2012 in review

As another year draws to a close, minds inevitably turn backwards to cast a critical glance over the successes, highlights and happenings of the preceding 12 months. It's also, of course, an opportunity to identify those things that remain on the 'to do' list.

For me, blogging was stuck obstinately on the 'to do', rather than the 'done' list, so here's a quick catch up of 2012, to bring my adventures back in Britain up-to-date.

Monasterio de piedra
(Zaragoza, Spain)

January - the year opens in Zaragoza with a bicycle ride and a visit to magical cascadas (waterfalls)

February - snow fell and out came the black and white film to capture Birmingham's spellbinding industrial past

March - David Hockney takes me back to Saltaire and reminds me of the perennial beauty of the English countryside

April - spring blossomed and Birmingham burst into bloom

May - Brunel's mighty feats of engineering made themselves felt in marvellous Bristol

June - the heat of summer in blazing Spain 

Meet the parents at
Lincoln Cathedral

July - graduation time, family time and another dislocated knee!

August - a welcome return to the Jewellery Quarter

September - getting back on the horse (or learning to drive again)

October - turning 30 in Paris

November - a return to the eternal city

December - Birmingham is at its most magical at Christmas-time

Birmingham: I love you best at Christmas

I love Birmingham. The city has been my home for 11 years now (minus a brief sojourn in 2010/11) and, though I say this quietly, has to be one of the UK's most under-rated places. Or perhaps it's just a well-kept secret.

Birmingham has some wonderful architecture, fantastic museums and great places to go. It also has a brilliant atmosphere. But it really comes into its own at Christmas-time.

Birmingham Town Hall looking festive

Come November, Victoria Square and New Street begin to get taken over. Wooden huts begin to appear, and evening strolls are spent dodging cranes that are lifting lights into place.

Then, before you know it, the city is swarming with people wrapped up tightly against the cold, clutching huge flagons of beer, negotiating the crowds while attempting to eat grilled sausages, chocolate-covered waffles or giant pretzels, or huddling together over a paper cup of hot mulled cider/wine/Pimms/apple juice.

I'm talking, of course, of the Frankfurt Christmas Market. By happy coincidence, the market has also been in Birmingham for 11 years, and is one of the country's most popular outdoor Christmas markets.

I love it because of the truly happy atmosphere the market brings, as if Birmingham has become a kind of magical wonderland for the season, full of twinkling lights, delicious smells and goodwill.

Elsewhere, you can hear angelic voices coming from St Philip's cathedral, and marvel at the giant bauble-shaped lights (or as I like to think of them, Strictly Come Dancing-esque glitterballs!)

Excuse me while I practise the tango

So if you've never been to Birmingham for Christmas, make sure you put it in your diary now. And I can definitely recommend the winter Pimms. Just don't tell everyone...

Birmingham's Frankfurt Christmas Market runs from around mid-November to Christmas Eve, and is open every day from 10am until 9pm. You'll find it in Victoria Square, Chamberlain Square, Centenary Square and New Street, all very central.

Spring bursts

Seeing David Hockney's 'A Bigger Picture' exhibition reminded me of the joys of the English springtime. I had forgotten how the world slowly starts to creep into life again after the bleak bare earth of winter, with the landscape changing on an almost daily basis.

We're lucky in Birmingham that planners throughout the city's history have sought to neutralise its manufacturing industry with green spaces, making for an extremely verdant city. While in Chile, Carlos and I both missed Birmingham's tree-lined streets and the dose of naturaleza they provide.

Oozells Square, Birmingham

My favourite place to go to at this time of year is Oozells Square, whose springtime secret I discovered by accident a few of years ago when cutting through from Brindleyplace to Broad Street. The square's zen-style central space is lined either side by a dense row of cherry trees, which burst into pink bloom each March.

Springtime at St. Paul's

Elsewhere, however urban a route you take through the city, you're accompanied by happy yellow heads of daffodils, delicate blossom falling and green buds sprouting overhead. A truly happy time.

Oozells Square is located just off Broad Street; turn down Oozells Street (next to Flares...) and/or follow signs to the Ikon gallery. While you're there, make sure you take in the brilliant Ikon and its even more brilliant tapas restaurant (Cafe Ikon) for some seriously good food. The cherry blossom is best viewed in March.

An english springtime

A couple of Fridays ago I braved the big smoke and took a trip down to London to see David Hockney's 'A Bigger Picture' exhibition at the Royal Academy.

You can't have failed to notice that the Olympic Games come to London this year, and to ensure those of us who aren't really that interested in sport aren't left out, the Games are accompanied by a Cultural Olympiad - a programme of events in the arts, of which the Royal Academy show is one of the flagship projects.

And flagship it seemed to be, judging by the numbers; I arrived mid-morning to an already full gallery, and settled down to an hour's queuing and amused people watching. Not wishing to be stereotypical, but it seems that the Royal Academy's appeal has not filtered down to the unwashed masses, despite the supposed universal nature of the Cultural Olympiad. I felt somewhat incongruous among my retired art critic companions.

David Hockney RA: A Bigger Picture

Once inside though, amid jostling for position in the crowded salons, I was rewarded with a luxurious collection of paintings of the English countryside, without being disappointed by all the hype.

