editorialgirl

Every week for the last – ooh, I dunno – six months? A year? I’ve looked at “your pictures” in the Guardian Weekend Magazine, thought about sending one in, and haven’t. Finally, about a month ago, the theme was “derelict”, so I sent a picture of Moseley Road Baths – and two weeks later, I was honoured to see that it had been picked as the lead.

Of course, I’m really chuffed. But I must admit it wasn’t just about getting one of my photographs printed. I hoped that it might get Moseley Road Baths a bit more recognition.

The Guardian’s byline referred to the picture as showing “an abandoned swimming pool”, something that the Friends of Moseley Road Baths picked up on a few days later, saying: “The article incorrectly describes the swimming pool as abandoned (there is another fully functioning pool on site), but it’s not difficult to see why they drew that conclusion.”

Indeed, when I visited, the Gala Pool certainly seemed to be abandoned. And upstairs, room after room of dust and neglect. Boxes of photos and certificates dating back thirty or more years. Paperwork. Pigeons.

Even though the future of the Baths hasn’t been decided yet, it’s still a Grade II* listed building. According to English Heritage, Grade II* means it’s a particularly important building of more than special interest. Yet Birmingham City Council aren’t making any repairs at all, even tiny ones that could save a lot of money in the future. To my (admittedly cynical) eye, it does look as though the building is being left to rot, to make future bulldozing decisions easier.

I wrote about what I’d seen in the Gala Pool on the B13 forum after visiting there to take the pictures last August.

“…it’s in a dreadful state. There seem to be a lot of little things that could be done to save disaster in the future, but it’s almost as if they’re letting it run down on purpose.

For example, there’s a pinhole leak in a water pipe above the unused pool. All it would take to fix it is a stepladder (it’s not very high at all) and some epoxy tape (or even a bit of rubber and a pipe clamp, which would last a few years)… but no.

Instead, this tiny leak has already rusted all the metal in the seats and railings on the two stands below it, decayed all the plastic and rubber on the two floors – and is presumably therefore destabilising the structure underneath.

[here I linked to a picture by Keshvala, showing some of the worst rust, but it no longer exists on flickr]

I think that depressed me the most. It implied that there is no intent to stop the rot at all.”

I still worry about what I saw now, nearly a year on, because I know that all the leaks are still there. It can’t be long before the Gala Pool becomes too unstable to even walk around.

However, despite all of this, I haven’t joined the Friends of Moseley Road Baths – and that’s because I’d feel like a fraud. The fact is, I probably wouldn’t swim there. I just don’t go swimming any more. (On the rare occasions that I get the chance to, I prefer the quieter pool at Aston University). Of course, I want the building to be done up and maintained, but the FMRB campaign is for the pool to be refurbished as a pool. Should I be supporting this, if I don’t have any intention of following through and using the pool in the future?

(I certainly can’t think of a use for the Gala Pool if it wasn’t a pool, though. A gym area, perhaps? …Actually, I’d love to see it as a art gallery, but I know that’s just being silly.)

The Victorian Society, (who, in 2007, featured Moseley Road Baths on its list of the ten most endangered buildings in Britain) seems to think that turning it into a different type of venue is a problem that other Baths have faced before, so have pledged support for the pool to stay a pool. They said in 2007: “Knowing how difficult it is to find uses for swimming baths that fall out of use, we are urging Birmingham Council to do all they can to safeguard the future of the pool…”

So perhaps there isn’t any middle ground. Perhaps we do only have a choice between a fully refurbished pool or nothing. Whatever the answer, the Council aren’t telling us. They’re choosing to prevaricate instead. Everything has to fit into a wider strategy of health and fitness provision, which includes Sparkhill Baths, also currently closed. For the last few years there’s been a lot of talking – about sports halls, fitness suites, saunas, new pools – but not a lot of doing.

And if you were Birmingham City Council – already in the red and, as we’ve seen with Central Library, big on change for change’s sake – what would you do? When you can have a brand new pool for millions of pounds less, would you bother looking after a money pit, no matter how pretty it is?

You can see all the photos I took at the Baths, including more of the Gala Pool and the upstairs offices, in my Moseley Road Baths flickr set.

I went to the Birmingham Seen exhibition at Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery today. Its run has been extended until January 31st – next weekend – so rather than wait for someone to come and see it with me I thought I’d better JFDI and went along on my own. (Actually, I’m glad I went on my own. It’s been ages since I just went somewhere on my own.)

