The circumstances of the visit make an odd contrast to the most recent appearance of royalty in Birmingham, when newly-weds Kate and William came to Winson Green last summer as part of their tour of areas affected by the riots.

When Queen Henrietta Maria arrived, the town had also recently suffered from looting and worse, but on that occasion it was at the hands of Royalist soldiers.

Despite the fact that Britain’s past is peppered with periods of bloodshed and brutality, the Civil War still stands out as a truly jaw-dropping episode. At its most basic it was a conflict between the Royalist ‘Cavaliers’, who believed that King Charles had a divine right to impose his will on Parliament, and the Parliamentarian ‘Roundheads’ who thought otherwise.

In reality this conflict was overlaid with a myriad of others – Protestant against Catholic, Puritan Protestant against moderate, Scots against English, Highland Scots against Lowlanders, one Highland clan against another.

It was as if every grievance that had been grumbling along in the background of life erupted all at once, and all against a backdrop of famine and plague.

Birmingham at the time was only a small town, but one which was developing a reputation both as a hotbed of Puritanism and as a manufacturer of weapons, which were being supplied to the Parliamentarians.

The town was duly identified as a target by the Royalists, and one that would have to be dealt with in order to clear a path for the Queen on her journey down from York. In April 1643, Birmingham was attacked by a Royalist force of almost two thousand, led by Prince Rupert, the Laughing Cavalier himself. Despite being outnumbered ten to one, the Parliamentarians put up strong resistance behind makeshift defences at Camp Hill, before eventually being overrun. The Royalists went on to burn and plunder the town at will.

There are no landmarks or memorials to remind us of any of this today, and in fact why should there be?

When the royals go on an offensive today it is of the charm variety, and the belief that they were appointed by God himself has long since disappeared.

But even in twenty first century Britain, vestiges of the sovereign’s ‘divine’ powers still remain. Any MP who refuses to take an oath of allegiance to our unelected monarch will find themselves barred from entering the House of Commons. And surely royal visits, such as that by the Duke and Duchess of Cambridgeshire, are meaningless unless there is still some background level of belief that the royal family are, for whatever reason, simply better than the rest of us?

With the Queen’s diamond jubilee due to be celebrated later this year, maybe it is not too curmudgeonly after all to suggest that we ought to remember that the fledgling Birmingham was once torn apart by marauding soldiers trying to instil exactly this belief in blue-blooded superiority into the local population.

There were about a dozen stalls packed into the main room in the club, plus one or two more outside in the car park.

We had mainly gone along out of curiosity rather than with the idea of buying very much, but I still came away bearing some interesting Christmas gifts for my girlfriend.

We also bought a few things for our own immediate gratification. My son got a ‘friendly’ Christmas hand grenade made from soft felt. We got his sister a couple of badges from illustrator Liz Lunney’s stall, which both featured cartoon rabbits. One bears the slogan ‘sour rabbit cares about you,’ which seems encouraging.

We also bought some cup cakes from the Cupcake Bistro, chatted to a guy from the Friends of Hazelwell Park, mooched around the rest of the stalls, which sold everything from jewellery to tea towels to second hand records, listened to medieval Carols sung live, and generally had a good time of it.

There was a cosy, relaxed atmosphere – a sense of  a small community of local artists and businesses coming together to support one another.

We’ve lived in Stirchley for over five years but I’ve only recently become aware of the place as having its own cultural scene, independent of the nearby, well-established vibrancy of Moseley and Kings Heath.

For anyone who wants to keep up to date with local goings-on, the tweets emanating from @stirchleyhaps, and their accompanying website, are good places to start. They provide regular details of upcoming events, and also the kind of trivia about the everyday lives of Stirchley-ites which helps to flesh out the place and bring it to life.

Earlier this year Stirchley briefly had its own squatted social centre at the Whit Marley building, which held a couple of art exhibitions and an open mic night, amongst other things. This has now closed, but there are still regular comedy nights at the British Oak, a traveling cinema, and gigs at the Roadhouse.

