The Hedge is a pervading theme of this blog, & thus also of my witchcraft & life. By it I mean the particular setting of the witch - I suppose it needn't be a geographical location, it could be a time or group, for example - which both forms her & is worked on by her in a spirit of reciprocity.
These spirit of place posts tend to refer to a particular spirit of a particular place. In this case, while there are things which seem to be unique to the Birmingham spirit (for example elsewhere a suburb of a city will usually be homogeneous, while in Brum often one end reclines in the lap of luxury & the other rots in squalor) this one surely isn't unique.
It's just that these three examples tickle the Hound no end. I was delighted to pass along Fore St recently & discover the council have given up on the battle & replaced the sign with one where the words are closer together so that there isn't room to write 'skin' in between.
I've never seen the Rea St sign with additions, which indicates the battle of cleaning up after the vandals persists, as it does with Inge St. The only trouble is - you've guessed it - these three streets are now permanently their alternative names to my mind!
The Fore St alteration is rather predictable, but I rather like the more 'gentle' approach to Rea St - It seems rather childlike and naive.
ReplyDeleteMinge St just made me out-and-out laugh!
Thanks for sharing these. I'll have to keep an eye out for altered street names around Cromer and Norwich.
That's exactly how I feel about the Rea Street one - I also wonder whether the person who typeset it saw this in the mind's eye. Wouldn't it be good, too, if the person who made the alteration were to comment here & let me know whether he drew the caricature of Sherlock Holmes on the sign for Sherlock Street, as I suspect?
DeleteThat would be great to hear from the street sign amenders! I hope they're not stereotypical layabout youths. I have a feeling that the Rea St one is someone far less predictable - A middle-aged businesswoman who had a flash of rebellion, perhaps?
ReplyDeleteOh, gods. I've just re-read my first comment and I'm now cringing at the three "rathers" in the first sentence!
I like that idea a lot. The Inge St one could present the possibility of a disgruntled theatre goer or a confused rent boy. Even a resentful member of the National Trust protesting that the Back to Backs gave (in this person's view) been made too squeaky clean.
DeleteYour comments on your perseveration came as I was watching a video on shell shock in the first world war. I'm only saying.... X