Tag: journalist

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LOCAL OPINION: Vera Gilbert – Truth to Tell, Erdington united after football’s less than finest hour

Words by Vera Gilbert / Pics by Ed King

**First published in the August/September newspaper edition of Erdington Local**

Vera Gilbert is a former broadcast journalist and passionate Erdington local; a woman who has worked across a kaleidoscope of high profile regional and national broadcasters and newspapers throughout her career.

Her recent project, Truth to Tell, is organised along with several Erdington groups and individuals, providing an open platform for discussion on race and racism – currently held via Zoom.

Vera caught up with Erdington Local after Truth to Tell chose the recent racism directed at the young, black England football squad players as their topic of discussion.

Our small team which had been doing a series of community Zoom conversations aiming to improve race relations in Erdington hurriedly decided to hold another conversation after the uproar following the UEFA Euro 2020 final game between England and Italy.

I hate to repeat the painful truth that England lost on penalties. But it was not as difficult to conceive the angle for our conversations – the people of Erdington had spoken in our local social media groups. It seemed incredible, but our theme was ‘Erdington United’.

Our local media showed Erdington people pouring out compassion for the team and the three young black players, 19 years old Bukayo Saka especially – also Marcus Rashford, who is 23, and a name known even to me a non-football follower. There was also Jadon Sancho, aged 25, and Raheem Sterling, aged 26, another name I’d heard before was also in there too.

What a thing! One would think that racism was something which involved not the many but the few.  Some people had been worried when we started ‘Truth to Tell’, the name of our Zoom programme of conversations, that we were stirring up race issues.

We the multi-racial team of organisers rooted in the Erdington community said we wanted to make life better. Some of the truths that the black people spoke of their life experiences of racism were hard to hear. Some of the listeners had not heard about such experiences happening right in Erdington.

One thing we have honed, and chalk up as a success, is that sometimes facing the same situation we do not realise we are not sharing the same perspective – e.g. angry black woman is in truth frustrated because she feels hurt and says so. The white person who sees no hurt, or is embarrassed says ‘shut up, you are stirring things up’. So, we reached a point of empathy without argument, just by listening and speaking one at a time without interruption.

People in Erdington, after Euro 2020 finals and the cascade, no, torrent of abuse against the young black penalty takers who hadn’t serve up the goals, showed unprecedented empathy, support, and love for the young players.

We England lost, yes. But our community gained a startlingly massive heart.

Here’s a truth: Erdington was so positive in this matter of race that we the Zoom chat organisers decided fair is fair – this is great news. How did this happen? Why? And could we ensure this positive sprit grew?

Our hurriedly arranged a Zoom conversation just a week after the match was so beautifully lively.  We were multi-cultural and multi-racial. Any hesitancy about speaking out was gone in the first five minutes. People were tripping over each other to speak. The strands of the conversation were varied from the issues of the penalty-ship, like how decisions about who would take it were made, to the agonies the young footballers experienced first over the loss, then over the online abuse.

Some around our virtual zoom table were not surprised at the ‘abuse’ spewed by ‘racist yobs; ‘twas ever thus – they can’t help themselves’.

There was concern over the effects on young people. Another among us just wanted people to focus on the positive and be thankful; wishing for us all to live in peace and harmony never mind if we all thought her a Pollyanna.

Organising team leader, Gerard Goshawk, summed it up to me after the discussion: “The session was powerful, thought-provoking and felt an important conversation. I was so pleased to be part of an event like this, where all the participants contributed.

“There were lots of different perspectives, but I believe that in our own small way it will enable us to move forward and really truly ‘build back better’ as a community.”

I could write volumes about the slights and hurts of racism, but I reserve what little strength and energy I have now to being more direct and choosing my battles.

As a black Erdingtonian, I am not ashamed to accentuate the positive. This is my community too, made up of people born and bred in Erdington, old hands at life, newcomers, all shades of human.

We are mainly people who have invested and are investing too much effort into building good lives and continue to do so.

So, I roar like fans from the football stands; not that I have been on any famous ones… ‘COME ON ERDINGTON… Erdington united we stand and mix and mingle and laugh and cry and work and try not to be afraid.

As I finish this piece of writing in my mind’s eye, I imagine the whole of Erdington singing to each other like footie fans do on the terraces, ‘You’ll never walk alone’.

For more information on Truth to Tell and to join further discussion groups email Vera Gilbert at [email protected] or Rev. Gerard Goshawk at [email protected]

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LOCAL PROFILE: Vera Gilbert

Words by Jobe Baker Sullivan / Pics by Ed King

**Read our LOCAL PROFILE with Vera Gilbert in the March edition of the Erdington Local newspaper, out now**

Once viewed on television screens across the UK, Vera Gilbert is a former broadcast journalist and passionate Erdington activist. Previously working for newspapers and radio, alongside her career in TV, Vera has found a happy home supporting her local church and animating events and festivals in Erdington. Erdington Local took up the chance to relive some great moments with her.