BMAG vs Gas Hall

Getting there was a bit trickier than I’d expected. The exhibition was advertised as being on in BMAG, so I went in via the main entrance, up the big steps and through the massive doors. (They’re rather imposing, so pushing them open makes you feel really important. I like that.)

The trouble with going in this way, though, is that you can find all the old stuff quite easily, but there aren’t any signs to the Gas Hall… which, it turns out, is where most of the interesting temporary exhibitions are, including Birmingham Seen.

I ended up asking someone – and to get to the Gas Hall from the main exhibition galleries, I had to go through an unmarked doorway, round an unmarked corner and down some unmarked stairs. When I got down there, I realised everyone else had gone in via a side entrance, which would have made more sense, but how was I to know that? (Um, apart from the fact that I’ve lived in Birmingham all my life and should probably just know things like that?)

I do think it’s strange to advertise something as being on at the BMAG, but then put it on in what is pretty much a separate part of the building and not tell you how to get from one bit to the other.

The exhibition

So. The exhibition. If you’re from Birmingham and you fancy a bit of local history, the exhibition is just lovely. The theme is quite vague, in a good way, so anything that documents Birmingham’s history is in there. Oil paintings, watercolours, pen and ink line drawings… and lots of photographs: professional and amateur, fine art and documentary. There are a load of photos from the Central Library’s national collection (which, incidentally, should be given the dignity of a permanent home in a dedicated photographic gallery for the city instead of being stored in a barely viewed archive… but that’s another story). Exhibits date from the 18th century to the present and are shown in more or less chronological order.

Remembering how to remember

Leaving the content of the exhibition aside for a moment (again – sorry), what I found weird on a personal level was that I had forgotten how to “do” an exhibition like this, where there was so much I wanted to take in. I felt almost panicked when, within the first ten minutes of my visit, I saw a photo I really liked. How would I remember what I was seeing? I didn’t know what to do with myself.

I think it’s simply down to being online so much. I’ve become so used to being able to click around from one thing to the next, immediately recording (copying and saving) or bookmarking what I see, that I’d forgotten how real life works. “How to remember”, if you like.

But after bumbling around a bit, I relaxed into it and started spending a long time looking at each picture. I carefully read the blurb next to it a couple of times. I stood back and looked at it from a couple of metres away, then I went in close and studied the detail. If I saw something I really wanted to remember – the name of the artist, perhaps a streetname or detail of old Birmingham that I wanted to be able to talk to my dad about later – I made notes. Actually, I made a lot of notes. And it made a huge difference. Slowing down to take in these details, instead of clicking ‘save’ and moving on, made a big difference to my mood – and I started to remember why we do things like this for relaxation.

Highlights

For me, the highlights of Birmingham Seen were all relatively recent works and my preference for these was probably as much down to recognition of the subject as appreciation of the style. I liked James Priddey’s bold pen and ink drawing of Moseley village from 1969 and Des Gershon’s Balsall Heath Anthology, a series of street photographs from the summer of 1970. Tom Merillion’s “Concrete Dreams” – superb tilt shifts of classic Brummie scenes like New Street Station and Spaghetti Junction from 1999 – were a very pleasant surprise (right up my street, as you can imagine) whilst Roy Peters’ photos of glum councillors couldn’t help but bring to mind this more recent tumblr blog.

There are also some detailed models and drawings of Manzoni’s original plans for the civic centre of the city, where Centenary Square is now. I didn’t know that Baskerville House was the first building in a grand plan that was never actually realised. It was supposed to be just one of a whole set of European-looking civic buildings. Seeing it its original context was fascinating.

Finally, though, the sadness I felt as I watched 7 inch cinema’s Birmingham timelapse film – a collection of photographs by Derek Fairbrother showing the Victorian Mason College building being demolished and Madin’s Central Library taking its place – knocked me for six. I sat on the little bench and watched it through a couple of times on the large screen… and I’m not ashamed to say I shed a tear for our poor city, destined to regenerate and regenerate, adding folly after folly without ever really getting it right, or even stopping to check. But again, that’s probably a rant for another day.

If you do fancy Birmingham Seen, it’s only on until next weekend so you’ll need to make it quick. (And take your mom – there were so many questions I wanted to ask that I knew my parents would have the answers to.) I highly recommend it – although I really hope that at least some of the photography collection will see the light of day again in one form or another.

The Birmingham Photospace team spent most of this weekend preparing for our latest exhibition, Birmingham’s People, which launches at The Drum on Wednesday night.

