Birmingham

I knew David Wood a little at Oxford, where he displayed a precocious talent in the OUDS and ETC. Starting as he meant to go on, he is now hailed by some as the children's theatre laureate. We turned our backs on panto for once in order to sample his adaptation of "Tom's Midnight Garden" this afternoon, the children scoring it 10 out of 10.

For this, the five of us sat at the back of the steeply-raked stalls at Birmingham Old Rep. It's celebrating 100 years as a theatre this year, and the space between the rows is an indication of how well we've all been eating our greens in the interim. I remember being taken to pantos there by my grandmother Gateley - probably in the 1940s, when my legs and trousers were shorter.

Before the play, we paid a visit to the crib at St Philip's (in fact two cribs - plus of course the Burne-Jones Nativity window); and then had lunch in the new Library café, explored its lifts and escalators and admired the view from the top floor. The children rolled merrily around on the carpet of the recreated Shakespeare Memorial Room, where they clearly felt at home. (Ida has been spouting Macbeth.)

Birmingham

Yesterday, my book group met in the salubrious surroundings of the Birmingham Art Gallery & Museum restaurant. Not the hautest cuisine, but adequate: we missed our usual pints of bitter. Breaking with tradition, we discussed The Book over lunch, rather than tea. It was the sequel to Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall: Bring up the bodies didn't grab all of us as firmly as it did me, but we seemed to agree that it was worth looking at. Shall I buy volume 3 when it appears? Probably.

Why Birmingham? Because Peter, our newest member, is full of enthusiasm for its examples of Arts & Crafts architecture. So, after we'd looked round some of the galleries and finished our book discussion, he led us down Edmund Street, Margaret Street, Newhall Street and Colmore Row, ending up at St Philip's.

Having admired the late Burne-Joneses there, we went across to St Martin's to look at the very different earlier window by him, saved by a whisker from destruction in World War II.

My companions were taken aback by Selfridge's, hovering over the Bull Ring, but even more by the new Library, to be opened next September, but now already dominating the East end of Broad Street. For my part, the excitement was this (photographed) new kinetic installation in the oculus of the Museum's new History Gallery - by Keiko Mukaide and Ronnie Watt: it was unveiled earlier this year. And whose is the amazing stained glass window on the stairs behind it, without any label?

Not amused

Caroline bought a bike for Agnes' birthday on eBay, so collecting it was my excuse for an outing to near Nuneaton on Friday. My reward for riding a 19" frame lady's bike from its former owner's to Nuneaton Station was a stop-off in Birmingham on the way there: I wanted to pop into the Art Gallery to see Burne-Jones' Perseus Series, on loan from the Staatsgalerie Stuttgart, the first time it had been on view in the UK. (The show was closing today.)

The pictures tell the story - as gruesome as any Tarantino film - of Perseus visiting the Graiae, Medusa's sisters, who shared one eye between the three of them, and making off with it; cutting off Medusa's head, and using it to win the affection of Andromeda (before turning various people to stone). It amazes me how the Victorian establishment obviously lapped all this up: Burne-Jones' commission came from Arthur Balfour, the future Prime Minister.

I fell asleep in the train going back, waking up with a jolt as it pulled in to Cheltenham. I had put my book on a low shelf beside my seat. Only as I was pushing the bike down the platform, the train moving off to Cardiff, did I remember.