MEMORIES ABOUT THE STAFF AT BIRMINGHAM'S MUSEUM & ART GALLERY (1984-2010...)

 Memories About The Staff At The Museums & Art Gallery In Birmingham…

Part 1: the main Museum and Art Gallery, Chamberlain Square…

Clearly I have certain recollections about the non-teaching staff who worked within the different museums and centres belonging to Birmingham: Sarehole Mill, Aston Hall, Blakesley Hall, the original Museum of Science and Industry in Newhall Street, the Nature Centre and of course the main Museum and Art Gallery itself.

Starting there, I must mention the Director at the time, Michael Diamond, who was revered I guess by the staff. He was from the art community really, so perhaps the natural history, social history and archaeology staff sometimes felt that their departments weren’t afforded equality within the system. 

Michael Diamond…

I hadn’t even met Michael after starting at the Museum as a teacher, although I might have passed him a few times in the many galleries and corridors… However, through a guy who worked in the shop at the time, I was to become acquainted with the Director in rather unusual circumstances. The shop’s manager ran the Museum’s cricket team and when he learned that I was a cricketer, I was quickly absorbed into the team to play against other council departments. Michael Diamond was the feature batsman in that quirky team…

We introduced ourselves to each other as we opened the batting together: “Hi, I’m Pete, the new Schools Liaison teacher…” The reply was swift: “I’m Michael, the Museum Director…” My response: “Oh, YOU’RE Michael Diamond…”

We added some runs until I called him for a quick single but he didn’t make it in time and he was run out… I had run out the Director… I was amused by that and he apologised to me for being too slow… The other players were incredibly deferential towards him though, almost bowing towards him when they spoke to him: “Er, Mr Diamond, Sir, would you mind fielding in the slips please?” Mike and I were on Christian name terms already…

Despite being a wicketkeeper, the other players were not very good in truth, so much so that I was asked to open the bowling with my left-arm medium pacers. I had only ever bowled two overs in my life, in a competition when I was playing regularly for the Lucas Great King Street team. We all had to bowl two overs and also bat but I ended up bowling to my brother-in-law Roly, the stalwart of the Lucas team with his big hitting and swing bowling.

I bowled a kind of spin out of the back of my left hand, called a ‘Chinaman’ at Roly and he whacked a couple of the deliveries to the boundary at Moor Lane, near Villa Park and he clearly enjoyed getting the better of me. However, he tried it once too often and was caught out almost on the leg-side boundary but he was so angry that I thought he was going to hit someone, possibly me, with his bat. I felt quietly proud but I took another wicket too, which was a very great shock to me…

Thus Michael Diamond and I always chatted when we met in the Museum, which the general staff members seemed rather surprised at…

When Jane Duffield took me down into the depths of the museum to meet the Natural History staff, I was fascinated, shocked and appalled all at the same time. It was like a den of iniquity…

Natural History…

I felt like I was in some underworld hovel run by cynical gangland characters as I was shown around a chaos of stuffed animals in glass cases, horrific pickled creatures in jars, a variety of fossils and a mixture of strange smells… The guys who worked down there were certainly close-knit, a real clique and they made me, as a visitor feel uncomfortable and not entirely welcome.

The main guy wore a moustache and he had a habit of making the sound “Hmm…” between phrases and one could not help but impersonate him when not in his presence of course. He and his buddies weren’t doing anything, except drinking coffee, tea, or, er, whatever… 

Sadly there was a bit of a scandal some time later, when it was discovered that a private taxidermy affair was being run in the department, presumably in work-time and personnel departures soon followed…  

The security staff…

CLEARLY, THESE FOLKS WERE NOT THE ONES I KNEW...

When I first arrived at the Museum, there was a group of ‘supervisors’ who remained in the ‘control room’ for much of their time. Initially I only ever saw them when I collected my keys each morning and we engaged in a lot of banter.

Before a reception desk was inserted in the ‘Round Room’, a small kiosk was manned to direct visitors around the building and this was positioned at the end of the ‘Bridge’ which led from the Round Room to a staircase which took folks up to floors two and three. A ‘security guard’ as the security staff members were then called would be installed in the kiosk to do the job. However, often an older guy who wore no teeth to speak of was given the job and I recall a group of elderly and rather posh women asking him where the Pre-Raphaelite galleries could be found…

'THE BRIDGE' WHICH LEADS FROM THE MAIN MUSEUM ENTRANCE BUILDING/TEA-ROOM/CERAMICS GALLERY (RIGHT) TO THE BUILDING WHICH ONCE HOUSED ARCHAEOLOGY, NATURAL HISTORY, 'LOCAL' HISTORY, ETC... 