Hockney has made as his focus in this exhibition, the capturing of a particular scene as the seasons progress. This idea culminates in the pièce de résistance; a set of paintings of the coming of spring, produced on an iPad, which chart the movement from January's bare branches, through the first blooms of March, to the vivid florals of May.

Accompanying this was a giant size video installation, which filmed a drive through a stretch of country road in Yorkshire from several different cameras attached to the bonnet and doors of a car.

The hawthorn blossom room was especially beautiful, seizing a fleeting moment of the seasons where hedgerows burst into a fluffy white down.

And it was a also lovely to visit some paintings of this area of Yorkshire which I remember first seeing a couple of decades back as a small child in Saltaire in Bradford - one of those childhood trips that has a lasting effect and influence on the person you become.

To see the paintings for yourself, head over to www.hockneypictures.com, or visit the Royal Academy of Arts before 9th April 2012. It's well worth a visit.

Birmingham in black and white

Right on cue this week, snow fell. It's been an extremely mild winter so far, but like clockwork, the week of the end of January / start of February arrived and it snowed. Casting my mind back, it's snowed during this week more or less ever year since I moved to Birmingham - which is now 10 years ago.

We live on a student estate, so six inches of snow meant just one thing for our neighbours: snowball fights! Sadly then, the freshly driven snow didn't enjoy its pristine condition for long. However, down on the canal early this morning, I did manage to find myself in the middle of an extremely atmospheric scene.

Fog hung gently around the factories and gas works, as the sun struggled to push the cobwebs away. Virgin snow lay on the canal side, while sinister-looking branches formed as the ice on the water's surface began to splinter.

With each black and white photo I took, I pictured myself in bygone times. Down at this level, with the black locks and ironworks standing proud against the white of a world covered by snow, it's easy to imagine that not much has changed since the construction of this stretch of the Birmingham and Fazeley in the late 1700s.

View photo gallery on Flickr.

To autumn and to birthdays

Autumn is my favourite season. I love it for its colours and the way that it smells. There is nothing more beautiful than low golden sunlight dappled through rusty leaves together with the lush freshness of damp earth. It probably comes as no surprise, therefore, to learn that I am an October baby.

Celebrating a birthday at the end of October means you will always be greeted with a surprise as far as the weather is concerned. Two years ago, it was 20 degrees centigrade (that's hot here) and I floated around town in a flower-print summer dress. Three years ago, I watched the first snow of the winter fall on Birmingham's rooftops, almost scuppering my evening get-together plans as the roads jammed with unforeseen ice.

Even last year it seems I wasn't immune to the unpredictability of my birthday's seasonal backdrop. While spring was advancing through Chile, 28th October 2010 saw snow fall in Santiago city - making it one of those days that all Santiaguinos remember. And for Carlos and I, it made for absolutely unforgettable scenery as we watched our first sunset over the Andes, completed with snow and without pollution.

Well today is again my day. Good fortune meant that I woke up to a classic October scene - crisply cold but with clear blue skies and brilliant sunshine. Rising early, I indulged in reading a short story from Haruki Murakami; it seemed fitting that the only book of his I could find in the library this week, having been recommended the author (for a second time), was his anthology of Birthday Stories.

The childlike delight of unwrapping presents followed of course, along with re-discovering that modern technology's best feature by far is its ability to connect people. One giant digital hug has reached me from South America (and a couple of other parts of the globe), that is as reassuring and blessed as the embrace that stretched out from the UK one year ago, which propelled me on through homesickness and anxiety.

So here's to autumn and to birthdays, for their reminder that for every harsh winter that comes, there are mellow moments of slow-burning gloriousness.

Late summer blooms

At the end of September, the UK was treated to what the weather forecasters call an Indian summer - a delightful week of clear blue skies and hot sunshine of the type that rarely appears in summer in this country, but that does like to surprise us at more unusual times.

For us, this bout of good weather coincided with a visit from Carlos' extended family from Spain - giving them, I fear, a somewhat rosied perception of a British autumn. But never mind. It meant that we got to do some sightseeing with a proper holiday backdrop.

Amid a week of firsts for me - and the discovery that Birmingham and its surroundings have some cracking good places to visit (hence starting the new blog) - one of the stand out places was Birmingham Botanical Gardens. Despite having been several times in the past, albeit mainly for drunken university balls, I'd never had the opportunity for a proper look round. And how I had missed out.

On an absolutely glorious day, the expansive gardens were at their best - the first autumn leaves shining brilliant red and gold in the sun while the last of the summer blooms blazed. We started with the glasshouses, moving from the oppressive heat of the tropical and sub-tropical rooms, through to the truly zen-like tranquillity of the Japanese garden and national bonsai collection. Back inside, the Mediterranean greenhouse unsurprisingly captured the imagination of our Iberian guests, packed as it was with stunning colours.

We were slightly disappointed to find the succulent room out of bounds due to maintenance, but we were at least treated to some magnificent specimens of giant cacti outside on the terrace.

The next couple of hours were simply spent meandering through the extensive grounds, which are pocketed with different styles of gardening and flora. A sumptuous day; if you have a spare afternoon and a patch of sunshine, I'd highly recommend grabbing a picnic and taking a stroll around Birmingham Botanical Gardens.

Birmingham Botanical Gardens are on Westbourne Road, Edgbaston. Easily reached on any bus leaving the city centre from Colmore Row towards Harborne - at the time of writing that's the numbers 10, 21, 22, 23, 24 and 29.