The place I call home. I am like a moth to it's light. I have tried to escape but alas I have consistently failed. Not only do I live in this shady little non-suburb of Birmingham, I work here too. I do my shopping in one of the three major supermarkets and consider it my civic duty to support the local cinema. I am one of the very few of my generation to be born in this strange little town, there was no maternity ward in Redditch in 1978. It is a leafy little town, shunned by Birmingham as being out in the sticks and too working class to exist as an equal amongst the small villages that surround it. An embarassing part of Worcestershire that scoops up the detritus from the nationally mocked Birmingham.
It is a town without history. A replica of a map from the 18th Century on my wall shows: Bordesley, Beoley, Alvechurch, Iplsey but no Redditch. It is a new town. Little factories are scattered amongst the trees to provide low paid and dirty jobs for workers with no aspirations beyond a 52" high definition 3D tv on which to watch soaps and reality tv shows. There is an abundance of pubs which are filled with men who barely speak to each other during the week. At the weekends these sleepy establishments turn into rough houses where over inebriated thugs go on the rampage.
There are two real things that stop me from leaving Redditch. Firstly I can't afford it. Secondly I don't really buy into this grass is greener elsewhere malarky. I haven't travelled a lot but when I have it has quickly become obvious to me that the place I am visiting is just as much a crap hole as Redditch or unbearably snooty. As I turn off at juntion 3 of the M42 I breathe a sigh of relief. I can sense the feeling of malaise take over again. The Redditch brand of apathy is particularly addictive, before long I am comfortably melancholic and looking forward to a good moan about the lack of entertainment in my silly little town.
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