He replied with the lack of clarity one would expect from a toothless person and the scene degenerated into a crazy sketch from TV’s Monty Python, or Fawlty Towers. I was helpless… 

In truth though, it was unkind to the guard himself and I always wondered whether the supervisors chose him purposely to relieve their own boredom…

Boredom… Ah, yes, the guards were terribly bored, partly because of a lack interest in art and archaeology, partly because they were told they could not do anything whilst sitting at their posts on chairs and partly because many of the male guards, some ex-military, preferred working at the Science Museum. They could patrol the area they were posted to but I guess once you’ve spent a day guarding and inspecting the Mesopotamian artefacts, any interest waned quickly.

Some of the guards resented the Schools Liaison staff until that is, they saw what we did and very quickly, they began to offer us a huge amount of support and often went out of their way to watch any sessions we taught in the public galleries, before the onset of proper teaching rooms. 

One guy I must mention was Ramesh, who would eventually and deservedly become a supervisor when the Museum staff was given a real shake-up and was reorganised. He wore his hair long and he spent his time on posts surreptitiously writing in a small diary whenever he felt safe to do so. He was a decent and sensible guy and we joked a lot but he inadvertently became part of my Egyptian sessions on days when he was lucky, or perhaps unlucky enough to be at a post which I would pass with a group of kids, en route to my teaching room…  

One morning I told a class that they would shortly be passing a descendant of the famous Egyptian pharaoh Ramses… He was of course, Rameshes… I said that the children should really bow as they passed him and to look at his shoes (which Ram always kept scrupulously clean) because they were the most expensive black shoes available…   

Thus the kids all bowed as they passed Ramesh and studied his shoes intently which caused him to look at them too but he acknowledged the bows with great humour, although he certainly wondered why the pupils had shown such great interest in his shoes. The puzzled children would tell me that his shoes were totally unremarkable. They were, of course… 

We really laughed about it afterwards and I would explain to the children later that it had been a bit of fun. However, Ramesh and I repeated the ruse regularly and he began to play his part brilliantly…

He also told me that I was mentioned many times in his Museum diary…

Big Derek…

Derek was a supervisor from the start, a large guy with a very deep voice, who had acquired a air of authority and he was the only person ever to flirt with the SLD boss Jean Evans, even putting an arm round her when she had stalked to the Control Room to acquire a favour…

He was always decent to me and did his best to make my teaching spaces available whenever possible.

The quiet member of staff…

This chap lived near me in Hodge Hill and his home was actually on Hodge Hill Common itself. When I started at the Museum, he worked in the shop and was regularly spotted fetching and carrying new stock, as well as serving customers. He was extremely polite, rather shy and perhaps somewhat fussy but when the shop was taken over by an outside concern, he managed to secure a position in the general office, where he dealt with the incoming and outgoing post and I guess that he carried out other office duties too. He was scrupulous about cleanliness and I know that he kept his hands very clean, often wearing thin surgical gloves but eventually, after more staff changes, he was surprisingly offered a job as a member of the security staff.

He didn’t really belong in that role, for he was a bit of a loner, often walking into the city centre from home to work. He was knowledgable about history and unmarried but it really was tough to hold a conversation with him, due to his shyness, although I managed to engage him in short chats whenever possible.

However, it appeared that he was related to and lived with a woman whose habits included driving her car in a circular route from her house on the Common to the Fox and Goose traffic lights and back again along the Coleshill Road, early most mornings. However, before parking back at her house she paused at a waste bin on the Common’s small parking area to shove bags of trash into it. I noticed this behaviour because I would be walking my dog on the Common at about the same time each morning…

THE 'COMMON WOMAN' REACHES INTO HER CAR FOR A BAG OF TRASH...

I became obsessed with why her behaviour was like that and began to watch out for her car, which she drove in a very low gear, a Ford Fiesta, LAB 7 X… The bespectacled lady, wearing a long plaid skirt would reach onto the back seat and grab a knotted Somerfield bag then scuttle across to the waste bin and furtively shove it inside. She would then return to her car and drive the 30 metres or so to her house.  

THE PARKING SPACE...

I was fascinated… I wondered why the rubbish hadn’t simply been placed into her own bin but then I began to imagine the dumping of drugs to be collected by some slimy ne’er-do-well, even perhaps human remains… One morning, after she had driven away, I emerged from behind a nearby tree and, with mind spinning, rifled inside the bin to check the contents of her bag, expecting a withered hand, a bloodied foot, part of a skull, or the dissected remains of the vicar’s cat, for there was a church a few doors away from her house. Sadly, all I found were an egg-box and some general kitchen trash. 

