The Olympic Torch Goes By
I climbed the hill and then waited on the platform on which the Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral is built.
The pictures are in the order I took them.
If I’d made a video, you would have heard the bells ring out. Just as they did, when the Relay passed the Anglican Cathedral.
A few thimgs to note in the various pictures :-
2 – This picture shows the platform at the right, where I took the pictures from.
3 – Lloyds Bank TSB’s publicity vehicle was a converted Bedford CF van, that started its life selling ice cream.
18, 19 – You can spot the Archbishop of Liverpool, the Most Reverend Patrick Kelly in full regalia. Admittedly, it was mainly red, white and blue. He seemed to be enjoying himself, but I don’t know whether he blessed the relay.
21, 26 – The giant puppets are from Hope Street Ltd. and represent Beatles characters.
23,24,25,26 – The building directly opposite is part of Liverpool John Moores University. In my day it was a Roman Catholic Teacher Training College. Opposite the building and behind the one with all the columns, used to be the Everyman Theatre, which is currently being rebuilt.
35 – Note the man on the crane.
36,37,38,39 – The torch and a kiss is in there somewhere.
40 – Walking back towards Brownlow Hill and the University.
What it was like at ground level is shown by this video.
You Get a Better Class of Busker in St. Paul’s Tube Station
I took this picture tonight, on the mezzanine floor between the escalators at St.Paul’s Tube Station.
A Busker with a Celtic Harp
I would have thought that usually those playing a harp, were well above the cathedral, rather than underneath it!
I hope I got the type of harp right!
Climbing The Shard
It would appear that a group of intrepid climbers have climbed the Shard by London Bridge station. Read the story here in the Belfast Telegraph.
People and especially students have always been doing this.
At Liverpool in the 1960s, I was in a year with Alvin John Slasser, who was usually known as Sean.
One night he climbed the crane of the Catholic Cathedral in Liverpool, which was being built at the time. I suspect that the Shard was taller, although the crane was several metres taller than the cathedral and Sean did claim to have gone right out to the driver’s cabin.
Sadly, Sean is no longer with us. In the first year of the course he died in a freak climbing accident in I think North Wales.
If there is something tall there, someone will climb it!
It must have affected me greatly, as when C named our second son, he had a middle-name of Shaun. She got the spelling wrong.
What An Awful Bunch of Wanabees
I’m not talking about the latest Big Brother or X-Factor contestants, but the towns that want to be cities to mark the Golden Jubilee, according to this article on the BBC.
The list is as follows.
Bolton, Bournemouth, Chelmsford, Colchester, Coleraine, Corby, Craigavon, Croydon, Doncaster, Dorchester, Dudley, Dumfries, Gateshead, Goole, Luton, Medway, Middlesbrough, Milton Keynes, Perth, Reading, Southend, St Asaph, St Austell, Stockport, Tower Hamlets and Wrexham
I always thought that Milton Keynes was a city already.
In addition, Chelmsford, Medway, Perth, St. Asaph and Wrexham already have cathedrals, so doesn’t make them cities anyway?
Liverpool’s Third Cathedral
It may not be a religious building, but Lime Street station in Liverpool, has all the columns, roof and space you’d want for a cathedral.
It is a proper destination station like St. Pancras, where you could meet someone for business, pleasure or whatever. It is also very close to some of the major attractions of Liverpool. Unlike many stations, which seemed to have been built wherever they could get the land.
What Would God Think?
Bradford Cathedral would appear to be the first cathedral to have solar panels on the roof. It’s here in the Yorkshire Post.
I suspect that some will think it is a desecration of a holy building!
I’m sure God, if he or she exists, which I doubt, would actually be pleased as hopefully the cells would make peoples’ lives just that little bit better in the longer term.
St. Paul’s As I’ve Never Seen It Before
To me St. Paul’s is London’s church, if only because it stood unbowed to the Nazis as a symbol of defiance and hope.
Tonight though, in the evening sunlight, I saw it as I’d never seen it before in all its pristine beauty after a thorough cleaning.
