Thursday 27 October 2011

Crying is not an emergency

When you come out of Lime Street station there is a big sign opposite saying: "Liverpool: in England but not of it".


In some parts I've explored, this could be expanded to "On planet earth but not of it"...
 this is the ticket booth for one of the kiddies rides at New Brighton beach:

Stern forewarning

Monday 24 October 2011

Land of our Da's??

Into my second week as an apprentice Merseysider and I'm not saying Liverpool is surreal but there are enjoyably disorienting things going on around here. Some random impressions:

I got the telly set up and we are somehow BBC Wales. That's right - at 6 30 when the national news finishes we get updates on the latest row in the Welsh Assembly. Not annoyed, since Kate's mum lives in Caernarfon and I've always fancied picking up some more Welsh language.
But the bottom line is: in Leominster we were only about 5 miles from the Welsh border & we were resolutely BBC West Midlands. What gives?


Back in Leo the ice cream van's jingle was that "Yodelling Swiss Wanderer" 'orrible noise which at least ceased to disrupt yr reverie from around mid-September.
This week the ice-cream van was still going (in late October & that is impressive) and the jingle was Anton Karras's theme to Carol Reid's 1948 film "The Third Man", the finest British picture ever made.

I'm liking my local ice cream van.

On Friday, in Liverpool city centre, young women were going about at 10.30 am wearing gigantic curlers in their hair. This is a sixties revival every town in Britain should welcome. Liverpool did it first though, I think...

The unfinished but already fabulous Museum of Liverpool: Ken Dodd's tickling stick displayed between an old chip shop sign saying "All our fish fried in the best dripping" and the hand-written lyrics to HMHB's 'Joy Division oven gloves' (these lyrics even funnier in "the flesh" so to speak).

A quite different class of people trying to peddle wares in pubs:
In London it was always poor Chinese guys with dvds who spoke no English. Can still remember halftime of a Celtic match in Corley's N1 when a Chinese guy entered and wordlessly thrust a video into the face of Glaswegian Tiff who was fairly tanked by then. The title of the video was "40 Year Old Virgin". Tiff thought about hitting him before realising it was the name of a movie.

First fortnight we were in Leominster in the local pub a guy came in with a shotgun slung over his shoulder. I got the mobile out to call the cops then realised he was a poacher when he started asking "Anyone want any pheasants or rabbits?"

Yesterday in The Albert in Lark Lane with Kate and her old Scouse friend Picola.
A lady came up to them, trailing two stuffed plastic bags and said:
"Hey gels: do you wanna buy some stuff?"

That is precision language: "some stuff".

Wednesday 19 October 2011

The Senate & the Liverpudlian People

One week ago I moved to Merseyside from Leominster in Herefordshire (and for my adventures with the Tory party there see this Blog: you'll need a strong stomach & a weird sense of humour!).


Since I married in Liverpool in 2006 - my wife was reared on Anfield Rd - I've been falling for this strange town in fits and starts.
Ever since I emerged from Lime Street station and saw the astonishing building opposite it. St George's Hall, possibly the finest Roman building standing anywhere in Europe.


I wandered into the Hall, mesmerised, then burst out laughing when I saw this carved into the bronze doors.
S.P.Q.L.
The Victorian fathers of Liverpool were saying "this, Liverpool, is the new Rome".
The magnificent, arrogant, crazy self-confidence of that still makes my jaw drop. I thought then - think now - "who on earth do people who make a statement like that think they are??"


This Blog will be a record of my attempts to answer that question.


Or, as Henry at the start of Goodfellas (could have, should have) said:
'Ever since I can remember, all I ever wanted to be was a Scouser...'