Birmingham’s People is made up of photographs of people who visited this year’s Artsfest in September. The Birmingham Photospace team set up a small studio in Victoria Square and invited anyone and everyone to have their picture taken by professional photographers (and team members) Matt Murtagh and Jennifer Peel.

There are 170 portraits altogether, 15 of which have been printed larger-than-lifesize (20″ x 30″) and the rest of which are printed smaller and mounted onto massive photoboards.

Like the Flashswap that we ran in March – and everything else that Birmingham Photospace does – this exhibition is to raise awareness of the fact that Birmingham needs a space for photography.

We’re really proud of the Birmingham’s People show, not just because the photos are really good (and they are) but because we’ve proved to ourselves that it is possible to put on a photographic exhibition to a professional standard without a great deal of cash (Birmingham Photospace is completely self funded).

But on to the real point of this blog post.

To promote the exhibition, Matt Murtagh was interviewed for BBC WM radio last week by DJ Loyd Williams. We were really pleased to get the coverage – not least because, despite the 10pm Saturday night slot, the blurb on WM’s site promised a programme dedicated to “showcasing local artists and keeping you up to date with the region’s arts scene”.

I was a little disappointed, then, to hear Matt – sandwiched incongruously between the “dance anthems” – subjected to a rather bizarre line of questioning.

Near the beginning of the interview, Loyd said, “So, you’re focusing on Birmingham’s People. I have to ask this – presumably, you’re local?”

Now I don’t know if I’m making something out of nothing here, but the way this question was framed (“I have to ask this…”) sounded to me like he was expecting a different – perhaps more controversial – answer. Matt doesn’t have much of a Birmingham accent, so perhaps Loyd was surprised when he answered, “yes, certainly – I was born and raised in Yardley.” He certainly sounded surprised, because after a pause, he answered: “OK. Oh – the posh part of Birmingham.”

Ye-es. I know Yardley isn’t the poorest area of the city, but it sure ain’t no Harborne.

Perhaps this could be put down to the fact that Loyd himself isn’t local, coming as he does from Burnham On Sea. But what of the next question?

Matt was explaining what the exhibition comprises. “Over the weekend we managed to take 170 portraits, which was an average of one every six minutes, I think. And we pledged that we’d have everyone’s portrait go up. So we’re going to have 170 prints and 15 large prints, which we’ve decided to be… well, the best photographs we took.”

“So tell the truth then,” began Loyd, “what was the criteria for choosing them? Was it based on attractiveness?”

Matt was, quite reasonably, stumped. “Well… it depends how you define attractiveness, I think,” he said. He got a guffaw in response. “Really? Tell the truth!”

Now I, along with the rest of the team, was part of the panel, so I know the truth. I know that we chose the photos based on… the best photos. How would anyone choose? The best photographs Matt and Jen took, of the 170 taken, were naturally going to be chosen on an aesthetic basis. Which 15 portraits would represent the 170-picture exhibition as a whole? Which were the best composed; the best directed? Which were technically of a particularly high standard? Would they work together as an exhibition, hung slightly away from the other 150-odd?

The best photos would naturally have to include the old, the young, the ugly, the pretty; people with props and without (there were plenty of other artists at Artsfest, so many had brought their art with them); black, white and Asian people; single people, heterosexual couples, same sex couples and families – because these were the people who came through the door. We wanted the large pictures to demonstrate all of this – to demonstrate the huge variety of people at Artsfest: and by extension, Birmingham’s People.

“There was a small panel of people choosing, but we chose the ones that we thought were most representative of what our vision of Birmingham is,” said Matt, finally. “And our vision of Birmingham is one that’s… it’s multicultural, it’s across all age groups, it’s… a perfect mix, I think. Which is what gives Birmingham its strength.”

Obviously Loyd had been waiting for the M word. The reaction was immediate. “Well you say that,” he began, “but some critics might say… because you touched on the word there: ‘multicultural’ – and as soon as you start sort of bandying words like, I don’t know, ‘ethnically diverse’, ‘multiculturalism’… people get a little bit scared and think that often it’s going to be a little bit… worthy. Have you had any sort of criticisms of that nature at all?”

Matt ummed again and Loyd continued, “’cause I’ve looked at, you know, the promo stuff, as I say, and there is a mix of ‘us ethnics’ in there [laughs] – which is good, that’s not a bad thing – but it does leave yourself open to criticisms of ‘is this really representative of Birmingham?’”

