There are four tall younger men sat on the table including my reserved seat on the train to Birmingham. It’s fine. I wanted the two hours working on my laptop to be done on the food tray on the back of a chair. That’s what I wanted and that’s certainly why I didn’t bother with the seat I’d specifically reserved on a table so I could do work.

Birmingham University has signage issues. I am not a planner. But I’d put a campus map at the train station. Train station: point of entry for a lot of people. Point of entries: good places to have some form of log of locations, visually arranged with some kind of spacial awareness of the organisation of all the different places in real life. A map. I didn’t see a map for quite some time. And even then the first one was rubbish. Meaning I was in a bit of a rush to get to my destination with a bit of a sweat on. If people judged me solely on my arrival and first half hour at conferences in university venues everyone would assume I walked around in shirts drenched in my own sweat.

What I didn’t realise on my walk to the venue was that the Apple maps feature on the iPhone might be greatly improved, but it has not tamed the beast that is finding your way around the Birmingham campus. See below for what it offered me on my walk back to the train station. It knew where I was…but it was offering me two routes that basically involved – rather than walk in a straight line to the thing five minutes ahead of me – turning around and circumnavigating the planet (minus the five minute walk).

Some other things:

• Birmingham university (the old buildings) remind me of Germany, that’s a compliment Birmingham University.
• I don’t think I’ve had a Burger King breakfast before (as opposed to Burger King regular meals at breakfast time, which I have had). I don’t think I will have a Burger King breakfast again.
• The accent of the midlands is a real shame because not all of the people are physically grotesque but even the non-ugly ones are rendered disposable because of that voice.