Reasons To Be Cheerful #1

It's now well over a month since I swapped East Midlands for West. Initially I made the move with a heavy heart - leaving Nottingham for Birmingham felt not so much like venturing to greener pastures as to barren wasteland and concrete jungle. Having spent a good deal of time here over the course of the last three years, despite being permanently based in Nottingham, I found myself still unable to come to terms with the city, still searching for assets which remained resolutely hidden.

Which is why, once the move was made, I resolved to redouble my efforts and find reasons to warm to the place and make myself at home. Thankfully, they seem to have been suggesting themselves with a pleasant regularity over the past few weeks.

Reasons To Be Cheerful is a new semi-regular feature in which I aim to highlight some of the places and events that give Birmingham its appeal. It remains more an attempt to convince myself than anyone else, but the thoughts and views of fellow second city residents and those well-acquainted with the place are very welcome indeed.

#1 - Birmingham Book Festival

(Meant to write about this a while back, but laziness dictates that I'm trying to shoehorn it in here inconspicuously...)

The BBF is an annual event comprising of an assortment of talks, readings, workshops and other gatherings which take place over the course of about two weeks in a variety of venues around the city. This year's event, which ran during the middle of last month, boasted appearances from the likes of David Lodge, Roddy Doyle, Hanif Kureishi, Tony Benn and Maggie Gee amongst others.

I went to two events towards the end of the festival. The first was an evening session entitled 'Cities', which brought together the novelist Jim Crace, renowned for his fictional creation of urban spaces, and John Reader, author of a non-fiction book about the history of cities from their beginnings to the present day. Also present were the festival co-ordinator and Terry Grimley of the Birmingham Evening Mail. I was expecting a discussion about the writing of cities, but in the event the session morphed into a lively and engaging debate about the extensive redevelopment of Birmingham which, for someone relatively new to the city, was particularly fascinating and helped nurture my recently-discovered warmth of feeling towards a place I've very often found myself maligning to others. (A fuller review can be found on Parallax View.)

The second event was on the very last day, an afternoon workshop aimed at people who wanted to improve their short fiction writing skills or who, like me, were simply interested in finding out more. Amongst our number we had a couple of published poets, a dramatist, a Young Adults author and a Creative Writing MA student. The course was run by Helen Cross, whose first novel 'My Summer Of Love' has just been turned into a film. Over the course of three hours we discussed the basics and practised a variety of techniques, my only complaint being that the session wasn't long enough to really get to grips with anything.

I never thought I'd catch myself saying this, but with any luck I'll still be in Birmingham this time next year to take greater advantage of the festival's events than I did this.