The Newly-Cleaned St. Paul's
Thinking back, I don’t think I actually saw the cathedral until the 1960s, as my visits to Central London were usually fairly limited, despite living in the suburbs. As an example, I didn’t visit the Tower of London until I was probably twenty. And that was because I was showing a friend from University around.
Liverpool Takes on Its Biggest Challenge
The reports today about Liverpool University’s leadership of a large trial of a pancreatic cancer vaccine is very much to be welcomed.
If there was a motto that sums up the city, it is “Think Big”. Just think.
- Architecturally, it is the Second City of the UK.
- St. George’s Hall is one of the most magnificent neo-classical buildings anywhere.
- Liverpool City Centre is a World Heritage Site.
- It has two cathedrals, one of which is one of the largest in the world in many ways.
- The Beatles transformed the world of music more than anybody else.
So you can never say the city is full of shrinking violets.
So when Liverpool established itself as a world-class cancer centre, it didn’t take on the easiest of targets. It concentrated on one of the biggest and morst deadly;pancreatic cancer, which has one of the lowest survival rates.
Now are we starting to see a small step on the road to a successful fight against this awful disease, which killed my son at the early age of just 37?
You will see a link to their research on this blog. Click it and donate!
A Day in the Second City
To me, Liverpool is England’s second city, despite the claims of Birmingham and Manchester, which are pretty weak really.
If I was to show you pictures of Birmingham or Manchester cathedrals, would you recognise them? Probably not, but most people know both of Liverpool’s two iconic and world-class ones; Anglican and Catholic.
Liverpool too, has a compact centre behind the world famous waterfront which together make up the Liverpool Maritime Mercantile City, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Liverpool also has some of the best collections of art in the UK outside London.
Then too, we all know musicians, actors and comedians from Liverpool, but lists of those from Manchester and Birmingham are noted for being rather short. The latter may have produced Tony Hancock, but I can’t name a second comedian for Birmingham. A lot of people think that Beryl Reid was from the city, but she was born in Hereford.
I’d actually sold the tool-kit for an XJ-S on eBay to someone in the city, who is restoring one of these classic Jaguars and as I always like an excuse to visit, I used the proceeds to deliver them personally.
So at 10:07 yesterday morning, I boarded the Virgin express for the city. A few minutes over two hours later I was in Lime Street Station. I’m a great believer in what I would call destination stations, where you could go to meet a friend, client or business colleague and have a meeting or a meal. St. Pancras is obviously that type of station, Euston and Edinburgh are definitely not and Kings Cross is getting there fast. In a couple of years, Lime Street will be a place to visit in its own right, especially, as it is opposite one of England’s greatest buildings, St. George’s Hall. Pevsner rated that building one of the finest neo-Grecian buildings in the world.
So the evidence that Liverpool is the second city is overwhelming and now that Virgin Trains have a very good service from London, I’d add it to the must-see list for any visitor to the UK.
I’d first arrived in Liverpool with a tatty cardboard suitcase containing my clothes and a few books in 1965 to start my course in Control Engineering at Liverpool University. Then the station was grimy and dirty and as the train crawled into the station after a four hour journey from London, I did wonder what I’d let myself in for. But in a way it started a love affair that has lasted nearly fifty years.
I should also say, that I had been given an unconditional offer by the University of a place, so I’d never even had a visit or an interview. In those days you either accepted those offers immediately or you might lose them.
A Gluten-Free Lunch in Beautiful Surroundings
I had perhaps intended to have lunch in Carluccio’s in Smithfield, but on the way I walked behind St. Paul’s to take a photograph of the Temple Bar.
Temple Bar
Instead of passing through, as I intended, I spotted a sign saying restaurant and pointing to the crypt of the cathedral.
So I explored and found a restaurant with a full coeliac, not just gluten-free menu. It was more than I needed, so I approached the adjoining cafe and asked if the soup was gluten-free. The waitress said she was a coeliac too and said she’d check and also get me some gluten-free bread if I would like some. In the end I had some excellent parsnip soup and one of Fentiman‘s exotic soft drinks for about eight pounds.
So now, I can add a hole-filler to my walking routes around London.
The Anonymous Widower 