Birmingham England
It’s my first night out in Birmingham for a while, and I’m in an abandoned dance hall, three feet away from a rat. Not the most persuasive advertisement for a city break, perhaps – except this rat is six feet tall and is singing Shostakovich. It’s dark, it’s crowded, but somewhere above my head, the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra is going full blast. As the crowd surges, I move with it: because a brass band,
