Day 12 - No Change
Coventry to Birmingham
One of the first things I see as I emerge blinking from my hotel this morning is a naked lady on a horse. Unfortunately it's just a statue, albeit a slightly racy one.
 |
| The Lady Godiva statue |
Actually, I’d forgotten about Lady Godiva. This was the lady who in the 11th century apparently rode naked through the city on a horse in protest at the crippling taxes being levied on the local populace by her own husband Leofric, Earl of Mercia. Her own husband, mark you. Phew. As family arguments go this was obviously a big one. It's a peculiar way of punishing your husband for doing something you didn’t agree with - certainly glad my wife doesn't do that.
Legend has it that local people discretely looked away as Godiva rode past, except for one man named Thomas who was promptly struck blind. His sly peek at the naked lady later gave rise to the expression Peeping Tom. Both are now commemorated, Godiva in a fine statue in the city centre, and Peeping Tom in a bust peering out fruitlessly over the heads of shoppers.
It being Day Twelve and probably my shortest day of travelling so far, and it being a Sunday, I decide to attend the morning service at the new Coventry Cathedral which is built amongst the ruins of the old. In the event, it is even better than I could have hoped. I've arrived in Coventry in the middle of their International Church Music Festival so the Sunday Eucharist is celebrated against a backdrop of Schubert's Mass in G delivered with the assistance of a 100-strong professional choir, a couple of fine soloists and the full might of the BBC Chamber Orchestra. It is a spine-tingling experience and one I'll not forget.
 |
| Meadow Pool bus station |
Spiritually uplifted, I make my way to Coventry's Meadow Pool Bus Station, a station so palatial it even boasts its own picnic tables. Things soon go wrong, however.
The Birmingham bus pulls in and I offer the driver a crisp £10 note. He refuses it, saying that he can only accept the correct change. He then points to a box on the door of his cab with a slot into which you drop your fare, and a Perspex window through which he can check that the correct money had been tendered before he releases it noisily into a sealed cash box below. He has absolutely no access to this money, and he doesn’t give change.
Slightly annoyed, I begin rummaging through my pockets for change and eventually manage, despite the impatient harrumphing of the rest of the queue, to scrape together £1.69p.
I'm a penny short.
“You'll have to get change”, says the driver inflexibly.
I get off and head irritably in search of a shop where I can buy a packet of mints with my £10 note.
“Don't you have anything smaller,” says the shop assistant, irritably.
“No,” I reply, really quite irritably.
After the tussle over change, the actual journey to Birmingham is uneventful. The scenery is pretty uneventful, too, though we do pass through Meriden, the home briefly of the British motorbike industry and a town which lays claim to the title of Absolute Centre of England. This claim is signified by a 500 year old monument marking the "traditional centre of England", but it’s status has become increasingly under threat as time and cartographic skill has advanced.
In fact, the Ordnance Survey now believe that the exact centre of England to be Lindley Hall Farm in Leicestershire, or more precisely a field a couple of hundred metres from the farmer's house. The Ordnance Survey apparently used the ‘gravitational method’ to calculate this. Put simply, this marks the point where a cardboard cut-out of the country – including its islands - could be balanced on the tip of a pencil, though obviously this would need to be a pretty big pencil.
Incidentally, today happens to be the anniversary of the first ever car accident in 1896, in which Henry Wells mowed down a cyclist in New York City, so its timely to point out that Meriden also has another monument, a memorial to the cyclists who died in the First World War. This is a sad but pleasingly eccentric thing to commemorate. The memorial was unveiled in May 1921 in the presence of more than 20,000 cyclists and to this day an annual event sees thousands of cyclists pay their respects to their fallen comrades. Hope they all get home safely.
 |
| Birmingham's modern city centre |
I'd not visited Birmingham in 25 years and I find a city which has changed markedly in that time. It's much busier and more prosperous with shiny new office blocks everywhere and pedestrianised streets where once there were lines of dense traffic. It's all rather disorientating.
Birmingham, of course, is also the home of one of the West Midlands' greatest delicacy, the balti. So after a quick shower I'm back out onto the streets in search of the local delicacy. Fortunately, I don’t have too far to look and the day ends in a warm, aromatic glow.
NEXT: Birmingham – Birmingham – I have a day off which I spend travelling between two bus museums on buses which would otherwise be in bus museums, and I discover just how little I really know about old buses
Map courtesy of those awfully nice people at Google
Comments
Post a Comment