• names and places I’ve never been or heard of
• Kingsheath or Moseley?
• Too much shopping
• beautiful-ugly
• mistaken for a woman by blokes outside the British Legion pub while walking with Laura
• what’s the front door you imagine when asked to imagine home?
• Eagle-tattooed front man: head-crashing, ear-pulsing, knee-jerking, gentle-whispering
• Looking for Auden and Tolkien in the landscape
• Recognized by staff of London Midlands trains
• Wild speculation that the flat beneath us was occupied by Banksy on hide out. Clues: recycled box of New Balance trainers, empty graffiti cans, in and out at odd hours of the night.
• Berlin or Birmingham? Berlinham
• Kira O’Reilly lives in Birmingham
• A beautiful eighteenth century dovecote
• AE Harris building singing with potential
• A flat transforming into a home parallel to the establishment of a collection of household items destroyed by guests
• ‘M.S.’ melted our kettle and burnt the oven gloves
• Nicholas made soup
• Inspiration walks
• And what about my per diems? It all over – It all over!?
• Stan’s Cafe live in Birmingham
• Met the occupant of the flat beneath us. He is a graf artist, not Bansky. Disappointed.
• Baskerville is currently my favorite font
• Staggering towards the terrifyingly named ‘Bear Grease’ – actually a Wetherspoons called The Pear Tree
• The coming insurrection
• ducks and swans cracking ice on the water in front of the MAC
• a drawing of a giant snowman in the car park
• “We are now approaching Birmingham New St. our final destination”

We took a walk along the frozen canals, marvelling at the geometric slabs of ice and enjoying the extra layer of silence that snow brings. 

We saw the spray from a duck’s landing on the canal water frozen in time.  Nicolas (from EXYZT) spoke about the canals as Birmingham’s romantic hidden world.  We navigated home in a left-hand drive car covered in flowers with an abstract but accurate hand-drawn map (turn right at the mosque).  We still don’t know our way round but being strangers with our senses still prickling feels like a good thing.  It helps us have more ideas about this place.  We’ve been inviting artists to stay with us in our flat.  This is helping us turn our flat into our home.  Nicolas cooks a very good soup teeming with root vegetables, cabbage and leeks.  This is how we want to work with people.