sunday afternoon stuff

Today I had a pretty standard Sunday kind of day - pretty standard to how I used to spend Sunday that is, in fact most of the Sundays of my childhood, adolescence and early twenties before settling in Birmingham. Get up in a leisurely way (or at least as leisurely as my six year old will permit), make coffee, breakfast, listen to desert island discs and a few mins of the Archers (depending on tolerance levels), read papers, head to a market, go to a cafe, eat brunch etc. Then head out for a walk get some coffee etc.

Woooo slow down - go to a market? Okay so it's been around for a while and it's not that big or that fabulous but still the essence is there. You see today I popped over to the Custard Factory flea market luckily having had brunch at Peaceful mind in Kings heath.

You see the whole time I've lived in Birmingham I've sort of been waiting for it to be like it is or at least how it is getting to be. Something to do with spending my young life living a ten minute walk away from Greenwich market, which although disappointingly down at heal and oddly touristy now was in its day a lively mix of thrift, flea, antique, gift and craft market - well markets in fact. It was huge, hours of perusing, coffees, lunches and Sunday paper reading, meeting up with friends to dissect the Saturday night which the Sunday followed - I love this kind of endless Sunday pottering - and if you're really lucky you get a longish walk in a park followed by a boozy Sunday lunch sometime mid afternoon, somewhere warm and cosy..

So how does Birmingham’s answer to a Sunday measure up? Well Kings heath/Moseley does well on cafes, Sunday lunch places to eat and parks - If I can be bothered our Sunday dinner might be pretty good too! As for the market well - um it's small (but perfectly formed). It's kind of got all the right ingredients some market stalls, live music and good live music (although I didn't catch who they were but some jazz guitar Jiango Reinhart style (poss something to do with Jibbering records in Moseley), an art gallery, some stuff for kids but here’s the thing it's small I was hoping it would be bigger we kind of exhausted the pottering possibilities within 40 minutes.

The thing is Digbeth, although just a short walk from town, a ten min bus ride from Moseley/KH, is still a slightly unlikely destination unless there is a good reason to go,. Now this market could be a good reason to go but needs to be bigger, needs to keep you there longer. Also I was disappointed that Rooty's was closed and that the majority of little shops in the Custard Factory were also shut. Seems a little counter-intuitive as the market 'user'. If you think about the long rambling flea markets of Paris (that I would happily take a couple of metros to reach) you know you can spend a whole day there.

Now I am not trying to do the Custard Factory flea down - I enjoyed my time there and realise that it being a good place to go is just as dependent on the crowds coming and that there is a certain amount of momentum required for these things to grow and get really good. So I would suggest they keep everything open cafes, shops and stuff and all you folks who like to meander, potter about on a Sunday head down there.