Citizensheep. "Michael Grimes lives in Birmingham (UK). This is his blog about anything that he fancies."

I spent the latter half of this afternoon looking for neutral patches of concrete near Birmingham city centre, that would be suitable for a team game. Finding such a place is no mean feat, even in the wastelands of Eastside and Digbeth.

It wasn’t my idea. Nikki Pugh of BARG wants to run a ‘social game’ called The Lost Sport that she played in London last year and thought was utterly fantastic. At the time she didn’t know anyone in Birmingham who wanted to give it a try, but now that BARG is gaining momentum and she’s also been asked by a school in Leicester to include it in a project, the time is ripe to get people playing (and practising for 2012!). (The game was originally part of an ARG that ran alongside the Beijing Olympics.)

Firstly we looked at the pedestrian area at the top of Albert Street, near Moor Street Station. This is a nice space, but I felt it was a bit too open: both to public interference and official scrutiny. I hope there’s no law against chalking temporary lines on the pavement, but these days nothing would surprise me.

We then went on to the old Curzon Street Station car park, which we suspected to be inhabitated by skateboarders. Sure enough a group of them were starting to trickle out of what is now a car park, scrabbling over the wall and onto the pavement. They told us that although the property is officially out of bounds when the car park is shut, they no longer get bothered by security and are left to enjoy the vast expanse of wasted space without bothering anyone else.

This space is so underused; and even though it’s a car park by day, it’s in a poor state of disrepair. Sharing it with a bunch of skaters for an evening would be brilliant (although the feeling may be more begrudging on their part!).

We ruled out the patch of ground next to the west end of the car park, which appeared to be the forecourt for the Curzon Street Station building, as it wasn’t even enough and was probably more severely guarded (even though it’s in a thoroughly poor state). However, I see on the map that there’s a patch of ground at the east end of the car park that may be worth persuing.

We then headed home, pausing briefly at the Custard Factory in the vain hope that bits of it would be big enough (sadly the ponds take up all the useful space).

But on the way we imagined how fun it would be to play a social game in the middle of a roundabout, with traffic surrounding it. And lo! On the ring-road, by PC World in Highgate, the roundabout has a large area of tarmac. Although it looks like it might be a place where lorries park-up sometimes, the entrance was closed off when we looked.

So that was fun; even though we still don’t know where we’ll be. We do know when though (probably): Sunday 3 May, or thereabouts. Keep your eyes peeled on the BARG events page though, as the date may change.

• Possibly related posts

  1. Market Pong 2: let’s make it massive this time
  2. Commandeering Birmingham’s market stalls for a game of table-tennis

Birmingham,Ramblings