The University of Birmingham

I took my daughter to see this classic redbrick university yesterday and we were impressed. They put on a very good day and we were able to see inside all the departments. Since my time, everything has been smartened up and modernized on the inside of the buildings, in fact, I only recognised the staircases in the Guild building. The Cinderella faculty was the Arts faculty which was awful! Completely the same as it was, which means much, much worse.

The library is apparently about to collapse under the weight of the books - I loved all those books - but now there are hardly any, just computers everywhere. So the university is going to build a lovely new library, and then knock the old one down, so the centre of the campus will be less recognisable. But the university needs to keep improving and it's an exciting place with so much drastic change going on. I met a very nice youngish Prof of Nuclear Physics with whom to discuss the changes.

This is the old library which was a very good library of its type.

I had never been inside the Medical School before and it was great - bright and modern inside an old building, we both really liked it. We went beyond the campus so that we could place it in context and found that Selly Oak has also been changed recently. There is a relief road taking traffic away from the Bristol Road in Selly Oak so the university has been closed off at that side, and a number of buildings have gone completely, including the Gun Barrels, which I'm sure didn't cause much grief. Still plenty of curry houses in S.O.

Last night went for a dinner at the Valley cooked by my own dear brother, and very nice it was too. He came up and went Hurdygurdy, like the Swedish chef from the Muppets. I said, "Are we having meatballs?" I had got it in one -