There are co-operatively run businesses such as the Bike Foundry, Loaf online, and the South Birmingham Food Co-op, all of which sound very useful, but not one of which I really know much about yet.

When I first came to Birmingham, about twenty years ago, I was involved in a couple of workers co-operatives – a vegetarian cafe over in Saltley, and a small housing co-op, both of which long ago bit the dust. These days, when it can sometimes seem as if we are all capitalists by default, its nice to know that those alternative ideas are still around and being put into practice.

I write a lot about places outside of Birmingham where I happen to end up through work. Maybe I should make it a New Years Resolution to find out more about the stuff that’s going on on my doorstep.

However, even though he has now been ‘snipped’, the late night habit has continued. If anything his walks have become later still, and the average number of family members coming along has decreased. Most nights it is just the dog and me in the darkness of Highbury park.

As soon as we arrive I let him off his lead, at which point he usually disappears to do his own thing. Sometimes I can see him as the faintest of shadows against other shadows. Sometimes he will hurtle past me on a mad dash to nowhere in particular. But most of the time all I have is the vague idea that he is around somewhere.

Highbury park is a big old place, big enough to get away from the sound of traffic and light of street lamps.

Occasionally, for no clear reason, the darkness will spook me and for a minute or two I will find myself constantly resisting the temptation to look around me for the approach of unknown assailants. But mostly it is a relaxing emptiness, free from other people, or the expectation of them, and free from the plethora of sights and sounds that fill almost every part of the city in the daytime.

I am using these walks to learn about the stars. I have an app. on my phone which provides me with a 3D view of the night sky from my current location, with all the planets and constellations labelled. I have started from the Great Bear ( the one that looks like a saucepan, and the only one I already recognised ) and worked outwards.

On cloudy nights I  just stroll along. With so little sensory input, small changes become instantly noticeable. Now that Autumn is underway, the leaves on one particular tree have become dry enough to rattle softly in the breeze as I walk past.

Once in a while there are other people. One night I passed a trio of silhouettes on a bench by the river. Low muttering tones and the hiss of an opening can suggested street drinkers who had nowhere better to be.

Once I heard, but didn’t see, younger drunken people in the distance, at least one man and one woman. At one point the woman’s voice rose in screaming fear while the man shouted his hatred back at her. A few moments later they were united again in harsh raucous laughter, receding away into the night.

A couple of days ago the police were searching the park in pairs, their white torch beams bobbing up and down as they looked for a couple of guys whose appearance they were unable to describe to me other than that they were carrying JD Sports bags. For a few minutes the park seemed transformed into a vast dark arena where some primeval hunting game was being played out.

But these nights are the rare exceptions. Almost always it is just the dog and me, which, I think, suits both of us fine.

The ‘Nr’ abbreviation seems to be slipping from popular usage in addresses today, which is a shame as it can be an important little word if you are making your way to an address on foot or via public transport. Maybe it isn’t seen to matter so much now that we have sat-navs and mobile phone apps which only require a postcode to pinpoint an address.

But even postcodes can be deceptive if you take them at face value. Fradley Park has a Walsall postcode, although Walsall is even further away than Lichfield. And even when you have cut through the misleading parts of an address and found where it really is, there is still the capacity for further deceptions when you rely on mobile phone apps to tell you the best way to get there.

I originally set off from Warwick, having delivered a car there earlier in the day. My Trainline app told me, correctly, to catch a train to Moor Street and then walk over to New Street station for the Lichfield service. However, when calculating the earliest Lichfield train I would be able to catch, the app decided to allow forty-three whole minutes for me to walk between the stations. It did not mention that if I could cover the five hundred yards in less than twelve minutes I could catch an earlier service.

I am on the earlier service now.

Trent Valley station is on the right side of Lichfield for Fradley Park so I know I will be only about a couple of miles from the address. I put the postcode into my Google Maps app, which correctly locates the address, but labels the area as Alrewas, not Lichfield or Fradley. I then get it to work out the quickest walking route from the station. It comes up with a circuitous squiggle, almost four miles long. The A38 runs in a straight line out to Fradley Park, but the app has assumed that pedestrians cannot go that way. This would be a reasonable guess for most dual carriageways, but apps never tell you when they are just guessing. I know there is a pavement along one side of the A38 because I walked along it once, some years ago, to collect another vehicle from somewhere else on the industrial estate. The walk won’t be as pleasant as the stroll along country lanes that Google Maps had planned for me, but it won’t be half as long either.

