Tuesday 19th April 2022

An interesting day for me walking around Spaghetti Junction, knowing that this was my grandfather’s patch and where my dad grew up for his formative years. Granddad’s church was demolished to make way for SJ but I believe it was a very poor neighbourhood with a great deal of social need. Dad was born here in 1918 so I was looking at the older buildings, wondering if he would have known them. Certainly Aston House would have been there in all its majestic Jacobean glory. Now a museum, not open until Wednesday so we couldn’t visit. We looked around Aston Villa football ground, in my grandfather’s parish and apparently he was there supporting every Saturday there was a home match. Not sure how his love of football managed to escape me! The thing we noticed most was the poverty and the rubbish. This is definitely a less salubrious area than where we were moored on Friday and Saturday. We visited a sizeable Anglican church and were about to go in when we noticed many pairs of shoes in the porch and realised there was what seemed to be a gathering of Muslim women. We didn’t think they would appreciate our presence, or at least that of a 6ft 3″ male! It was great to see the building being used ecumenically – there were notices about all the Easter services and a local Good Friday walk of witness, so it is encouraging to see that it is an active church.

We are situated next to a watertap so I took the opportunity to use the water and give our floor a good clean. The mophead was then really dirty – I was surprised at how much mud must have been walked onto the boat.