Gah. I've been putting this off, and off, and off, but I suppose I'd best get on and get it out the way, then I can stop fretting, RussL can stop wondering if I've ignored him, and we can all resume our lives with renewed vigour and pep.

So it goes like this, so read that now if you haven't already. M'chum RussL has tagged me, and I wasn't safe, or exes, or whatever today's young people call it these days. Here we go:

Odd, but fun, fact about Birmingham

God, this is difficult. I'd attempt to make up an initially plausable lie that spiralled into madness, but chum Tom does that kind of thing much better than me. And, indeed, already has. I could go for that old chestnut about Birmingham having more miles of canal than Venice, but then Birmingham is very, very large and Venice is very tiny in comparison. It'd fit comfortably inside the Middleway with plenty of room left over. Actually, it's less of a difference than you think - Birmingham has 58km of canal, while Venice has 42km. Given a population about around a million against Venice's 62,000, that actually means that Birmigham is vastly under-canaled. It has a trifling 5.8cm of canal per head of population against Venice's magisterial 67¾cm. For Birmingham to match that we'd have to build another 620km of canal. I'm guessing now, but that would probably mean digging out all the main roads into the city and flooding them. And that would be silly, wouldn't it?.

Odd, but fun, fact about this website

As if this wasn't hard enough already. Back in 2001, I got a phone call from a woman at Thames television wondering if I would go on some late night entertainment (i.e. an early let's-laugh-at-the-internet-weirdos) programme. She was quite disappointed when I explained that a) I didn't live in London and b) all that stuff about playing Top Trumps with the cards prostitutes leave in phone boxes wasn't meant to be taken seriously.

Tag your post "birminghamUK" and "brumblogtig"

That was easier.

Choose Two People to Tag

And will they still love me in morning? Ok, I'm choosing The Baron even though I suspect he's officially in Smethwick. Nevermind, I haven't seen him for a while and hopefully he'll have forgotton about this by the next time I do. I'm also choosing international man of musicalness Dubber. I don't believe we've met, but I realised recently that I know his wife. No, not know his wife. Know his wife. Sort yourself out. Really.

Can I go now, sir?

As an aside, and observant readers will probably have realised, I really don't like the word blog, but I can't explain why. I'm also uncomfortable with Brum and rarely use it, because I'm not from round these parts and it doesn't seem right for me to.