One side of Eastside
Bordesley. Megabites has set up at Garrison Circus on the corner of a park. This
is Eastside before seven in the morning.
As I walk up Great Barr Street, through the gap in the disused viaduct, I see
the top storey of the Custard Factory. I cross the canal: squeezed between the
canal and the disused viaduct, a skip hire business. On my right the Forge Tavern
marks the junction with Fazeley Street. On Liverpool Street I pass the impressive
Central Bus Garage, its proud façade looks onto a broken chain link fence and
an abandoned manufacturing shed. Diesel fumes clog the air.
PGS, Rockford Engineering, stockholding steels and in amongst this is tucked
the Wagon and Horses public house. Painted onto the viaduct "Bordesley Cattle
Station GWR". Running alongside the railway to Solihull, Upper Trinity Street,
neglected, with its tarmac surfaces patched and tired, heads gently uphill. On
Upper Trinity Street - upliftingly named - Artistic Trims manufacturers of textile
plastics is closed and "To Let, Industrial/Warehouse accommodation" Pinnacle Heating
Services, the new Borsch Electrical Superstore "discount warehouse open to the
public".
And then I emerge on Coventry Road where the Clements Arms glitters in its new
paint with the backdrop of a car hire compound and nudged by a boarded-up neighbour.
Where there are boards had once been a Carribean restaurant.
The steps at Bordesley station from the road are grand and well kept. One emerges
at the top on a bleak bare platform for a fine view of Birmingham: St Andrews
football stadium to one side, the Rotunda and the City Centre to the other. Across
from here the Trinity Church, a scaled down copy of a Cambridge building: a beige
elephant constantly in search of a suitable and sympathetic use. To the south
a single diesel locomotive crosses on a bridge on the line that carries trains
through Moseley and Kings Heath. In the distance Tyseley incinerator gently disgorges
light grey smoke and competes for dominance of the skyline with a nearby Mosque.
My train arrives, I leave. This is Eastside.
John Davison Autumn 2001