Please tell Boris

.....To tell the emergency services that sirens at each and every hour throughout the night just isn't needed. I was in an equally grid locked New York a few months ago and noticed the lack of sirens. There a quick one or two wip wops and that would suffice. In London it would appear the boys in blue appear to only satisfied if they are completing an end run, at full tilt with two tones going all thwe way. So Boris having got very little sleep last night....please sort it out!

Waving cheerio, hugging hellos

This morning was a bit of a strange experience, standing at the entrance to airport security instead of walking through it. Saying goodbye to Tom and Hellen was actually quite tough, another milestone passed as they grow up and become their own self reliant person. Unlike the film Love Actually (it may be sad that I know it - but three women live in my house) I wont be there to reap the joy of a re-union when they come home in 10 days time as I will be travelling again.

East Midlands this morning unlike I guess airports like Heathrow where separations can be longer if not more permanent was a happy place, as most of the people passing through were, so it appeared, starting their holidays. Straw hats, shorts and very loud shirts was very much order of the day.....a warning to Faro, Malaga and other points south seemed appropriate but probably already too late as many thousands of rampaging Brits will already have passed through this summer.

Travelling is a wonderful opportunity to see, taste, hear and experience many new things and I still get a wonderful sense of wonder from visiting new places and espically meeting new people, however as you fight your way through the sign waving taxi drivers and people hugging their hellos in the arrivals hall it is sometimes a little lonely...(ahhhhh).

Where did the ABC go?

I am sat in a McDonalds at the bottom of Bristol Road at it's junction with the middle ring road in Birmingham. As a sixteen to twenty something year old I used to catch the 41 or 47 Corporation bus into town which turned right at this junction en route to town. As the bus went past I would always check what consecutive week Emmanuelle had been playing, I seem to remember it had got well past 100+ weeks. It's a bit of a challenge to work out who was still going to see it. Then again perhaps not.

Whilst ABC and it's revolutionary 3 screens have long gone, together with the Odeon Queensway just up the road - the cinema scene is going strong. I am waiting here to kill some time (the thought of killing or being killed I will come back to in a minute) before going up to what used to be the Children's Hospital which is now an entertainment complex that includes......a 12 screen cinema

It is some 24 years since I lived in Birmingham. The absence of this urban existance from my day to day life has scarred my view of the city. Whilst the roads remain familiar and I am very happy to zip through side streets to plot a route from one place to another,my comfort with some of its inhabitants has become very very wary.

Coming to this fast food outlet my senses have been heightened in a similar way as when I wander around streets in cities such as New Orleans, New York and Cape Town. bosterious lads, wearing street clothes of baggy t shirts, reversed base ball caps, low slung jeans and bling, bling, bling pose a threat - if not in their minds - certainly in mine.

Are they a danger? I am not sure, one part of me wants to say it's me. I am conditioned by the media, popular culture (movies again) and my own white anglo saxon background. So I keep my phone in my pocket, stand quietly and try not to catch anyone's eye at the same time successfully convincing myself that it is me and the 'problems' are in my mind.

It is at this point a lad who must be 6'4+ comes rolling in, walks through the queue I am standing in and before getting to the next queue takes a position at the counter, taps a pound coin on the counter and says to some rapidly stressed counter staff 'Hey man someone serve me, I wanna to get a drink'. Oh bloody hell, am I going to get dragged into this? Is my car safe? If I get attacked will I be able to tell someone to collect my daughter - that's the reason why I am in Birmingham in the first place - Hellen is at a concert with her friend at a small venue called 'The Flapper' which is at the back of the NIA. It's all a flood of different emotions as the small girl who clearly looks like she is about to chuck it all in and walk out asks me for my order. Her training takes over has she enquires whether or not I wish milk and sugar with my coffee and am I eating in. My potential nemesis has persuaded a compatriot already in the queue to add a drink to his order and the matter is sorted.

I can't help thinking that if the difference between inner city urban Britain and the pleasant mainly white, mainly middle class rural Britian is such that if it means that a short fat middle aged white guy is concerned/scarred to go into a McDonalds in the centre of a big city at 8 o clock in the evening by the demons in his own mind then Houston we have a problem (too much stuff about NASA on TV at the moment).

These young....now that is a thought, I want to say black but is that 'acceptable'? Anyway the important thing is that these guys are as English as I am and we need to work at ensuring that the worlds in which we live remain in touch with each other. It is our collective responsibility to ensure that everyone has the chance to build a successful life for themselves, irrespective of their start point. Sorry - I will get off the hobby horse. Actually one last thought on the subject. If the BNP's position is that everyone should go 'home', do they believe white people should leave South Africa?

So my Miami Melt is done, chips scoffed and coffee drunk. Whilst ABC Bristol Road and Emmanuelle has finally gone past their sell by date, the AMC cinemaplex does await....so time to go