The streets where I actually factually live

People are often asking myself about where I actually factually reside.

Folk seem genuinely interested in where I am from and the place I like to call home.

They say: “You’re living on a different planet, Belm, you’re an idiot!”

Or: “Get back to the Loony Bin, Belm.”

Clearly, I’m not from another planet – although I have done some space travelling – and I live in the actual factual village, not this place called Loony Bin.

So I thought I’d give you a small, but perfectly formed pictorial tour off of hereabouts.

This will give you a flavour of the bustling, cosmopolitanised, multi-faceted community I like to call mine and some of the villagists who inhabitise hereabouts.

The early morning “school run” always sees the village full of traffic - this is when the teachers chase children through the streets, it can cause congestion but it is such a spectacle that is worth the inconvenience: 

The main shopping hub of the village revolves around the central square. Always a buzz of excited chatter, the square is the village’s 24-hour heart and soul – shopping by day, creeping and crawling by nightfall.

We try to discourage too much motoring around the village square, but we are enthusiastic about car parking:

We hold regular farmers’ markets, when the countryfolk from off of the hills come into the village and try and sell themselves.

Here’s a couple of countryfolk arriving in the village on their favoured weekend mode of transport:

The village’s Belgian Quarter – formed in the 1950s during the Great Flemish Exodus – is a particularly popular destination with villagists and outsiders alike.

On the weekend, the chocolate fairs held in the Belgian Quarter can actually factually attract thousands:

Most activities revolve around the village green.

During the summer months, especially, you’ll find the villagists gathered on the green for some event of other. Here’s last weekend’s Village Fun Run and Badger Cull getting into full swing:

There are those unfamiliar with the actual factual location of the village.

As this pictorial representation of the one road in and out of the village shows, we are nestled in a quiet valley hereabouts:

The hills surrounding the village are largely quite a bleak and barren land.

Although we are but a quick skateboarding distance away of larger Midlands towns – and Birmingham itself is barely 20 of the minutes away by faster transportation – the windswept inhospitableness of the surrounding hills often puts off people from visiting (which we don’t mind as we can be very anti-social):

In fact, our comparative remoteness makes us naturally shy people. However, when strangers are in our midst, we do try and make them feel as welcome as possible - if we don’t chase them away with flaming torches first, obviously.

But this ingrained shyness and reclusivity is best represented by our local farming community, which likes to camouflage itself at every opportunity:

Clearly this provides just the briefest of glimpses of the villagists’ life and ways.

But hopefully it also helps to increase wider understanding of our community.

The best way to get to know us betterer is to come and actually factually visit. But let us know when you’re coming, just in case we’ve popped out.

So, we is what we is and nothing more or less.

This is how we rolls.

Egg hunting and other country pursuits

I am a massive supporter of countryside traditions and other narrow-minded pursuits.

That is why for the last 20 years or so I have led the local Great Easter Egg Hunt with a certain degree of gusto and gratitude.

Later today the community will gather in the beer garden of the Bedknobs and Broomsticks, the Angela Lansbury-themed public house at the heart of our villagist mentality.

Buxom Brenda (the landlord’s wife, on the right of the picture) will coral the community’s youngsters and whip them into a frenzy. I myself (on the left of the picture, waving) will then set the great hunt trail by dragging a large silk purse infused with cocoa across fields and stuff.

The community’s kiddies then have to sniff out the trail and chase after myself on the Great Easter Egg Hunt.

This tradition dates back to olden times when our community used to be over-run by a plague of bunny rabbits.

The rabbits were a particular nuisance at this time of year – a mixture of genetics, the moon and stars and weather meant they craved after eggs and chocolate. Rabbits would break into houses and seek out pantries in order to raid stocks of eggs and chocolate.

Matters came to a head a century or more ago when the rabbits literally destroyed Old Meg Mulligrew’s historic egg and chocolate emporium. All that was left was a mound of rubble, although a Tesco Extra now occupies the site so that’s OK then.

Filled with a sense of outrage and self-righteous indignation, the community armed themselves with bits of trees and chased the rabbits out of the community and the surrounding area. They did this every year following the Mulligrew incident until the rabbits simply gave up and went marauding elsewhere and it was up to other communities and villages to deal with the problem.

The Great Easter Egg Hunt commemorates those olden days and heroic villagists. The local kiddies chase me with large twigs and once I’m cornered they beat me until I relent and hand over the eggs made of chocolate made by Shiraz Mulligrew (great, great, great, great niece of old Meg).

We all then return to the Bedknobs and Broomsticks and gorge ourselves on egg and chocolate-based food and drink until we’re actually factually sick and everything.

I do enjoy this day not just because it is helping to maintain a rich, colourful and meaningless tradition.

I get to wear a big fluffy bunny costume and whilst setting the trail I get to indulge some of my favourite leisure time activities, such as creeping and crawling around our community through hedges and bushes.

Above all it teaches the next generation an important lesson – the community that indulges in mindless spitefulness and gluttony together, stays together.