About Brum

With the next Brum Twestival fast approaching in September this year, the organisers have decided to hold a vote to find out which local charity is the favourite of the twestival-goers – and which will be supported at this year’s event. All the candidates are excellent charities in their own right, and I strongly urge everyone to vote for the local charity of their choice.

This year’s candidates are:

• Acorn Hospice
• Kidney Kids Appeal
• Birmingham YMCA
• The Conservation Trust
• SIFA Fireside Day Centre in Digbeth
• St Mary’s Hospice in Selly Oak

There’s more info on each of these charities on the Brum Twestival site.

Having had a good friend who died from advanced stage lung cancer spend his last weeks at the BSMH, I’m especially grateful to them for the wonderful care, attention and compassion they give to their residents and their families on a daily basis. They’re entirely funded by donations and the odd benefactor; to lose St. Mary’s Hospice - or indeed, any other Hospice – would be a tragic thing to happen and would drastically decrease the availability of quality palliative care in the West Midlands. Besides that, it would put an even greater strain on the NHS to provide the same level of extraordinary care.

So, please support your local Hospice – and indeed, support all of your local charities. If you can’t afford to donate to all of them at once, set up a rota system or donate to a number in turn, changing every couple of months. What’s £10 or £20 a month? It’s not much to you, but to them it means the world. Thank you

See you at the Twestival in September!

Yes yes yes people, once again it’s the most Bostin of days – Talk Like A Brummie Day! 2009 marks the third successful year in which TLABD has been held. It’s dead simple to take part in… Either do your best stereotypical Brummie impression, or just thicken the accent you already have

For some background info, including more on the culprits who set up the inaugural TLABD, head on over to TalkLikeABrummieDay.co.uk. There’s a section on the accent and even a quick ‘n dirty dictionary to help you get started. If you’re struggling to get started, whoohoo’s had an English <-> Brummie translation service up on the web for a good few years now. There are other translators and dictionaries up on the web too, but if I gave you all the links that’d take half the fun out of finding them now, wouldn’t it?

If you fancy giving it a go, don’t forget to RSVP to the Facebook group too so we can see the trend spreading!

Roll up, roll up – it’s the shiny new About Brum podcast, replete with delicious podcasty goodness and compatible with all half-decent media players and devices.

The inaugural episode features Nick Booth of Podnosh and Birmingham Social Media Surgery fame! Also, Birmingham- or West Midlands-based band? Get your music featured on the next instalment… Contact me for more details.

Click here to download the podcast's audio file

Links to articles mentioned in podcast:

http://www.paradisecircus.com
Nick Booth: PodNosh.com
Nick Booth: BeVocal – Acock’s Green SMS

Intro music for this episode: Advantage – Never Say Never

If you think you deserve to be featured in a future podcast, get in touch - I look forward to hearing from you!

BP, bizarrely on a quest to help us save money on petrol (whodathunkit), are tooling round the UK with a specially modified Ford as part of their Fuel Efficiency Challenge. They’re giving people the chance to do a circuit around town and have their driving style analysed – they’ll be stopping by Millennium Point today, and hopefully (if it’s not too busy) I’ll get to have a go in the car.

Marketing and promotion aside, they do raise some very valid points. In all my driving around the city, I’ve noticed that there is some truly hideous driving going on (from myself included) – lots of leaden right feet and late braking abounds in the City centre. Hopefully I’ll learn something useful from this to take away and help improve my driving skills.

I wonder how we can make all road users in Brum adopt slightly more sensible driving styles? It might help a bit with the awful congestion too…

This is the final day the BP guys are in Brum, moving on to reading at the end of this month. AutoCar’s already blogged about what they’re doing, and hopefully I’ll see some familiar faces when I head down to meet them.