I and Bridie
I and Bridie were one of the stalwarts of the Liverpool folk scene in the 1960s along with The Spinners and perhaps later on, The Scaffold.
I saw this poster outside the Philharmonic Hall and took a picture.
Jacqui and Bridie's Folk Club
The Three Graces
The Three Graces is the collective term for the buildings on the Liverpool waterfront. It’s changed a lot since I first went there in the 1960s to get the Crosville buses to my digs at Huyton. It’s now even got a canal connecting the Leeds and Liverpool canal to the Albert Dock.
To get to the Pierhead from Lime Street, you take the Wirral Line of another of Liverpool’s unique features, a proper Underground railway to James Street and then walk a couple of hundred metres.
Train Across the Mersey
Everybody knows about the Mersey Ferries, in part due to Gerry Marsden‘s song of the same name. The train though crosses the river at Runcorn on one of my favourite bridges, the Ethelfreda or Britannia Bridge, depending on your preference.
The bridge lies alongside the Runcorn-Widnes road bridge, which was built in the 1960s. I remember after a party once in Cheshire getting C to stop the car on the bridge as I was feeling unwell. I then proceeded to puke my guts into the river below. After that incident, she nearly didn’t marry me! I never went to another party, where ICI’s Petrochemicals and Polymer Laboratory, were responsible for the punch.
There is an interesting footnote to the design of the bridge and that is why it is not a suspension bridge. It is hinted at in the Wikipedia entry for the bridge.
The next idea was for a suspension bridge with a span of 1,030 feet (314 m) between the main towers with a 24 feet (7 m) single carriageway and a 6 feet (2 m) footpath. However aerodynamic tests on models of the bridge showed that, while the bridge itself would be stable, the presence of the adjacent railway bridge would cause severe oscillation.
But the true story is all about how good engineers know their subjects.
The designers of the bridge made a presentation before the design was finalised to the ICI Merseyside Scientific Society. One of those attending was Mond Division’s vibration expert, who supposedly had a fearsome knowledge of the subject, even if he was slightly eccentric. After the presentation, he rose to his feet and said that he’d done some quick calculations and because of the proximity of the two bridges, the proposed suspension bridge would shake itself to pieces at a particular windspeed.
The bridge designer was not amused.
But ICI’s vibration expert was proved to be right in wind tunnel tests and we now have the steel arch bridge. Here are some notes on the design from Wikipedia.
The design of the bridge is similar to that of Sydney Harbour Bridge but differs from it in that the side spans are continuous with the main span rather than being separate from them. This design feature was necessary to avoid the problem of oscillation due to the railway bridge.
So good design avoided creating another Galloping Girtie.
I took a video as the train crossed and you can see the road bridge and some of the details of the railway bridge, with the large Fiddlers Ferry power station in the distance.
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.
Moaning About the Price of Petrol
I’ve had a rough three years and now can’t drive because of the strokes. I just laugh at all those idiots, who insist on using their cars to do things, that I now have to do happily on the bus, or by walking. Although I live in London, I rarely use the tube, as the bus stops within a hundred metres.
Today, I’m off to Liverpool on the train from Euston. In First Class too! Paid for incidentally, by selling something on eBay from a car I used to own twenty years ago, that just happened to turn up in the move.
Life is fun! And funny as I listen to the selfish moaners!
It’s Grim Up North!
I am a soft Southerner and a proud Londoner to boot, with the tough genes of a true mongrel. But especially after today’s weather reports from Jockshire, no sane man or woman would want to live north of Cambridge. I might make an exception for Liverpool, as I like my culture to have an edge.
The Student Fee Debate
If I look at my course at Liverpool University in the 1960s, there were some of us, who did very well, others who did reasonably and possibly quite a few who never did any serious engineering at all. Now they are trying to force more and more people to go to University and this happens when they have a funding crisis, caused by the appalling financial management of the infamous Nulabor government.
In some ways we may well be having the wrong debate.
We have a problem to pay for it all, but are Universities the right place to educate people for careers.
My father was a printer, who owned his own business and if there was one thing in his business he was proud off, it was the success of the apprentices he’d trained. He once told me, that of the dozen or so he’d had, only perhaps one had not been a success. In some ways they were bigger successes than they thought, as he always chose the rougher kids, who didn’t mind getting their hands dirty in one of the dirtiest businesses of the 1960s. I remember him complaining that schools used to send him kids, whose English was good, but if they wouldn’t get their hands dirty they were out. He always said that teaching the English was the easy bit, provided they could read, but learning to get a feel for the lead tyoe used in letterpress was not so easy.
