An Equestrian Double
I took these pictures yesterday outside St. George’s Hall in Liverpool.
The view of the hall would be better, if they didn’t use it as a car park!
I wonder if there is another pair of equestrian statues in the world of a royal husband and wife, where each is treated equally. I don’t think there’s another statue of a lady in such a prominent place, where the lady is riding side-saddle. Certainly, there isn’t in the UK. But there is one of Queen Elizabeth on Burmese in Regina, Saskatchewan. But then Burmese was born in that Canadian province.
I also went over St. George’s Hall for the first time. It is rather a creepy and forbidding place in the cells under the courts, which are no longer used, but the whole is a marvel of Victorian architecture. As it is right in front of the station, it is an ideal place to spend an hour or so before cstching a train. Especially, as it is a free attraction.
A Liverpudlian First
Oriel Chambers was built in 1864, so soon it will be 150 years old.
Oriel Chambers
It is the world’s first metal framed glass curtain walled building. It is also a Grade 1 Listed building, one of 27 such buildings in the city.
These buildings alone, are a good reason to visit the city.
Liverpudlian Humour
They used to say you don’t have to have a sense of humour to live in Liverpool, but it helps.
A Creche For Husbands
Strangely, the pub didn’t seem to be that busy. But then it was the middle of the afternoon. Or could it be that the average Liverpudlian felt that as they’d spelt crèche wrong, the pub wasn’t very cultured?
A North South Divide
I went into a branch of a well-known restaurant chain in Liverpool today and asked for a lemonade with my lunch.
The waitress brought a fizzy one, whereas in their London or Cambridge branches, they usually assume that you want a still one! In some places they do ask, which is probably the right thing to do. Just as most places do with water!
So does the north want fizz in their lemonade? And the south doesn’t!
I mst say that some things don’t seem to change in Liverpool though. The waitress was bright, keen and chatty, even if she only scored a small bit less than perfect. I can remember them like that in the 1960s. Although they were much worse trained then!
One in particular brought meals for C and myself on a tray, which she placed on the table, so that one meal was over the table and the other was hanging over the edge. She then took the meal over the table and placed it for C, which meant the other meal upturned the tray onto the floor. To make it worse, it was her first night. So she burst into floods of tears.
Reasons To Go To Liverpool
I’m always being asked by people, why they should go to Liverpool.
Here’s a few reasons.
- St. George’s Hall, which Nikolaus Pevsner described as one of the finest neo-Grecian buildings in the world.
- Liverpool Anglican Cathedral, which is a superb neo-Gothic creation by Giles Gilbert Scott, an architect, who also created Britain’s red telephone box.
- The Victoria Building of Liverpool University, which gives red-brick university its name and has some good art in its gallery and museum, including some by Freud, Turner, Frink and Epstein. I saw an excellent special exhibition there of art by Stuart Sutcliffe, the so-called “fifth Beatle”
- St.. Luke’s Church or as Liverpudlian’s call it the bombed-out church, which has been left as a memorial to the Second World War. This church was my late wife’s, C’s, favourite building in the city.
- Oriel Chambers, which is the first modern building in the world.
- The Walker Art Gallery or the National Gallery of the North. It is administered by central government, although many of the paintings came from local sources. It also has one of the largest collections of pre-Raphaelite painting in the UK and the Liverpool School of the movement is well-represented.
- Liverpool has more street statuary than any city in England with the exception of London. I particularly like Eleanor Rigby by Tommy Steele.
- Superlambananas are fairly numerous.
- The Pier Head, the Three Graces and the Mersey Ferries. Do remember that when a lady walks in front of the Liver Birds on the Royal Liver Building, and they flap their wings, she’s a virgin. They also flap their wings for honest men.
- The Albert Dock, the Tate Liverpool and the other museums in that area.
- Goodison Park. The home of Everton along with Craven Cottage in London, is one of the most complete works of Archibald Leitch, the architect of many sports grounds in the UK.
- Hope Street that connects the two cathedrals and also contains the most amazing pub in the world, the Philhamonic Dining Rooms.
I could add a few more, but I won’t.
Where Next For The Emirates Air-Line?
I like predicting the future and in many cases, I have the knowledge to do my predictions based on fact rather than fantasy.
So now we have got the Emirates Air-Line up and running, where else could we use a similar system within the UK.
The Emirates Air-Line has been designed using the simple single cable, Monocable Detachable Gondola (MDG) technology, which uses a single cable for both support and propulsion. The simple concept probably explains, why the system went from project start to finish in undera year. It is not untried technology, as a similar system in Caracas, is twice the length and has twice the number of cabins. So if you are of a nervous disposition and find the Emirates Air-Line a bit scary, stay away from Caracas. Although looking at my pictures and some of the Caracas system, the gondolas appear to be very similar. Both might have been built by the Austrian company, Dopplemayr. The Emirates Air-Line certainly was.
But it does show the flexibility of the technology, as Caracas system is much larger than the London one. But the Emirates Air-Line is not small in terms of capacity, as its 34 cars can move 2,500 people in an hour, which is the equivalent of thirty buses. Cynics have complained about the cost of £60 million, but then crossing a river, either needs a tunnel, a ferry or a bridge.
Asa an aside here, London’s millennium footbridge cost around £20 million, but of course couldn’t have been used here, as it is not high enough for large ships to pass underneath.
I know England well and I think there are several places, where cable-cars could be a cost-effective alternative to other means of moving people.
Obviously, because I know Liverpool well, a cable-car could be an alternative way to cross the Mersey. Liverpool has a problem in that it has three ageing ferries, that will need replacing at some time. They also do other jobs, like run pleasure trips up the Mersey. As there is a proper railway under te river, Liverpool’s need for passenger movement is not so pressing. But a cable-car system, running all the way from Lime Street station to Birkenhead could be a spectacular attraction taking visitors over one of the best cityscapes in Europe.
Crossing the Tyne at Newcastle, would probably be one of the easiest from an engineering point of view.
Obviously, schemes will come together, when the economics of the Emirates Air-Line are fully understood in a couple of years.
But I think before the end of this decade we will be seeing other cable-car systems in the UK.
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.
If C Had Been in Liverpool, She’d Have Been Here
St Luke’s in Liverpool, was one of C’s favourite churches, as sitting there at the bottom of the hill, it says so much about the pointlessness of war.
Every time I go to Liverpool, I always pass the church and contemplate for a few moments about what might have been, had she not got the cancer.
Bluecoat Chambers
Bluecoat Chambers is an arts centre in the middle of Liverpool with a rich history. Despite living in the city for nearly five years and having visited many times since, I’d never been in before yesterday.
It’s well worth a visit and the current exhibition brought back many memories of a wonderful holiday in the Ecuador and the Galapagos, that I had with C.
Liverpool Waterfront in the Sun
It was a glorious sunny day yesterday in Liverpool.
The amazing waterfront, showed itself at its best.
It was a pity, that because of the evening celebrations surrounding the Olympic Torch Relay, the Pier Head was shut off.
The Anonymous Widower 