Nicola and I spent the weekend in Birmingham. Despite having more canals than Venice, Birmingham is only just beginning to make a feature of them. The canal area regeneration makes for pleasant canal-side drinking, but the chain-pubs and chain-restaurants make it a little too predictable to be charming. On the other hand, the remaining dilapidation makes for wonderful photographic subject matter. On Sunday evening we joined 1000 excitable English fans in Centenary Square to watch England and France play (on a big screen) at the Euro 2004 tournament. England was 1-nil up against France until the 90th minute, but managed to lose 2-1... Bitter disappointment sounds the same, even in a Brummie accent, and a number of wailing fans seemed to be threatening to throw themselves into Birmingham's "Far Canal". For more photos see here.
