V is for Victory!

Pop your 1940s-style glad rags on this Bank Holiday Sunday and join in the 70th anniversary VE day celebrations at The Abbey Pub on Abbey Road. 

Music, food, drink, games AND a raffle (by jove!) with money raised going towards the very worthy Poppy Appeal, here's footage of the VE Day celebrations in 1945.

Decorate The Bears

Ohh err missus... there are 2 naked bears currently in residence at Thimblemill Library which need to be decorated.

The 2 bears are playing an important part in the start of Bear Trail which sees We Are Bearwood (check out their great website right here!), 30 local community groups and fellow Bearwoodians joining together. 

Following their successful bid for a lottery grant We Are Bearwood explained that  “we will create 30 wooden, three dimensional bears that stand 1 metre tall. We will ask schools, toddler groups, faith groups, local history groups, exercise groups, residential care homes and local businesses to each decorate a wooden bear. They can paint hand prints on it, stick pictures of bygone Bearwood on it, dress their bear in clothes or decorate in any way they choose to express their identity or relationship with Bearwood. We will then hide the bears on a trail around Bearwood and create a map for people to follow and find the bears. Each bear will also be given a necklace with a historical fact about Bearwood written on the pendant."

You'll be able to play your part in dressing the bears this coming Saturday, then during the afternoons of Monday 27th and Wednesday 29th April. 

It's a FREE event for all budding young (5+) artists out there.

PS.  Watch out for more news about the smaller 'cub' versions of the bears and for the Bear Trail map coming soon!

A Walk In The Park!

Had a hard day at the office, need a break from the kids and want to make the most of the beautiful summer evenings?  Warley Woods need you!

The park is patrolled most evenings and is looking for new volunteer recruits to cover Monday, Friday and Sunday nights. 

Viv Cole, Warley Woods Community Trust Manager, explained to welovebearwood that “what the patrols do is simple, but very special – volunteers go out in pairs, just to walk and be seen and to answer questions about the park, the Trust or pass on information back to us in the office.  You don’t have to be an expert on these things, just open to chatting to people in the park and we’d send you out with one of our regular patrol groups for a while in any case, so you get the feel for how it works.

This would be a lovely volunteering activity for people who walk (or want to walk) regularly.  It doesn’t have to be every week - as life happens, and it rains - but every time you can it's a bonus.  It's great if you can volunteer as a pair or trio, as it makes it nice for you to walk with a friend and you can easily communicate about the nights you can and can’t do – but if it's just you then we’ll do our best to pair you with another volunteer (we never want you to walk alone).”

If this sounds like a walk in the park, please contact Warley Woods Community Trust Office for more details. Tel: 0121 420 1061 Email:  admin@warleywoods.org.uk  

Pete Williams Live @ The Rep

Courtesy of Bearwood's no1 music blog, The Hearing Aid, (we're not worthy!) here's the Baron's review of local legend Pete Williams' gig at The REP last Friday.  Enjoy!
 
SOUL. Looking back at my hastily scribbled notes (quite frankly I was enjoying the show too much to take many) that’s the one word that sums up both this evening and the man himself. From the gentle almost whispered delivery of opening number Breathe through to the slow burning then explosive Roughnecks and Roustabouts (title track of Pete’s essential new album) and on to the moving father and son confessional of Are You Listening? there’s a rawness and passion to much of the material and its performance that’s like looking right into the man’s very heart and soul. Trust Me saw this heart ripped right open tonight “Trust me to fuck it up again” sang Pete with a brutal honesty that’s all too rare in the bullshitty world of showbiz. Take First Real Job too (one of the many standout tracks from the new album and tonight’s gig) a movingly poetic look at life as a 15 year old working in a factory in Oldbury. Faced with the reality of his future seemingly mapped out before him (“So this is it then? Work. Retire. Expire.”), young Pete dreamt of better things (“Fly like and eagle soar like a falcon, high over rooftops above the factory floor”) before eventually ending up as part of one of 1980’s biggest bands of course, Dexys Midnight Runners.