I have to admit to being saddened by this line of questioning. I love Birmingham because of its diversity and I don’t see an opportunity to put that across as “being worthy”. Multiculturalism in this sense doesn’t just mean “including black and Asian culture” – after all, a young girl with tattoos and piercings is definitely going to be representing a different culture to an elderly man in a crisp white shirt and tie – and that’s what the exhibition tries to show.

To put it another way, the fact that not everyone is like me – and my appreciation and love of that fact – is definitely representative of the way I see Birmingham.

I don’t know why it upset me, really. I just think it was a bit sad to bring it down to that level, although maybe it’s been good for us to think about it.

What I do know is that the photographers took pictures of everyone who came through the door volunteering to have their portrait taken. Every picture taken is going up on the wall at The Drum. And the fifteen portraits chosen to go up as large prints were chosen because they were representative of the 170, and look great together as an exhibition.

Click here to listen to the interview and hear how Matt actually answered the question (very sensibly and philosophically, of course… the star).

And if you’d like to come along to the Birmingham’s People launch night for the Artists’ Talk (with a glass of fizz!), to view the exhibition for yourself and find out a bit more about Birmingham Photospace, don’t forget to reserve yourself a place on our Eventbrite page.

This photo is of my great grandfather, Ernest, with his sister Jessie and his brothers Frank, Sid and little Freddie. Of the older boys, I’m not sure which one’s which, but my guess is that Ernest is second from left.

There are eight years between little Fred and Jessie, the oldest - so if he’s about six and she’s about 14 in this photo, that would date it at 1897.*

I don’t know where it was taken, but all of these children were born in Birmingham, as were their parents. This branch of my family – my dad’s mum’s dad’s side – is listed on censuses over the years at addresses around the Bordesley area – Deritend, Small Heath, Hay Mills – including, in the 1881 census, an address at Muntz Street, then the home of Birmingham City FC.

By the 1901 census, the boys and their parents had moved to Crayford in Kent, where Ernest met his future wife – my great grandmother – Rosina, before bringing her back to Birmingham with him to start a family. Jessie stayed in Birmingham, working as a tailor.

I have a tangible connection with Jessie; I wear her ring on my right hand. She left the ring to her favourite niece – my Nanna – Ernest and Rosina’s daughter. And Nanna left it to me.

Intriguingly, someone has been snipped out of this photograph. You can see the line where it’s been cut, between the boy on the far left and the others, leaving only a bit of spooky trouser leg.

*EDIT: I saw my dad at the weekend and he showed me the original photograph – here’s what was written on the back:
Frank Herbert 9 yrs / Ernest John 10 yrs / Jessie May 11 yrs / Sydney Charles 8 yrs / Frederick Clifford 3 yrs
This would date the photo at 1894.

Dad hadn’t noticed that someone had been cut out of the photograph – he couldn’t explain it either…! He did tell me about two more brothers, who wouldn’t have been born when this photograph was taken: Reginald Joseph, who was born in 1897 and died in a POW camp in 1918; and Horace Richard (Dick) born in 1901.

Dad has an amazing scrapbook full of pictures like this, with captions explaining who everyone is. I spent a long time poring over the photos and watching these children growing up, having children and grandchildren of their own and getting old.

Birmingham what what what event?

For a while now I’ve been involved in Birmingham Photospace, a voluntary group dedicated to finding a permanent space for photography in the city.

It’s crazy that there are so many photographers in Brum, but no central space dedicated to photography. So, prompted by a post on flickr last year from Patrick Willcocks, a group of us have been meeting regularly to try and make it happen. The idea is that a Birmingham Photospace would provide exhibition and gallery space as well as potentially educational, studio and technical facilities. (And of course a cafe. Every good gallery needs a cafe.)

To this end, the Birmingham Photospace group are holding our first awareness-raising evening next month: a “flash” – as in “now you see it, now you don’t” – photo exhibition.

What? Where? When?

Photographers of all abilities are invited to bring their work along to exhibit at a spontaneous, free event at the Custard Factory on Saturday 21 March 2009. But there’s a twist. Everything exhibited can be offered as a swap.

Whether your photo has been created lovingly in the darkroom, digitally manipulated or just snapped on the run, everyone who brings a print will have the opportunity to swap their work for that of another photographer. It’s a great chance to show your work off to an appreciative audience, as publicly or anonymously as you like – and to pick up some unique, locally produced art for yourself.

How Does It Work?

Simple. For every print you bring to give away, you will be able to take another from the exhibition in return.

