A Liverpool Facelift
You’d think it would be something like an Essex facelift, which appears in Wikipedia as a Croydon facelift. Although, I’ve never heard of it with respect to Croydon.
A Liverpool Facelift
But as the picture shows, it’s not that at all!
The Hope Street Hotel
On Friday night, I went to Liverpool for an Alumni Dinner at the University and stayed in the Hope Street Hotel,where the dinner was held. Here’s a few pictures.
One of the reasons, I like the hotel is that it does gluten-free food superbly well. It did in the dinner on Friday night and the food was summed up by the superb smoked haddock and poached eggs that I had for breakfast.
Other hotels should take note about the breakfast as fish and eggs is so simple and also impossible to add gluten.
When Was It Known Hillsborough Had No Safety Certificate?
It has been said many times in the last day or so, that Hillsborough had no safety certificate, at the time of the disaster on April 15th, 1989.
Perhaps, my memory has gone, but although I can remember the disaster, I can’t associate it with what I was doing at the time. I wouldn’t have been at football at Ipswich, as at that time I didn’t go. I can remember where I was when I heard about Lockerbie a few months earlier.
So for how long has it been known that Hillsborough did not have a valid safety certificate at the time of the disaster?
Surely to knowingly book the stadium without a valid safety certificate, is akin to flying a Boeing 747, without a valid certificate of airworthiness.
Or was that something that always happened in those days?
In trying to get more answers to my question, I came across this page on the web site of the Football Industry Group at Liverpool University. It is something everybody should read. This is one of the page’s conclusions.
The disaster was basically caused by the failure of South Yorkshire Police to control a large
crowd of Liverpool fans outside the Leppings Lane End, and the poor state of the ground,
but it was also clear that football’s total failure to learn from the numerous disasters that had
afflicted it during the twentieth century, and a police force conditioned to view supporters as
potential hooligans and so always expecting violence, contributed significantly to the 96 deaths
and many hundreds of injuries.
I agree very much about learning from the past. In the 1960s, I was in a few crushes at White Hart Lane and Highbury, and how they avoided a Hillsborough-type disaster in some matches, was more down to luck than any planning.
The page also says this about the safety certificate and emergency plans.
Sheffield Wednesday had redeveloped parts of the ground without obtaining
a new safety certificate, or telling the emergency services: the result was that the safety certificate was
outdated and useless, and that plans Sheffield Wednesday had developed with the local emergency
services could not be put into practice, as the layout of the ground had changed.
That to me is inadequate, to say the very least. An emergency plan like that, only works without an emergency.
The Catholic Cathedral That Wasn’t
I went over the new Liverpool Museum and they had the model there of Lutyens design for the Catholic Cathedral that was never built.
The Catholic Cathedral That Wasn’t
I’ve seen it some time before. But where or when I do not know. Perhaps it was shown, when they were building the present cathedral. I was in Liverpool at that time.
The Superlambanana With Bling
This superlambanana was outside a jewellers.
The Superlambanana With Bling
Although they are really leftovers from the European Capital of Culture in 2008, you still see them in odd places around the city.
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.
The Anonymous Widower 