Woolly says – We were taking a step back in time, well not literally but mentally at least. Today we were heading back to October 2019 and Zoe’s burpday when Jo and I had brought her tickets for the theatre the following March, something that we all love. Of course, March 2020 arrived and as we all know we wouldn’t be going out let alone being able to soak up the delights of Queen’s music whilst sucking on sweets. The day however had arrived for us to finally see the performance and I had decided that we also needed to add a few things into the outing.

We arrived in the centre of Birmingham and set off to one of our favourite places to visit, Birmingham Natural History Museum where new exhibitions awaited our investigation. We had barely gone three paws when the women stopped and the camera came out, I stepped closer to take in the flower display that had been erected in the Cathedral grounds for the Commonwealth Games that were due to start in the city, a lovely colourful display with a number of iconic buildings from the city hiding in amongst the flowers.

Crossing Victoria square gave us more Commonwealth colours that make an interesting site next to the much older monuments of the city, while the girls attention was focused on that I found myself looking up at a ship that had arrived in the square. This was no ordinary ship but one that had joined the original statue of Queen Victoria, by adding a boat and more statues of the Queen it had been christened ‘Queen Victoria’s all at sea’ by the people although the artist had called it ‘Foreign Exchange’. The statue has been “dressed” with an art installation as part of the cultural festival to tie in with the sport, by Guyanese-British artist Hew Locke. It was a lovely piece of work.

I was even more pleased to see that the Flossie in the Jacuzzi had got her water back after the iconic statue had undergone major repairs.

Having tracked down my fellow travellers we headed into the museum where everything except its beautiful structure seemed to have changed as well.

Where once Jo’s favourite penguin painting had been displayed our eyes were now met with a modern art exhibition of photographs and other items representing the city.

Next door gave us a whole new range of new exhibitions, I spent a while looking at the information and photographs on the Que Club, a place I had never been to nor heard off, neither it appeared had Jo who seemed mildly upset that a part of the music scene had passed her by.

A large area had been given over to an exhibition called Black Lash, based on the photographs and history of Mukhtar Dar during the terrible days of racism and brutality that the city had experienced during the 70’s and early 80’s.

It made for horrific reading detailing what people had gone through, as we stood reading a wonderful poem that was so sad in its message Jo and I agreed that although there was still underlining elements of these problems around today, they were not as widespread nor hopefully as brutal as they once had been.

With the clock ticking and curtain up approaching I trotted through the main shopping areas and towards the Hippodrome keeping my paws crossed that we had good seats. We Will Rock You is one of our favourite musicals and being based on Queen music I could already feel my paws wanting to tap to the beat.

The show was fantastic, well if you completely ignore the story or lack of it, the seats were the best we had ever had and my paws stung from clapping for so long in delight at the music that rang in my ears. With our excitement still bubbling away we headed towards the second part of the burpday treat, the Alchemist, a trendy cocktail bar with drinks that changed colour and covered us in smoke and wonderful aromas, and fish that was black, on purpose, but tasted divine. One of Zoe’s burpdays had been a resounding success only two more to celebrate this year for her!