To take part, bring your images to the Vaad Gallery in the Custard Factory (next to the Medicine Bar), between 11am and 4pm on Saturday 21 March. Your prints will be exhibited in the Gallery for the whole of Saturday, when you’ll get the chance to meet other photographers and choose a print for yourself. At 5pm we’ll have an official launch – we’ll tell you a bit more about what we’re doing to try and make a Photospace happen; you’ll get a free drink! – and then from 7pm you can take your new piece of artwork home.

If you’re just interested in supporting the idea of a Birmingham Photospace, but don’t want to swap prints, do come along to see the exhibition anyway and show your support.

And if you can’t make it to the Flash Swap, but still want to help, follow the Birmingham Photospace blog and spread the word about a permanent space for photography in Birmingham. If you can help us to find funding, or have any other bright ideas for ways to make it happen, all the better!

I wrote this on Sunday 2nd November and I’m buggered if I’m going to let a silly hosting problem stop me from publishing it again. Big thanks to Jon Bounds, who found the original in his Google reader archive. Lesson learned for me: back up, back up, back up…

Reading today’s Observer, I became worried for a moment that we’d had the wrong paper delivered. Christmas is axed in Oxford, read the outraged headline.

“Council leaders in Oxford have decided to ban the word Christmas from this year’s festive celebrations to make them more ‘inclusive’,” the article says. “But the decision to rename the series of events the ‘Winter Light Festival’ has been criticised by religious leaders and locals said it was ‘ludicrous’.”

Sound familiar? Yes, it’s exactly the same kind of moral outrage that put Birmingham into the spotlight ten years ago, when our Council decided to brand three months of winter celebrations and events – from bonfire night to New Year’s Eve – into one marketable festival: Winterval. Despite lights across New Street reading “Happy Christmas” and council-sponsored carol services taking place across the city, the tabloid press had a field day. The Bishop of Birmingham was quoted as saying Winterval was “a way of not talking about Christmas” and more than one commentator told us it was “political correctness gone mad”.

But no-one “banned the word Christmas” then, and no-one’s banning it now. In the very same Observer article that says Oxford’s Winter Light festival has “axed Christmas”, writer Rowan Walker quotes Tei Williams, press officer for the Winter Light Festival, as saying: “Winter Light … is a whole festival spanning two months. Within that will be Christmas carol services.” So, no-one’s axed anything, then.

I do find it strange that the Observer, of all papers, has jumped on this bandwagon, especially when these “anti-Christmas” fallacies are now so widely disproved. Even the Guardian – the Observer’s sister paper – published a feature two years ago explaining that the War on Christmas is no more than a myth.

But I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised. This week, in an article that called bloggers like me “winterval deniers”(!), The Birmingham Post’s Paul Dale says it’s all about perception. Whether these councils are right or wrong to use catch-all names like Winterval or Winter Light, it’s the fact that people perceive them as anti-Christmas that matters, he says.

He might have had a point if he hadn’t perpetuated the myth himself in the first paragraph. “Ten years after Birmingham City Council invited ridicule by airbrushing out the word Christmas from its official celebrations…” he wrote, ignoring the fact that this just isn’t true.

Paul goes on to admit that “the best explanation was that winterval represented a collective name for the events held from mid-November through to the first week in January” – this is true – but then continues, “to most of us, that’s Christmas.”

Is it? To me, the fireworks that we hear every night at the end of October and beginning of November are to do with Diwali and Bonfire night, not Christmas. The week after Christmas, going into January, is New Year’s Eve and the start of the new year… not Christmas. If the council wants to bring all of these events together and give them a catch-all name for marketing purposes, then “Christmas” is really not the right one.

(And besides, as Claire White was so right to point out to the Post, “you say Christmas is the right word for a season that lasts for weeks – and yet you, the mainstream media, moan every year about Christmas being too long or starting too early…”!)

So, is the Observer article just the beginning? Will the Winter Light Festival ensure that Oxford too will become a byword for anti-Christmas political correctness, or is Birmingham alone in having this nonsense thrown at us year after year? Put it his way: I’m pretty sure that in ten years time, Oxford will still be famous for its dreaming spires.

“Doesn’t it piss you off when you are sitting in a pub telling people about a cracking cat you met that there isn’t an objective standard to gauge how good it is against another cat? People can rate hurricanes but not cats. That’s ridiculous, I see loads more cats than hurricanes. I intend to redress this imbalance by making a universal standard of cats.”

It was only a matter of time before Daz created Meowseley, a “cross between Warcraft and Top Trumps, but with cats”. Featuring the gorgeous Edward, of course.

