The view from the 9th floor

One advantage of working in the centre of Birmingham, on the 9^th floor of an office block, is that you can see the whole city. To be honest, it’s hardly a post card vista of hills and lakes, but it’s certainly an interesting view. When I first started working here, I dismissed the view as a morass of concrete, but over the summer months I have become fonder.

To the south of the city is the Edgbaston cricket ground. The ground cannot be seen from here but the flicker of the score board can be seen, between two high rise flats, on match days (It was England v. Australia yesterday). To its left is Birmingham’s central mosque, now a permanent feature of the landscape and battling for attention among the flats that surround it.

The view to the north is less conspicuous, being overshadowed by yet taller office blocks. Between the gaps, there are hills with the electricity pylons silhouetted on the horizon. To the right is the spaghetti junction, the quagmire of intertwining roads that once defined Birmingham along with the Rotunda.

Closer to the centre can be seen myriads of cranes. Birmingham is definitely a city on the rise. In fact the view from here is an ideal place to survey the various construction projects taking place around the centre of the city.

Earlier this is year it was a pleasure to see two baby sea gulls progressing through early life on the roof of Waterstones, the booksellers. I heard somewhere that sea gulls quite like tall urban buildings, which they can glide on and off much like the cliffs in their more natural habitats.