Vera was born in St Vincent and the Grenadines, her home country made her “very happy – I still retain that atmosphere as my little heaven. That sense of community… We were poor, but the people were very loving, very kind.”

Vera moved to Birmingham during her primary school years, first living in Washwood Heath. She attended Hodge Hill Girls School in the 1970s.

Vera’s interested in journalism stemmed from her love of engaging with people. “To this day, I enjoy telling people’s stories. They were always a focus – and because they were a focus for me, it was a real privilege. I loved it. All the quirkiness, the different accents, the peculiarities.”

She studied her undergraduate degree at Birmingham Polytechnic, with her thesis concerning ‘Community Newspapers’. She was prodigious and noticed for her talents early on.

“I remember always having offers. I had an offer from the Evening Mail – I even got a front cover scoop for a local newspaper in Luton! I ended up at BRMB. Ed Doolan was there at the time – Les Ros was there. I was a reporter, sent out with a tape recorder, the old style, and I remember covering the Fireman’s strike.”

Vera continued to work for broadcast companies, including ITV and BBC. She went on to become a much sought-after freelance journalist, presenting content for Nationwide, a news and current affairs programme that ran between 1969 and 1983.

“It was excellent, doing pieces to camera. I did a lot of main stories and many ‘and finally’s. I remember doing something on a nudist beech… and I had to report a piece to camera… I won’t tell you how I managed it!”

Travelling the country in search of stories, Vera visited many places and met many people, including celebrities. One such celebrity was the popular English comedian Rodd Hull, best known for his mischievous hand puppet named Emu. Vera notes being very confused when first meeting him, with Rodd Hull’s material today relying on the same celebrity-embarrassing energy seen in the characters of Sacha Baren Cohen.

She recalled: “He had the bird, which I really saw as a prop. Then I started noticing that this bird was moving. I don’t know why, but I took it was real. If ever the bird moved, I would jerk.

“The bird started to get what I thought as ‘aggressive’ and I backed away – the bird came forward, and I ran and I was screaming! This was all on live TV. I was shouting ‘control the bird! Somebody come to my help!’ I didn’t realize that the crew was filming it all. There are some people that remember that to this day.”

But life in broadcasting was not all glitz and glamour, and Vera lived through a dark times in British history. Black Britons were subject to waves of racism, with slogans such as ‘no blacks, no dogs, no Irish’ cemented in the national mindset as an example of such intolerance.

Black women were likely to be only seen in lower paid jobs, as Vera comments: “Back then, as a black woman, the best job you could hope for was nursing, and not even the highest echelons of that.” Vera felt that she had to be “a role model – not like people speak as it now – but, as a black person, you felt you were putting the community on show.”

Vera stopped working as a journalist some 20 years ago but turned instead to her local area. She writes the newsletter for the Erdington United Reformed Church where she takes great pride in finding interesting stories and putting people’s good deeds on higher pedestals.

“I love Erdington. I love the people. I want to do what I can to uphold the area.”

On March 26 at 7pm, Vera is organising an online event called ‘Truth to Tell’ which she says the purpose is “to have conversations where black people talk about their experience, for them to say why they feel supportive of Black Lives Matter and so that people know about racism.”

For more details on ‘Truth to Tell’ email: [email protected]

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FEATURE: A spooky spirit walk though Erdington’s ghostly past… and present

Words by Adam Smith

It’s Halloween, and as trick or treating is another COVID victim why not explore why ghost hunters still flock to Erdington.

If you believe in the paranormal, or if your things-that-go-bump-in-the-night are more down to carelessness, there can be no doubt that Erdington has more than its fair share of ghost stories.

Whether it is the ‘melting woman in the phone box’, the old fella in the Lad in the Lane or the vanishing woman of Pype Hayes Park, these stories have been passed down the generations of Erdington locals.

Even if these stories have been embellished, altered, or given a splash of colour when told across pub tables or playgrounds, they have become part of who we are – a good ghost story is part of our oral history tradition.

Erdington Local can reveal there are new ghost stories happening now, as the unexplained is explored in a new book from local authors – They Walk Among Us – released this Halloween.

But first let’s walk through the spooky shadows Erdington’s of macabre memory lane…

The ‘melting phone box woman of Station Road’ is one of the most talked about ghost stories in Erdington. Two men were waiting to use the phone in the 1970s, a woman was in the box, and after a long wait they asked her how long she would be… only to find she had ‘melted away’.