In other news: a sad day for followers of loldeirdre. All the (copyrighted, to be fair) photos of Deirdre have sadly disappeared from flickr, leaving behind a couple of shiney peepl and a lonely Mullaney. Oh noes :(

I’m led to believe that this isn’t the end of the road, however, so keep an eye out in the usual places.

Apart from a brief flirtation with Glasgow, I’ve lived in Birmingham all my life. Not all over Birmingham, you understand – just south Birmingham. In fact, for 31 of my 33 years I’ve lived within four miles of my birth. Meh – call me a homebody.

Despite this, I don’t have much of an accent (or so I’m told – although this is mainly by southerners who are probably expecting a “yam yam” black country drawl). I do apparently have a “hard G” (in other words, I pronounce the Gs in words like banging and singing), and the more I drink, the more I go down-then-up at the end of sentences… but I don’t strangulate my vowels, and I certainly don’t say “ar” instead of yes.

So, having been told on many occasions that I “must be a posh Brummie”, I’m regularly surprised to find that words I use all the time are actually West Midlands vernacular.

For example, when giving directions, I’ve always told people to, say, turn left, “at the next island”. Apparently most people only ever call them roundabouts. Who knew?

Likewise, I’ll stop at the garage (pronounced garridge, of course) rather than the petrol station on the way home from the pub. Why has it taken me 30-odd years to find out that “garage” in this context is unique to Midlanders? I’m still not convinced it is!

Some words and phrases are historical and I wonder if Brummies are just being old fashioned by continuing to use them. For example, when I was younger, the off licence at the bottom of the road was “the outdoor”. This dates back to the time when pubs had a separate entrance for off-site sales. But wasn’t that the same all over the country? Why do people in the Midlands still use the word?

Others are just unfathomable. “Wash your donnies”, my mom used to say before lunch. In an effort to make up for using such unbecoming slang, she would hurriedly follow this with “from the French, donner – to give…” She’s right, of course. But how on earth did that little channel-crossing gem happen?

Obviously I don’t want to turn this into a list of local dialect and slang – there are plenty of those around. I just enjoy being genuinely surprised, and wanted to share that. So I could go on (how do you pronounce “tooth”? Have you ever been deffed out, or dismissed as yampy? Does your chip shop sell potato scallops?)… but I won’t. And besides, as my dear departed Nanna used to say: I’m off to the larpom.

You may remember that our intrepid Councillor Martin Mullaney had a complaint made against him back in May last year, for a Youtube video in which he, his colleague Ernie Hendricks and (now former) Epic Skatepark owner Keith Marsden went for a wander into a Grade II listed building on the Moseley Road.

This week, Martin’s blog reports that “Both Councillors were in breach of the Members Code in relation to showing disrespect to Mr Safdar Zaman, owner of the old tram depot offices.”

The Councillors are required to apologise, or be suspended. Bert and Ernie … sorry, Martin and Ernie have come to an agreement that Ernie will not apologise, and therefore be suspended for one month, but Martin will apologise* and give half of his allowance to Ernie for that month.

The Youtube video has been taken down.

The old tram depot is still a horrendous eyesore.

More at Martin Mullaney’s blog.

*UPDATE (26/03/2008): In a dramatic turnaround(!), it seems Martin won’t be apologising after all, but instead will appeal. The letter he was required to sign (PDF) apparently “just went further than I was prepared to go”.

I can’t keep up. You can attempt to, by going to the dedicated pages on Martin’s blog.

Councillor Deirdre Alden, “your Conservative Parliamentary Spokesman for the Birmingham Edgbaston constituency”, has a blog. And on her blog, she posts pictures of herself doing Councillor-like things, with a lovely big grin on her face. Not for her the gritty YouTube documentary choice of other local councillors – no, our Deirdre (sorry, Cllr Alden) sticks to the simple digital still and a smile. At a rate of around one every single day.

So it was only a matter of time before the lol meme came to Edgbaston, wasn’t it? That’s right – it’s loldeirdre!

I defy any lolcat fan not to see this and immediately want to have a go themselves. I know I have. And poor Pete Ashton‘s been getting a little bit fixated on smiley D. “I’ve spent most of this afternoon obsessing over Deirdre”, he muses. “I’ve never met her but I’ve built up this complex character in my head, one that I’m starting to care about. This isn’t a parody for me and it’s certainly not an insult. It’s something else. What, I’m not quite sure, but thankfully there’s a whole year of photos in her archives just waiting for the captions.”

Go on, you know you want to…