phipp - Postcard From Birmingham (1)

This didn't seem to go through last time, so fingers crossed for this time.

Hiya All

This is my first "Postcard From Birmingham". I thought about calling it a "Postcard from Sutton Coldfield" as everyone who is anyone knows that Sutton Coldfield is not part of Birmingham because it is posh :-) (In the same way that Solihull is not Birmingham, honest, or Clondalkin is not part of Dublin as they are posh as well.) Of course, that's silly so "Postcard From Birmingham" it is. This is not as glamorous as "Postcard from Moscow" but there you go.

As you may or may not know, I have just moved from the Emerald Isle back to Dear Old Blighty and am living in New Oscott in Sutton Coldfield which is in West Midlands NOT Birmingham (according to the locals) even though there is not a scrap of countryside between Birmingham or Sutton Coldfield.

We are living in a one bedroom flat which is fairly nice but only as a temporary measure. I am working in the City Centre at a company called ATMS which produces a Warehouse System using Progress Version 6. (Those people who have anoraks hanging in their wardrobes will understand what they do).

There is a Tescos and a bus stop to town within 2 minutes walk of the flat so we have everything we really need. Now we have Cable TV we have our normal entertainment set up as well. As you can see, I am easily pleased.

By the way, I am writing this in the Progress 6 Editor as it saves me booting back into Windows, so please excuse any spelling errors which are due to poor typing skills and the lack of a spelling checker. Hopefully it will import OK into the email package. We'll have to see, won't we?

You will be pleased to know, I am sure, that life at work here is fairly different from life at Walsh Western. Although I normally start between 0800 and 0830, I am out of the office between 1715 and 1730 each day. I don't normally have a lunch break but most other people have an hour away from the desk, so I may start walking into Birmingham for some fresh air :-)

I have two computers (one for work, one for best) which are very nice, super-fast Pentium IIs, just the thing for running Version 6 Code, and 1.8 GBytes free on each which is twice as much FREE as I used to have on my old PC!

I am an Analyst Programmer here which means, like at Walsh Western, that we can program without having a Specification written for us. However, as I am the New Boy, I have Specs written for me as I don't understand the systems yet. Of course, they have Sign Off on all their specs and won't start a single thing without the Sign Off and an agreement over costs. This makes things a little bit different from Walsh Western.

Oh yeah, they pay for your tea and coffee here as well. They even pay for my Barley Cup, which is nice. On your birthday you have to bring in Cakes for everyone but they let you claim the costs back, so it's my favourite cakes on 11 January.

We don't get Support calls up here as they go to the Support Department who can fix most things. This means that we don't have people running around asking for immediate fixes, for updates to be done for this afternoon and nobody promises work without scheduling it first. This has the effect that when I was here for an appraisal before I joined, I was asked what I though of the place. "A bit quiet" I replied to which I was told that they had had a really busy day! I thought it was like a Friday afternoon when Myles and Julian were not in the office :-)

They have ordered some new chairs and I was asked to choose the type I liked. We went to Staples (so I knew straight away that they wouldn't be delivered on time :-)) and looked at the chairs there. I'm getting a full-backed leather manager's chair as my boss agreed that they were far more comfortable than the other full-backed chairs which cost 20 pounds less. So, when they arrive, I will have a huge leather chair to run around the office in. Very nice too.

Ha! The Chairs have arrived, so I will be doing my Davros impersonation and wheeling around the office in a huge leather-backed chair for the rest of the afternoon cackling away to myself quite happily (actually, I don't cackle, despite what anyone has ever said). For those who are confused, ask people with anoraks who Davros was and which Science Fiction program he appeared in (hint, he created the Daleks).

I have given Brian and Myles my phone numebrs at home and work if anyone needs them - I will be posting this on my Web Site at some stage so I don't want to put any personal details there (I don't want any more crazies getting in touch with me).

We made it to Rosies in Sutton Coldfield at the weekend which is a fairly good Nightclub/Disco. We arrived at 22.30 and the place had 50 people dancing and around 100 people there! I was amazed, being used to turning up at Irish Clubs to find nobody there until 23.30 and nobody dancing until midnight. All in all, it was a pretty good night until we waited 40 minutes for a taxi. However, next time, I have a cunning plan which should cut the waiting down considerably. We'll have to see if the Cunning Plan actually works, though.

What is Birmingham like? Well, it's hard to say from two weeks as we have been working on the flat, making sure that was OK rather than going out. However, the fact that I cannot find a single Tourist Guide to Birmingham probably explains a lot. Waterstones and WH Smith both have a large range of Tourist Guides for London, Edinburgh, Warwickshire and so on, even a couple for Dublin, but not a single one for Birmingham. This means:

(a) Birmingham is a dead-end for Tourists and has not a single attraction
(b) Birmingham has so many attractions that everyone knows where they are
(c) You are a Tourist in Birmingham ????!!! Why ????????

I have a sneaky suspicion that (c) is close enough to the truth, especially as the shop assistants I asked showed amazement that I wanted a Tourist Book of Birmingham. Ah weel, we'll have to see how we get on in the future.

What else have I got to say, not a lot really. Unfortunately I can't repeat the glories of the Postcards from Moscow and tell people how strange Brummies are because they are not, even though they are Brummies. Nor can I say that I am in spitting distance of the Kremlin and so on. Ah well, never mind. I am sure that I will find something strange in Birmingham to talk about, after all I am rarely lost for words or opinions.

By the way, this is for Caroline: I saw a boxer on the TV when I was in Clondalkin, his First Name was Shea (not Shay), thus vindicating my question of how to spell the name "Shay/Shea". It may take a while to prove that I am always right, but I get there in the end. Of course, you probably have no idea what I am going on about, as usual.

For Brendan and Peter, as I am sure they miss this: "PYAT MINUTES" as that always gave them a laugh, at my expense of course.

Anyway, how is everyone at Wibbly Wobbly? Things must be better now I am not there to irritate you. Unfortunately, I can't telephone Ireland from work as foreign calls are barred from the phones and by the time I get home there should be nobody there at WW.

That reminds me, I have lost everyone's mobile numbers which makes it hard to get in touch. If you could let me know your phone number Mr. Bolger I can get in touch with most other people I need to through you (as you are so wonderful).

Any news from Across the Water? Don got in touch with me and I have had emails from Dermot and Mark so if I re-introduced the List of Shame and Hall of Heroes they would certainly be in the Hall of Heroes. (Don being in the Hall of Heroes, some mistake there, surely.)

Anyway, I have to go now.

Please forward this to anyone whose email address I do not have or who I have forgotten (basically, anyone in IT, anyone I dealt with in Wibbly Wobbly and anyone who has left and who has an email address (Joan Redmond, Mike Dempsey, Paul Heaney, Don tatla and Nick Skelly in particular).

See Ya

Simon

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