Sometimes, if you are a long way from home and in an unfamiliar corner of the country then relying on these over-confident little chunks of software can seriously mess up your day. But today I don’t mind – I was only looking for confirmation of things I knew already. Nor do I mind that the address isn’t really in Lichfield, or Walsall, or Alrewas. I know exactly where it is, and it is a nice afternoon for a walk.

Christmas has come early for the citizens of Leeds this year – festive lights are already strung across most of the main shopping streets, a full two and a half months before the event.

When shops begin to put out their Christmas stock at this time of year, in a blatant encouragement to spend early and spend often, there is a clear cynicism involved which no amount of tinsel is ever going to disguise.

But with this display, where the reasoning is less obvious, there is something almost upliftingly silly about the whole thing, suggesting as it does that there is someone in the local council whose decision-making processes are free from the dull confines of common sense.

I wonder what these streets will look like on Halloween as groups of ghoulishly-dressed revellers totter and meander beneath the reindeers and smiling santas?

The outdated name and the grimy concrete exterior give the impression of a company which has given up on any ambition of improving its public image.

I’m here to collect a VW Passat to take to an auction on the other side of the city. However, I’m also looking for something else. I want to see a No Smoking sign somewhere on the building, because I know they will be legally obliged to have one, and because I know it will make me smile.

I find one single small yellowing sign by the main entrance. In contrast to this, the outdoor smoking area looks positively lavish – four separate, roofed shelters with wooden seating, big litter bins, and leafy plants. It is by far the most attractive part of the site. In this day and age it is nice to see a firm that still looks after its workers.

Amongst the many apps now on it is Google Maps, which can pinpoint exactly where I am and give me a walking route to any nearby postcode. I’m currently using it to get me from Cheltenham train station to a BMW dealership about a mile and a half away.

The app uses the 3G network to transfer data, but before doing so will always show me a list of any nearby wifi networks it has found, in case I want to try to jump onto one of those instead.

This has introduced me to the strange world of home wifi network names. Our own family network was named, on the spur of the moment, after a pet cat, but there are clearly people out there who have put some thought and creativity into the matter.

I’m currently on a quiet street of respectable semi-detached houses and two storey blocks of flats. Here my iPhone has found networks named ‘the Highland Marches’, ‘Nightingales Lament’, and ‘Gracelove’. I find myself looking around trying to guess which of the surrounding, inconspicuous houses might be beaming out such poetic names.

The first two networks are listed as unsecured which means that theoretically I might be able to connect to them without a password. However I almost never try to do this since even at walking pace I would probably be out of range before I had even logged in. I also have a vague, irrational fear of being caught – a front door opening and the occupant striding out to look suspiciously up and down the street before settling their gaze upon me.

Around the next corner are ‘Predator’ and ‘banana’, amongst others, and then at the end of the road the tone is lowered by the decidedly unsavoury ‘tom blows tramps’.

Does Tom know about this allegation being transmitted throughout the surrounding area? I wonder what the neighbours think.

The shopping centre is not particularly upmarket, but not run down either, just the usual mix of chain stores and cafes and walkways and escalators.

The only oddity is the water fountain on the first floor, spattering quietly away to itself. People have been throwing coins into the shallow pool around it. I can’t see anything bigger than a ten pence piece, but nonetheless there must be at least ten pounds in small change in there.

The bottom of the pool is also marked with countless small brown rings where coins must have lain for some time before being removed. Who takes them out again? How brazen (or desperate) would you have to be?

Maybe the owners of the shopping centre empty it out occasionally and do something worthwhile with the money, or maybe the staff at the nearest off-licence find themselves occasionally having to deal with a customer wanting to buy a bottle of their cheapest cider with a heavy handful of dripping wet change?