So the first thing we should do is create proper apprenticeships in all sorts of businesses and make the whole system worthwhile for both those businesses and the young people. I’ve owned the stud for twenty years and in that time, we’ve never had any help with training some of the local kids. So what do the big studs do? Import people on short term contracts from places like Pakistan. I may be wrong, but there is something serious missing here!
To give the government credit, they are saying that they are going to create more apprenticeships. We need lots more and obviously they need to be very flexible and backed up by training leading towards qualifications.
It used to be that most nurses and others in the caring professions, were in a large part taught on the job in what was almost an appreticeship with lots of teaching. Now many of these professions need a university degree before you actually see anybody who needs some help or comfort. I’m sure that many are now barred from these professions, as they are not very academic and wouldn’t be able to get on a course. As an example, one of my friends, who has few qualifications, now works as an orderly at Addenbrooke’s and thoroughly enjoys it. She is being given on the job training, to suplement everything she learned as a mother of two. Surely, there could be a route to get this type of person into the caring professions, rather than importing them from the Phillipines and India.
All this proves to me, that on-the-job training is probably the best way to train people to do the important second level jobs, that don’t need a specialist degree. We’ve all met people, who run large companies, organisations or departments, who’ve fought their way to the top without any academc training.
We also have two other routes to getting a university degree; part-time study or the Open University. A schoool-friend used to be the Admissions Tutor at a well-known university and he was very adept at creating courses to fit round applicants jobs and family. He also had very strident views on universities, which are at completely at variance with all government thinking, but are based on many years experience in the field. The Open University always seems to be forgotten in education debates, but surely it is one of the finest successes of our education system in the last few decades.
So if the route for many to a good job and perhaps a degree is based on training and low personal cost, then perhaps we can reduce those numbers who take a traditional degree.
One also has to question whether this is necessary. In the forty years since I left university, I only worked for one year, where I needed any of the specialist knowledge that I learned at Liverpool. But the university degree got me the good job in the first place!
So is that the main reason for universities? They set you up on the ladder of life!
So to me the problem is we’re trying to send too many people to university, when there are better alternatives.
If we cut the numbers, we could probably fund everything in a better and more equitable way!
That is not to say the government’s proposal of no upfront fees, loans and paying it all back when you earn over £20,000 a year is wrong, but students need a choice that gives them value for money and one that they can afford, by getting an academic degree that pays well in the future.
Just Another Boy Band!
A texter has just described the Beatles thus on Radio 5.
They obviously never saw them live as I did, or watched as they saved a city from self-destructing, as Liverpool most likely would have done, if they had never come along!
They also inspired me, as in my years at Liverpool University, enough of what they created rubbed off on me, so that I became a modest success. Would I have become the same man without Liverpool and the Beatles? I doubt it!
Some Good News on Pancreatic Cancer?
I think this article on the BBC web site may prove to be a glimmer of hope in the treatment of pancreatic cancer.
Pancreatic cancer may lurk in the body for many years before patients fall ill, US scientists say
Research hints at earlier opportunities to spot and treat the disease, which is fatal in 95% of cases.
Genetic analysis of tumours by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Johns Hopkins University suggested the first mutations may happen 20 years before they become lethal.
UK survival rates for the disease have not improved in the past 40 years.
The disease is often aggressive and unresponsive to treatment by the time it is diagnosed.
The study, published by the Nature journal, found that tumours appear to be slow growing.
In other words if we could find a test for pancreatic cancer, we might be able to catch people suffering from the disease very early in the growth of the cancer. I know of pancreatic cancer survivors, who were caught very early, so perhaps something might work.
I know that my old University of Liverpool is looking for such a test amongst other pancreas research, so perhaps they are on the right track, if not for a complete cure, but for something that might help.
Let’s hope so, as I wouldn’t want anybody to suffer the same death as my son did from an uncureable cancer.
The Tunnel Road Cinema in Liverpool
Despite always being an avid filmgoer, I never got to go to Liverpool’s most infamous cinema. But as they were talking about horror movies on the radio I remembered this story about the place.
On Sunday nights, they used to show bad horror films with little on no merit at all. The audience then generally had a good time and often made everybody laugh, by being much funnier than the film.
On one particular night, the following conversation ensued between a couple of blokes in the cinema, according to a friend of mine at the time.
Aggressive male voice: “Get em off”
Squeaky female voice: “No!”
AMV: “Come on! It won’t hurt!”
SFV: “No! I’m still a virgin!”
AMV: “Alright then!”
At which point, he ripped his handkerchief in two and the audience collapsed in laughter.
The Anonymous Widower 