I've learnt a little about Sir Herbert Austin recently. Later Baron Austin of Longbridge, he was the man who more than anyone else shaped the landscape of the part of Birmingham where I grew up.
During my youth the car manufacturing plant he founded employed about 25,000 people and covered several square kilometres. Gee, were we proud of it.
All good things come to an end though, and mediocre things too. The cars it produced became more and more mediocre, and the once mighty company shrank, merged, changed its name of few times, got taken over by others from around the world, and eventually gave up the ghost entirely.
Out of the ashes though...... what a business opportunity. What a huge expanse of real estate. Above is a plan of the redevelopment currently underway, stolen from the website www.newsteelconstruction.com There's going to be housing, shops, parks, commercial and industrial areas galore. There's already a fair few things there, like the shiny new technical college (whose roof partly blew off while I was there!), and the comfortable and spacious Sainsburys supermarket (whose coffee shop provided a welcome respite from the cold, wet weather outside). There's even an Austin Park, with memorial to the good Lord, and a blow by blow account of the rise and fall of his company.
One unexpected finding during my extensive research this evening (ie. I read the Wikipedia entry): He spent several formative years in Australia! Between 1884 and 1893 he was here, based in Melbourne, and later Sydney. He married a Melbourne girl, and he was involved in designing and building printing equipment, gas engines, locomotive boilers, gold mining equipment, and eventually a sheep shearing machine! The latter enterprise was with one Frederick Wolseley, who was also later to give his name to a car brand. It was only after his return to England that Austin became interested in motor cars.
He was born in south east England, but buried in a church cemetery in the Lickey Hills.
While we're at it, here are some of the stars I grew up with, in the northern hemisphere sky. While it did rain just about every day I was in England, it nevertheless managed to clear up sometimes for spectacular starry night views.
Funny, that link's no longer working for me either. Here's another one: https://www.birdguides.com/species/species.asp?sp=122072 Not as eulogistic though - but there are pictures, and there's a report of another sighting at Hopwood, Worcestershire!
England's green
and pleasant land was largely under water when I visited a couple of
months ago. I understand it's even more so now. I visited Tewkesbury,
Worcester, and Evesham, and found the car parks under water, bridges
closed, and river walkways submerged. 
I got out on a few little rambles along muddy pathways and through muddy fields, but somehow it just doesn't quite cut it any more for this Aussie bushwalker. 
I did stumble across Tintin himself though, making his way down a fire escape on the outside of a building. The others all have murals around the city too, and there are lots of comic shops, and a cartoon-themed cafe-restaurant with its own Tintin statue.
Fortunately those accounts are wrong. There are indeed lots of more interesting things than a nondescript statue of a small boy urinating, the Manneken Pis.
I just read an interesting piece in the Wikipedia entry, about how the reflection from the dome on a sunny day looks like a cross, an effect neither predicted nor desired by the planners. It was therefore known as 'The Pope's Revenge' (Citation needed!) 
