 AS a newcomer to the city and in a bid to fit in I decided to take a lesson in speaking Brummie from the organiser of tomorrow's celebration of our accent. With phrases like "go careful past your granny's" and "getting a bit dark over Bill's mother's" echoing around my head, I set out to meet 32-year-old graphic designer Jon Bounds. My, admittedly watered down, Geordie accent was battling against me as I struggled to put a Brummie shine on to my tone, struggling with expressions like "face as long as Livery Street" and even had a crack at the one word from the area I do know -"bostin". Jon explained that the Birmingham accent isn't as easy as it first seems to a lot of people, and what outsiders often see on television is a Black Country accent, which is apparently easier to imitate. "It isn't easy for people to understand the difference between accents if they're not from the area. But there are people who can tell the difference between someone who lives at one end of a road from someone who lives at the other," he said. Clearly I wasn't going to be fooling anyone with my accent any time soon. So we moved on to some of the expressions which have been confusing me since I arrived. A bit dark over Bill's mother Ð which I learnt means it looks like rain Ð was the first one puzzling me. Jon told me one story he heard which meant that it means there are dark clouds coming from the direction of Stratford. The Bill is meant to refer to William Shakespeare. Even Jon admitted that some of the expressions were a bit of a mystery to him. So armed with a new phrase book of Birmingham phrases and muttering to myself in my, frankly pathetic, new Brummie accent, I dropped in at a shop on my way home to try it out. Looking wistfully out the window at the sky and wrinkling my brow I fixed my stare on the shopkeeper and said: "What do you think? Getting a bit dark over Bill's mother?" He looked at me like I was insane and seemed quite keen to get me out of the shop. To be honest I don't think he was from Birmingham. f=XZapfDingbatsno STRUGGLING... Will Olliphant (left) tries to learn Brummie with Jon Bounds. | 
