I spent the day relieved that Birmingham is a lot cooler than the first couple of days made me think it was.

I’ve scored myself a one year visiting lectureship, and I’m staying with Tim Wall, head of radio at the University of Central England, author of ‘Studying Popular Music Culture’ and all round nice guy and jazz nut (with uncannily similar tastes and musical preferences).

Tim’s approach to introducing me to his city was an unusual one. Normally when you go somewhere new, the residents like to show off. It’s called tourism, and you show the biggest, flashiest, impressivest places first. When the newcomers are exhausted, and they’ve got no more film in the camera, you take them back to your place.

Not Tim. He decided to do the slow reveal.

When I first arrived, not only was it grey and miserable, I started my journey in the worst car park in the northern hemisphere and went straight to the grimmest-looking university on the planet. My office was the one with the broken ceiling tiles on the floor and the stack of 1960s radio technology lying in various states of disrepair in the lino corridor outside. The teaching rooms were full of technicians muttering and moving desks into piles. The grey clouds continued to close in, and across the road, I noticed the scenic One Stop supermarket and the delightful dog racing track, which backed onto the motorway offramp. Think ‘back of Ellerslie’.

After seeing the UCE offices (or the piles of debris where the offices should be when we arrive to start the semester on Monday), we went straight to Tim’s home, pausing only to pass by a little bit of Tim’s favourite parts of Birmingham.

There’s a great big park surrounded by trees and fences so that you can’t see into it (and nor can you drive through it), and there are some shops that sell almost nothing I’d want to buy (except vegetarian haggis. I’m quite intrigued by that). There were also a bunch of houses that all look exactly the same. It’s Coronation Street stuff, only more suburban (though officially they’re villages).

Tim’s house, it has to be said, is really very nice. Far better than that of most lecturers I know in NZ. He also has some cool toys, like the digital telly recorder thing. There’s also a box of Black Music and Jazz Review magazines that I’m dying to rummage through.

However, I hadn’t seen any canals yet, and I hadn’t seen anything that looked like city life or city streets. Or – y’know – very many other interesting people. It was all a bit concerning…

On the upside, Tim has an enormous collection of jazz CDs and radio books, so I plan to do a lot of borrowing.

Anyway, last night, I sat with Tim at a pub and told him that although I was up for the new experience of it all, there were certain things I’d been looking forward to – the kind of things I liked about a place to live, the inner-city vibrancy, the pretentious living in a cafe area near tv producers and advertising executives – that sort of thing.

And he realised he’d been doing it all back to front. He thought I’d like what he liked (peace and quiet and a pleasant, comfortable existence) – not what his more “bohemian” colleague was into.

Today, everything changed. We had a beer in a cafe on the canal front, and walked through the city streets, which were reminiscent of a larger version of Durham Lane. In fact, now that I’ve seen what the town looks like properly, there’s a lot of B’ham that reminds me of Wellington and some of the good bits of Auckland.

I could scarcely contain my joy as we wandered past the concert hall and art gallery, around the cafe district and canal lines, and ended up driving just around the corner to Kingsheath and Moseley (Grey Lynn and Ponsonby respectively). I’d only seen Sutton Coldfield (Remuera) and Erdington (Meadowbank) until now and was starting to get really worried.

Tonight I go out to see the place I’m going to be staying for the next few weeks. It’s in South Birmingham (the right side for me) and it’s £50 per week for the room.

Bringing NZ wine was a great idea. A $20 investment in NZ equates to priceless treasure in the UK to the right people. Collards and Mission Estate are new and exciting joys.

I went to a second hand record shop called The Diskery yesterday. All my High Fidelity fantasies realised in one place. There was the stuff on display (which was pretty impressive)… and then there was the stuff out the back that they brought out to show you once the conversation had proved you worthy of such treasures. Not extra cheap, but the selection of impossible-to-find vinyl was overwhelming. It was very emotional for me…

I have an address that I can be sent things at now. It is:

Andrew Dubber

c/- Media and Communication

University of Central England

Perry Barr

Birmingham B42 2SU

And the first thing I would love to be sent, if someone felt so inclined, is a videotape of Brotown when that starts… I was looking forward to seeing that.

I visited the BBC in town today. It’s not just a bunch of studios, it’s also a retail outlet. Pretty much everything the BBC ever made is there. Not just the docos – I saw the Reggie Perrin collection on DVD for sale, the Liver Birds, Citizen Smith… and all the great radio shows on CD. Anyone for the Navy Lark? Awesome stuff.

And – get this: I now have a cellphone. Two, in fact. Our hosts in Amsterdam gave me one, and my sister in London also couldn’t bear the thought of me being stranded without that small piece of technology that connects you to the rest of the civilised world.

And small is right… the whole thing is the size of my index and middle finger side by side. I’m still pretty slow, but I’ve sent a couple of text messages now.

I was tempted to follow my ‘Quick, someone give me a cellphone’ blog post with ‘Quick, someone give me a million dollars’ – but I don’t think the same result would have ensued.

Meanwhile, here in Birmingham, Tim’s managed to get funding for a research project, and he’s made me the Project Coordinator on it, which will pull me off about half of my teaching after about 6 weeks of being here, and give me more interesting things to do (not that I don’t love the teaching, of course…). It also guarantees me a full-time salary, which was not an absolute definite when I boarded the plane in Auckland… so that’s a relief.

Essentially, the funding money is for us to train people from the music industry to explore and use new music technology for promotion and distribution channels outside of traditional record companies. Funnily enough, though, the first bit of that funding is earmarked for six months of “research” to find out how to do it in the first place ourselves, before teaching it to other people.

I’ve insisted that the capital expenditure budget first go toward an iPod, a Mac G5 laptop and a broadband internet connection for me. Tim seems to think that’s not an unreasonable request, so we’ll see if we can get that past the boss on Monday.

I don’t miss NZ a great deal yet (4 days – it’s hardly surprising). The people, of course, but not the place so far. That’ll come, but everything’s still very new and exciting.

That said, late tonight, I’m going to go on the internet and listen to

Camilla talk to Helen Clark on bFM.

I miss Bobbie and Jake, who are having a wonderful time with friends in Amsterdam – but they’ll come and join me once things are a bit settled here.