Birmingham in February

We arrived yesterday. This is not a vacation in the true sense of the word. We have come here on an urgent basis to be with our son Dan, and his girlfriend Electra. She was diagnosed a year ago with Acute Myelogenous Leukaemia.
This Christmas, she found out that the treatments had not worked as expected, and she had a relapse of her disease. January was spent in hospital getting the strongest chemotherapy they could offer, but it has also not helped. She has come home to her apartment in Birmingham to die. Dan is with her much of the time. They have both been incredibly mature and loving though this time. Electra's parent are both here. We also wanted to be here to support our son where possible. Hence the travel to this grey city at a grey time of year.

Of course, this means getting a flight across the Pond. Air Transat to the rescue there: we got two tickets return to Birmingham for less than $1200! And that included upgrading our seats. Or so we thought. When we got to the airport, it turns out they had sold our seats three times (they claimed there was a computer glitch). So we ended up in regular steerage. However, the bonus is that we will get our money back for the upgrade, and for the flight we got special service. And the seats we had were not bad. Arrived in Manchester, went through the long line of Customs, and still managed to catch our train to Birmingham in time.

Dan met us at the train station (good thing since it was a maze of passages and stores, and lots of people there as well). It w a ten-minute walk to the apartment. Have rented for the week. Initial impressions of Birmingham are not favourable: I suspect this part of the city was bombed during the war, and it is now filled with grey, modern buildings. Too bad Dickens is dead, he would have a good time with this town. And the sky was grey as well. Dan tells us they have a new word for weather: "bright". This is where it is grey, but not as bad as the dark grey they sometimes get.

After a restorative sleep on both of our parts (we felt like we had fallen off a cliff), we walked down to Electra's apartment (about ten minutes' walk). The rest of the day we spent in her living room, with Dan and Electra and her parents Paul and Anastasia. A lot of talking, some good connecting with Paul and Anastasia, and some nice time with Dan and Electra.

However, we were still quite time-shifted and had to leave at about nine to collapse into our bed.

It's amazing what almost twelve hours' sleep will do to help. We are now up and ready to go finally, and it it only 11 AM! We'll go get some quick breakfast, and then go down to see Dan.


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Location:Downtown Birmingham