14th April 2023.
After the impromptu 16.5% Jamaican tonic wine (and it’s not often you can write that) I wasn’t really bothered about the Bull.
I’d been before, knew it was a classic “country pub in the city” style place, but on days like this you want to stick to the new, surely <
Far better to spend a few minutes exploring Newtown, taking in the majesty of Birmingham’s tower blocks and canals. Did you know there’s more canal here than in Venice. Bet you never knew that.
But it was raining hard, and the Bull looked oddly inviting, and the week before Blackpool Jane had virtually demanded I do it…
Hard to resist the Ansells window, anyway.
In its own way, it’s as gorgeous as the Bartons Arms.
And incredibly cosy with its rambling interior and bench seats. As long as the jugs don’t fall on your head.
Jane would have been annoyed I didn’t have the “lush” Church End Gravediggers, but the Hooky was great, it really was, Jane.
Someone got told off for taking photos in here, I think, but it wasn’t me.
Or Stafford Paul. Think of the photos Paul could have amassed if the mobile phone had been around since 1973.
Talking of mobile phones…
retiredmartin 
“a few minutes exploring Newtown” wouldn’t have found the M&B pub cum fish and chip shop proudly built and opened in about 1973 by Bass Charrington as the first of its kind in the country.
And that reminds me that about fifty years ago I walked along the A34 from Cannock to Birmingham, I think to buy a book about First Aid from Hudsons which was just yards from the Royal Mail, now Post Office Vaults.
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Without wishing to appear smug, I was aware that Birmingham has more miles of canals than Venice. They told us the same thing in Hamburg, although it was waterways, as opposed to purposely constructed canals.
ps. Your friend Blackpool Jane was definitely right about the Bull, which came out tops on the list of pubs we visited on that rather rainy Friday.
pps. That’s not a very flattering photo of yours truly, but it’s marginally better than the one you took at the Barton’s.
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You look fine Paul. It’s too late to be shy !
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T’other Paul,
I think most residents of the West Midlands know that Birmingham has more miles of canals than Venice which is all the more important now that it no longer has Ansells and M&B breweries or an HP Sauce factory.
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And sadly, this non-resident, thinking he may be a typical non-resident, did not know that fact. I have to visit Hamburg.
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Dave,
But you probably know that there are more Balti houses in Birmingham than across the Indian sub-continent.
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It really is a beaut of a pub inside… I think Paul would be minimalist in his photos – a bit like the Alan Winfield of Stafford
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Aha, the one I fell asleep in – or so it would seem.
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It’s a while since I was last in the Bull, but there were a troop – not sure what the proper collective noun is – of handbell ringers in on that occasion.
Wonder if that still happens?
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A peal of handbell ringers? A clatter? A nuisance?
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Etu,
You remind me that fifty years ago Jenny Beech, wife of Frank Beech licensee of the Red Lion in Stone, was a campanologist.
Like dwile flonking I don’t this it’s as popular a pastime as it once was.
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No, but this would only have been perhaps around 2011.
Couldn’t resist a shout of “Last orders!” when they finished their piece.
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