1. We make slightly better time than we thought so we have time to meander into the city via my old haunts instead. It’s funny how familiar and yet strange it at the same time: it feels like a lifetime ago now. (And I suppose it is: I was 18-20 when I lived there, and that was nearly 18 years ago now.) As we drive up my old street, I’m thrown for a second but then the next building confirms it. We drive back down and I laugh heartily when I realise that my final year home has been demolished.
1b. John points out something that largely escaped my attention while I was living there – and my mum’s attention to this day – how elaborately decorated the pubs are in the city. Through over-exposure, we’re quite numb to Victorian architecture but these buildings from slightly earlier, that somehow escaped bombing and redevelopment, are breath-taking.
1c. Out of the car, the size of St George’s Hall also blows me away for the first time. How many times I have been past there? How many times inside? I even spent a full day carrying boxes of “Welcome to Liverpool!” pamphlets up the steps – and yet I never noticed the vast size of the columns, the bulk of them so high above us.
2. Inside the museum, we look at banana-coloured beetles eating fruit and the shadows of ants carrying leaves along a rope. Then we touch ancient rocks and massive shells, and stagger under the weight of an elephant’s tooth before John tries the amazing microscope and we look at much, much smaller things instead. We also enjoy all the specimens in the drawers – not quite knowing what will be inside.
2b. The warren of a cafe.
3. The sunset behind the docks and the man who stops to explain the strange window in the ground.
3b. The restaurant is further up the road than I thought it would be – right up, near my old university building – but it gives me the chance to see the extent of the regeneration up there: I tell John of how it was near abandoned, how we’d walk further out of our way rather than going down there – and now look at it, with its stately painted homes and trendy restaurants.
3c. The best Mexican food we’ve had in a long, long time.
4. We don’t stay at the gig for that long but I’m glad we make the effort to go for even a short time: I’m glad to see another pocket of regeneration and also a drooling dog that walks its tail when I say hello.
4b. We drive up to Southport along the old Dock Road. Again, we marvel at the scale of things – the ships, the silos and the old warehouses.
Leave a Reply