Advantages: Plenty to see, a relaxing escape from the city. Disadvantages: Expensive for a one-off visit. Disappointing restaurant.
Every city need its green spaces. The architecture may be spectacular and the shops fantastic, but finding a place to escape the traffic and bustle is a necessity for most city dwellers. Picture Birmingham and what do you see? The Bullring, New Street Station and Spaghetti Junction would be the first things that come to my mind. Although I've never lived in Birmingham itself, I worked there for several years. During that time I went to the Botanical Gardens regularly, but for the purposes of this review I will focus on my most recent visit which was August 2008.
A Brief History
Celebrity gardeners are not a new phenomenon. In the nineteenth century J.C Loudon was an influential writer on gardening and became part of London's high society. He designed the Birmingham Botanical Gardens in 1830 to provide a place where keen ...
Advantages: Big enough to get the destinations, small enough to care Disadvantages: Complex road system to get there
There's a theory that says every opinion on a site like Ciao is valuable and so we should post as much as we like on whatever topic takes our fancies. However, Ciao don't actually reward an opinion once there are already a bunch on a given topic. So this won't earn me a penny - even with the special bonus. Double nothing is ...... er.... nothing. But since there hasn't been a review of Birmingham International Airport for several years, much of the information on Ciao is outdated and well overdue for an update. So pennies or no pennies, here are my thoughts on BHX.
When I was a kid, I loved going to airports - any airport, it didn't matter - it was all just so exciting. Strange exotic people, big shiny shops and lots of static electric shocks from the nylon carpets - there was nothing quite like it. But as I grew up the whole ...
Advantages: Very emotional writing Disadvantages: Quite slow paced
Up until now, I'd only ever heard of ''John the Revelator'' as a song. Judging from the several mentions of the song in the story and given that author Peter Murphy works in the music press, I suspect that's where the title of this novel came from as well. How much I enjoy the song depends on which version of it I hear, but with no such concerns with the book, I was able to enjoy it fully without worrying if someone had done a better version elsewhere that I was missing out on.
John Devine is a teenager stuck in a small Irish town with a single mother, no real friends and a rather worrying fascination for bodily parasites, mostly intestinal worms. His only human contact is with his mother Lily, Mrs Nagle, an elderly neighbour and Harry Farrell, a local jack-of-all-trades. His only break from the house and from school is Sunday Mass. Not ...
