More to Edgbaston than cricket ground
EDGBASTON is a posh Birmingham suburb located not far from the centre of that very large, very busy UK city.
Most people think of Birmingham as a fairly mucky industrial city. People who live there are referred to as “Brummies”. Many of them speak with distinctive accents, not easy to copy unless you happen to have been born in that area!
I love Birmingham despite not having been born there and despite a constant struggle with their accents. That is just as well, really.
My first lecturing job was as a 23year-old structural engineer escaping from the boredom of designing steel structures with Dorman Long and Co in the northeast of England. I had reached the end of a graduate apprenticeship and was looking for a bold next step.
The opportunity arose to take up an assistant lectureship at the University of Birmingham and I jumped at the chance. I was profoundly ignorant of what was involved in being a university lecturer, particularly in a place as big as Birmingham with a soccer team called by the daft name “Aston Villa”.
It turned out be a magic opportunity thanks to the excellent leadership of a bloke called Redshaw who was the professor of civil engineering at the University.
Professor Redshaw knew nothing about soccer, but was a very distinguished aeronautical engineer and profoundly respected by industry leaders across the country.
He lived in Wolverhampton, next door to Birmingham and, despite that, managed to set a shining example of all that is good about being a professional engineer and academic. He treated his colleagues with respect and even appeared to enjoy working with them.
I was told that I could have an assistant lectureship for one year, with the promise of a continuing appointment by the University of Birmingham, only if I turned out to have any competency. Alternatively I would be given the sack after that first year.
I managed to avoid the sack, concluded that I was a competent lecturer, and that Professor Redshaw was remarkably wise, and tolerant of a young bloke who fancied himself when talking to young and old students.
I had met my wife when working in the northeast of England and she defied all odds that our relationship would not survive moving south to Birmingham. We were married in the local city and began our life together not far from Birmingham’s Edgbaston cricket ground. Edgbaston was regarded as one of the great cricket arenas and has got even better thanks to a comprehensive renovation in recent years.
To watch Test cricket at Edgbaston was a rare treat. After several years living in a student residential college called High Hall, we scraped together a deposit on our first house which was in Moseley adjacent to Edgbaston; not quite as posh as that suburb, but a damn sight cheaper!
We lived in Moseley/Edgbaston for several years and I drove past the cricket ground on most days of my life.
I was working in the University of Birmingham, lecturing and doing a PhD. Professor Redshaw had warned me that a doctorate was necessary if I wanted to be a proper university teacher. More importantly, he found some research money from the Military Engineering Experimental Establishment and made this all possible. It all led to my Doctor of Philosophy Degree at the end of 1966.
There I was, a new dad, with a new baby, a very busy wife, a Labrador dog and a thesis entitled, “Some Contributions to the Behaviours of Longitudinal Fillet Wells”. It wasn’t pretty reading but it had a very nice cover!
I found, over the years, that a nicely bound thesis with carefully designed stiff covers can make up for many pages of academic nonsense ....