facttime

En route to  Molineux Stadium  to watch Wolves play a friendly against Spanish team Celta de Vigo last weekend, I broke my journey in Birmingham. I had to leave home very early during a torrential downpour and was in dire need of more coffee by the time I got to Moor Street station. Luckily, I knew exactly where to go:  Tilt , a speciality coffee shop, craft beer bar and pinballeria in Birmingham's historic City Arcade, which my fellow coffee blogger Brian recently  wrote about again on the Coffee Spot . Tilt is around five minutes' walk from Moor Street, New Street and Snow Hill stations, making it a perfect coffee stop for anyone passing through the city and those staying longer. I came via New Street, following the Tilt sign along Union Passage to the City Arcade, which arcade dates to the late 19th century, and boasts a red-brick facade, high ceilings and decorative green ceramic trimmings. Tilt itself occupies an angular corner space at the end of the arcad...

This post is rather more personal than usual but I wanted to write down some thoughts during these most uncertain COVID-19 times. Normal coffee- and travel-post service to resume...at some point, I hope. “I never realised you were so into football,” a colleague said to me last year. It was a fair point: although I had mentioned the game and my team — Wolverhampton Wanderers — periodically over the five years we’d been working together, I'd also been inflicting my updates on my non-football-following co-workers with increasing frequency. In fact, I’ve followed Wolves for as long as I can remember. My family are from the Black Country and Wolves are a ‘family team’. But my interest has waxed and waned over the years, rather like Wolves’ own fortunes. For much of my childhood and teenage years, their performance could perhaps best be described as ‘underwhelming’ or ‘frustrating.’ Jumping more solidly onto the bandwagon during the recent (old) golden period could be seen as glory hunti...