LOL--"never tell someone from Solihull that they're from Birmingham"--'struth!

Oh, my, but it *is* a small world, innit?! My kids & I spend a couple of weeks every summer with our cousins in Dorridge; they used to live in Knowle but moved a few years back---aren't the property values shocking around there (and *I* live near Boston!)? Anyway, the curry from Lloyd's in Knowle is the *best*, and there's that very good Chinese take-away right near the train station in Dorridge...some good pubs in the area as well.

My whole family on my mum's side started out in Acocks Green and Yardley; some are still there, some have only moved away as far as Sutton Coldfield, while one auntie is now ensconced in Henley-in-Arden, which is a long way from Dolphin Lane! But there certainly is that certain ineffable "something" about being a Brummie, isn't there? My parents talk about the old Bull Ring in the '40s; I only knew it in its rather hideous '70s shopping mall incarnation, but they've improved things since then, and done some nice things down by the canal now. I was just at the art museum last summer for the first time in donkey's years, and it was just fabulous; gotta love those pre-Raphaelites!

~D