Disappointed, I checked again on another day and found fragments of family photographs and torn letters inside her bag but no body parts…

DEPOSITING HER TRASH IN THE BIN...

I asked the chap about the car and the woman, mentioning only that I loved the registration and that I saw it on the Common early each morning. He agreed that she was a relative of his but would say nothing more about her…

I left a note on the bin one morning too, suggesting that household trash shouldn’t be placed in the Common’s car-park bin… I kind of enjoyed that…

Other Security Staff…  

One veteran guard was rather friendly with Asian teenagers, girls and lads, who at that time would meet ‘safely’ inside the Museum & Art Gallery. He would be surrounded by small groups when at his post but on his breaks he could often be seen on the entrance steps with a bunch of them. 

Eventually, this rather unfortunate situation was deliberated upon and then stopped by the management.

I was once verbally hassled in a loo by one of the security guards called Brian, who hadn’t been on the staff for long and he gave me some stick for the holidays that teachers ‘enjoyed’. I turned on him and told him that every evening I was researching, every holiday I was reading and working hard preparing new teaching sessions and that life wasn’t as easy as he reckoned it to be. It was a slightly exaggerated retort but I felt I had needed to respond…

He walked away rebuked but soon afterwards from his post he watched me teach and following the session he approached me to say how great the session had been and that he hadn’t realised how much effort went into a two-hour slot with a group of kids I had never met before. He then became almost an agent for me, telling teachers and visitors how excellent my sessions were… Nice one, Brian…

The post in Gallery 20…

GALLERY 20 DISPLAYING ANA MARIA PACHECO'S 'MAN AND HIS SHEEP' EXHIBITS...

I recall the remarkable day when a painting was stolen from a gallery wall and the inebriated thief simply walked into Gallery 20 carrying Henry Wallis’ ‘The Death of Chatterton’, pressed a button for the lift, travelled down to street level with his swag, boarded a bus and tried to sell it to astonished travellers upstairs. It was a smaller replica of the original Wallis painting in the Tate Britain Gallery but it was painted by the artist. 

'THE DEATH OF CHATTERTON' PAINTING BY HENRY WALLIS...

Someone reported this incident to the police and it turned out that the thief was known to them, whereupon the painting was, I believe, reclaimed from a relative’s loft…

How could that have happened? Well, it was opportunism at its best because it was the afternoon of the funeral of a member of the security staff and of course fewer guards were on post…

Interesting though that the painting ‘The Death of Chatterton’ was stolen unseen by a skeleton staff…

THE EDMUND STREET LIFT ENTRANCE OUT OF WHICH THE THIEF
STROLLED (LEFT OF IMAGE.)
THE 'GAS HALL' EXHIBITION SPACE IS ON THE RIGHT...

And then there was the art work of Patrick Hughes, a Brummie himself who had experimented with an unusual form of painting. His 2006 exhibition in Gallery 20 was called ‘Superduperspective’ and contained some fascinating exhibits. 

THE CLEVER PATRICK HUGHES WORK...

His work involved optical illusions, so that when displayed, visitors could swear that that a painting moved as they walked past it. It was weird, no doubt about it but incredibly clever. However, it took a few walks past the paintings before one’s eyes reacted to the effect and whichever guard was on the Gallery 20 post was privy to strange folks walking to and fro, rather like they were inventing a new, vague walking dance.

Once the illusion was accepted by one’s eyes however, the walks to and fro increased in speed and many visitors’ expressions were either bemused or confused but to witness the reactions of those viewers was a joy for the staff…    

The worst post…

That was at the Great Charles Street entrance because the guard was involved in the often chaotic arrival of school groups. Those being taught were fine because we, the teachers, sorted out coat pegs and places for lunch bags to be placed out anyway but the groups doing their own thing caused the guards real stress… They had to ask teachers to sign in too and I guess for some of the guards, it was a real issue.

THE GREAT CHARLES STREET ENTRANCE...

Once the groups were inside the Museum however, that post must have been terribly boring, until of course, the pupils returned around 12pm either to grab their lunch bags, or coats if they were leaving to travel back to school.

Around 3pm was awful too, for usually, school groups left at that time and the guards dreaded the second coming of chaos… 

Then, from around 3.20 until 5pm, the post was isolated, for few members of the public entered the Museum by that door…

Kumas, Ken & Tony…

Kumas was a really good bloke and he rose through the ranks in the MAG, which was ironic because he had been a soldier and had spent time in the military ranks during a tour in Ireland…

Ken was a quiet guy who actually fell off his bike en route to work one morning and tumbled into a canal. I have met him since his Museum days, working as a porter in Solihull Hospital…

Tony was another quiet guy but he was the first person to research stuff about the military career of my maternal grandfather and I have much to thank him for…