Logging On

I'm Brian Homer and I was brought up in Harborne and lived there for 21 years - I now live on the BVT Estate in Weoley and work in the Jewellery Quarter  but still visit Harborne regularly to eat out, visit friends and shop.

I was at school at Emerson Road before it merged with Station Road, High Street before it closed and became the Clock Tower and Five Ways from just before it moved to Bartley Green. But none of these events were due in any way to me…

So my roots in Harborne run deep. My family rented a house on the Moorpool Estate from 1920 until my mum died in 2004. My great-uncle Harry lived in High Street opposite St John's Church.

But my interest in Harborne is not just in its past - it is in its people and the community. Harborne remains for me "the Village" - one of Birmingham's most complete suburbs with a distinct, though changing, identity. And I'm interested in hyperlocal (whatever that really means) blogging having been involved in local publishing in various ways.

I'm also intrigued to be contributing to a blog set up by an ex-editor of the Birmingham Post as my first experience in journalism and photography was through W E Hall, my friend's dad and resident of Park Hill Road, who was a journalist and deputy editor on the same rag. Later on I learned a lot from Derek Bishton, a Features Editor on the Post, when he moonlighted on Grapevine Magazine.

Anyway it would be interesting to see if Harborne is still called "the Village" - I feel a poll coming on.

Brian Homer