Beautiful Birmingham

I was born in Birmingham. I lived there for the first five years of my life, went away but came back at the age of fourteen, after which I lived and worked in and around the city for the next twenty five years, give or take the occasional year or so off in foreign places like the Outer Hebrides or Cornwall. I still visit the city but rarely now, and yesterday I was reminded of why.
Birmingham was never a particularly attractive city, but always seems to have felt bad about it. Consequently, every so often it undertakes a complete makeover. I remember the city centre before the iconic Rotunda building and the Bull Ring Centre, before Spaghetti Junction, before the motorways. All of the houses I ever lived in in the city, both as a child and as an adult, have been demolished. There are some places that haven't changed at all, of course, but it's hard, very hard, to find them.
Today is the sixtieth birthday of a good friend of ours. She's having a party – not that she knows it yet – and her children have summoned old friends from as far away as Cornwall and Germany to help her celebrate. So yesterday we embarked on the long trek up the motorway, to stay with Ron's brother for the weekend and go to the ball. All went well until we tried to escape from the M6, straight into some roadworks and a diversion. Very diverting. It was strange – we were recognising the names of roads, but not anything else. A big church was still where it used to be, but now with a mosque next door. Aston Villa football ground has been rebuilt ten times the size, eating up one of the houses I used to live in. We passed the pub where Ron and I met, now semi derelict and half hidden by broken boards; apparently one may not demolish a listed building, but it's OK to let it fall down...
We got back on track eventually, of course, and found Ron's brother in his local only half an hour late. They were actually playing The Time Warp as we walked in. And now it's raining; nothing's changed after all.