The story gained traction, now local folklore says it was a young mother who ran to the phone box to phone the fire brigade as her house was on fire, her children died, and she committed suicide not long after. The phone box, however, could not survive the onward march of progress and was removed due to the popularity of mobile phones.

The Lad in the Lane is the oldest pub in Erdington, once called Ye Olde Green Man, so it stands to reason there would be a ghost story attached to the premises which dates, back to 1400. Ghost hunters claim the Bromford Lane pub has “considerable poltergeist activity” and a grey shadowy figure is said to roam the site.

If anywhere in Erdington would have a reputation for ghostly goings-on it would be Pype Hayes Park. The historic park, which has connections to both the famous Bagot and Arden families, also has a macabre side.

Society belle Mary Ashford was found dead in the park on May 27th 1817, she had been sexually assaulted and been thrown into a pit where she finally drowned. The gruesome murder took place after she had been to a dance at the Tyburn House, when she was just 20-years-old. Castle Bromwich man Abraham Thornton was eventually tried and acquitted of the crimes, not once but twice.

But Mary’s ghost is still said to roam both the park and the Tyburn House, angry at her attacker who was never brought to justice.

Bizarrely enough, 160 years later on the same day – 27th May, Whit Bank Holiday Monday, 1974 – Barbara Forrest, also 20 and also returning home from a dance, went missing only to be found dead on the edge of Pype Hayes Park.

Incredibly, a man named Thornton was also arrested, charged, and eventually acquitted of her murder – her co-worker at a children’s home, Michael Thornton.

However, the most cited ghost sighting in Pype Hayes Park is that of a young woman in an old fashioned, yellow dress who has been seen floating through the park. She is said to walk towards a tree but vanishes and never come out the other side. The West Midlands Ghost Club took the story so seriously they investigated it in 2008.

A Roman Centurian is also has been seen wandering across the Chester Road near Pype Hayes Park too, alongside a white misty figure who takes a seat on the stone bench in Tyburn.

It is surprising locals can get a seat at The Tyburn House with all the ghosts believed to haunt the place. Yet a friendly monk called Fred is believed to be a regular there, with several licensees having reported a “dark human shape” jump past them on the stairs to the cellar.

On Erdington High Street, there have also been sightings of ghosts at the Roebuck Inn. Poltergeist activity has been reported at the old watering hole – as glasses were found smashed all over the function room and a pool ball has been thrown through a window, from inside, during the night. A barmaid was also covered in shards from exploding sherry glasses and a figure in a white shirt has been seen sitting in a locked, darkened restaurant.

There have been other ghost stories attached to the railway arch on Station Road (a monk with a lantern), Orphanage Road on the site of the old orphanage (crying children heard and the caretaker wandering around), and a 16-year-old girl with an expressionless face in Woodend Road.

However, there are new ghost stories also popping up in Erdington, Kingstanding, and Perry Common.

Two friends who met at school used their time in lockdown to write a book about new ghost stories in the West Midlands called They Walk Among Us, and Eridington was not without it’s spooky spectres.

Kingstanding journalist Charlotte Hart and Perry Common writer Louise Blackburn are releasing their book on this Halloween and have told Erdington Local about ghostly-goings on in Erdington.

Charlotte, 42, said: “One the best tales in the book is in Erdington. Someone reported thinking they’d run someone over by the cemetery but when they got out of the car to investigate, there was no-one there.

“Our contributor said he’d be left very shaken by it, it left him feeling chilled.”

She added: “Another story involves a toddler from Kingstanding regularly talking to someone at the if her bed in the middle of the night – and an Erdington couple who told us about her TV jumping from a chest of drawers to the floor on the other side of the road without getting damaged and waking the cat up.

“There’s other stories about people being visited at Good Hope Hospital and spooky events at Highbury Theatre in Boldmere.”

Louise, from Perry Common, was amazed with the response when she asked for contributions from people with modern ghost stories.

She said: “It’s impossible to check the integrity of people’s stories because they’re all first-hand accounts and if people tell us something has happened, then that is good enough for us.

“It’s up to the reader whether they believe something or not, and different people accept varying levels of paranormal activity.

“If the stories we have shared make people question what they are willing to believe, then we will have achieved what we set out to.”

They Walk Among Us – Unexplained Tales of Ghosts and Spirits of the Midlands is available from 31st October. For more information and links to online purchases, visit www.amzn.to/34yvlm9

To find out more about ghost hunts in the Midlands visit  www.hauntedhappenings.co.uk/ghost-hunting-events/West-Midlands