Starting with the 0749 from Euston to Birmingham New Street station then after a brief walk around, onto a local train for Sandwell & Dudley. From there through Oldbury Town Centre, very depressed but fine council buildings, to the Lion Farm Estate with a brief detour into Rowley Regis. Shells and tiny figures in a gravelled front garden in the latter. In the former much 
that was green and bucolic. Some striking gardening. Picturesque variety among the types and sizes of smaller social housing blocks and individual terraced homes. The remaining taller blocks being overhauled; another up the hill towards some antennae standing alone in its non-clad form.
From there through fields and past canals to the Wolverhampton Road. Cheap snacks from Aldi. A long, long walk along a parkway with 1930s houses on either hand. Left towards Warley Woods, over an undulation, with narrow, gabled terraces and old Volvos about. Then entering Birmingham along the Hagley Road. Lodging-house and DSS ‘hotels’, then actual hotels, and little else but buses, cars and the odd pedestrian for miles.
A greeting from a man you’d expect to be hoisting a can who called me ‘brother’, and then a sob story from a woman with a pushchair (unclear if occupied), eliciting a pound, announced the fringes of the city centre in about Edgbaston. Portland Road of old fame, and Cardinal Newman’s Oratory.
Finally brash Broad St
reet and the huge hole of works which now seems Birmingham’s centre. Never seen a city so remade. Up to the terrace in the library; finally back along pedestrianised streets with not a car or bus in sight. Pink trams crossed at Corporation Street / New Street junction, and a group of dancers entranced an audience, with a young man in black vest and loose pants twisting his arm around his head quite frighteningly.
And on the 1603 back to Marylebone, armed with pictures.
