Restoration

One good thing about being redundant is you get to take up opportunities that you'd normally have to turn down because you were at work.









Last week Pauline, the project director of the Restoration of Kings Norton asked me if I was free to look after a cameraman from Endemol who would be filming what was going on in order to create a pilot for the BBC. With any luck it could mean the BBC come back to film things properly, either for a one-off programme or even a mini-series!

So I met our boy, a producer sorry not cameraman; he just happened to be carrying a camera!





He was very interested in everyone and everything - and everyone was chuffed to bits that someone was there, filming. The thing is, for everyone involved, we all understand the importance of this renovation and restoration for the community and for ourselves, and many in the group can't understand why other people aren't as excited as we are.


But not everyone is as excited as we are, quite simply because they don't see what it's got to do with them. Just because people are neighbours doesn't make them a community, even when certain kind, thoughtful, wise leaders of that community believe it does.

So Andy the producer got heaps of enthusiastic help from everyone, but bless him, that's not necessarily the makings of an exciting programme so it still all hangs in the balance. We await to see how good a job of editing it all he makes! He got well over 6 hours of footage, God only knows what bits he'll keep!
I didn't get interviewed, I just helped carry things mainly and kept him to schedule as much as possible. I got to run around in a high visibility vest and a hard hat - FUN!




I watched them uncover a medieval chimney block by block while holding the camera's battery as Andy filmed and got shown these 15th century tiles they'd recently uncovered still in the exact place on the floor, unchanged in five centuries. Pretty cool.

I took my camera with me that day, I'm just sorry I didn't get a shot of me in my hard hat, I looked quite a picture!
I thought this picture of one of the builders eating his packed lunch on a tomb stone was funny. It sort of encapsulates what that whole area feels like at the moment, it's usually so peaceful but now there's scaffolding and builders and mud. At the same time they're a part of its character. In fact one builder, Damian, was once in the childrens home we were trying to raise money for, on Herons Way in Selly Oak. At that time he was a cub scout at the Saracens head. All those years ago he probably never dreamed he'd be helping to rebuild the same building! I also have to say the builders all seem lovely - cheeky chancers some of them but a cracking lot!