 

The rest, as they say, is history, albeit an occasionally troubled history as Black (inspired by Pete’s days in Santa Monica) hints at. Subsequent bands The Bureau and These Tender Virtues failed to achieve the great things they deserved (mystifyingly so in the case of the latter band in particular). It’s staggering to think that Pete then didn’t release his first solo album (SEE) until 2012 but I guess that life, love and everything in between just got in the way. Never mind all that though, if making up for lost time was an Olympic event Williams would be a double gold medal winner. 

 

In SEE and Roughnecks and Roustabouts he’s produced a brace of modern classics and as a live performer he’s the perfect combination of confidence and humility, seemingly genuinely humbled by the response this evening as he moved seamlessly from gentle ballads perched on a speaker to testifying rock ‘n’ soul belters. A great vocalist deserves an equally great band of course and Williams has picked some crackers here with Clive Miller (lurking in the shadows in between spots) getting some particularly well deserved whoops of applause for his harmonica solos.

 

 

 

After a thoroughly well deserved standing ovation Pete returned for an emotionally charged Suddenly Shattered before ending on a high with Cincinnati Kid, part Sinatra, part Mack The Knife, it was a truly swaggering show stopper of a performance that spontaneously roused the entire audience as one to their feet once more.

 

 

Williams may have been a key contributor to the most recent incarnation of Dexys responsible for the critically acclaimed One Day I’m Going To Soar album but as a solo artist, well, clearly that day’s already here.

 

PS: You can buy both albums right here, right now. Roughnecks is coming out on vinyl too! Vinyl, trust me, it's the future...

Stories With Paddington Bear!

 

 

Ok…we know this is taking place on the ‘other’ side of the Hagley Road but as huge fans of everything Bear(wood) related we wanted to tell you about the ‘Stories with Paddington Bear’ morning which is taking place this Saturday at St Mary’s Main Hall on Vivian Road in Harborne.

 

Perfect for kids (large and small!), you’ll get to meet Paddington and listen to his much loved stories told by a professional storyteller. 

 

Paddington themed crafts and  marmalade sandwiches (of course!) will be on offer too. 

 

For more details and tickets just click here!

 



Thimblemill Library April 2015 Calendar

 



Please forgive us for being late (better late than never…eh?) in posting this month’s What’s on at Thimblemill Library.  It’s that glorious sunshine (fingers crossed it lasts till next weekend) and too much fun over the Easter weekend that got in the way.

 There are so many great events taking place this month at Thimblemill Library but here are some of the highlights which caught welovebearwood’s attention.

 

 

Bearwood Yoga Master Paul Clark will be holding his FREE (there's our favourite word!) yoga classes for beginners every Wednesday for the next 4 weeks.

 

Starting with tonight (Sorry about the late notice! Blame those Easter bunnies!) the classes are the perfect introduction to the art of yoga and will help the uninitiated find their inner zen.

This coming Saturday, 11^th April, Hannah Graham’s debut one woman show Collidiscope, bumps (collides…geddit!) into the library. 

 

 

The play weaves tragedy with fantasy as the lead role takes on the character of 1930s Hollywood bombshell Madeleine Carroll. 

 

Courtesy of Bearwood’s Film Club the play is followed by Hitchcock Classic 39 Steps starring Madeleine Carroll and Robert Donat. At only £4 per person the evening’s a Bearwood Bargain, you won’t find the play and film on anywhere cheaper for miles around.

 

Then the following Saturday, 18^th April, Utter Bearwood returns with Rich Stokes in Ruins in Reverse.  We’ve been promised an evening of entertaining and enthrallment, at £4 per ticket (in advance) you won’t be disappointed.

 

 

Bearwood’s Got Talent!  Or so we’ve always thought.  Bearwood’s youngsters proved last year that this was the case and on Saturday 23^rd May it’s Bearwood’s over 19s’ turn.  If you can sing, dance or even just make people smile pop down to the library to get your application form.  The 2 winners will be put through to the grand final in July.