Back to Square One
I had thought that I’d found a house to move to in Canonbury in North London. But it failed the survey yesterday, and so I won’t be buying it.
But at least there would seem to be lots of suitable places for sale in the area to the east of Highbury and Islington.
So I’m going to start looking again.
I would really love to live in de Beauvoir Town, as C and I nearly moved there years ago, but instead we went to the flat in the Barbican.
I remember that we looked at a house owned by the writer, Alun Owen. Strangely, I’d met him before when he was a guest at dinner in the Liverpool University hall of residence, where I lived in my last year at University. Owen is probably best known for his screenplay for the first Beatles film, A Hard Day’s Night!
New Uses for Old Railway Buildings
The BBC has done a piece this morning about the reuse of Edge Hill Station in Liverpool as an artistic creative space by Metal
Often these buildings were well-built to designs of the best architects of their day. Let’s reuse them rather than build something new and rather boring and anonymous.
Shirley Valentine
I have never seen Willy Russell‘s iconic play, Shirley Valentine about the Liverpool housewife, but I have seen the film starring Pauline Collins and Tom Conti. It is now being staged in London again, with Meera Syal as Shirley. It may seem stage that an actress of Indian origin should take this role, but this play has a history of good actresses of many races and nationalites having success with the part of Shirley.
I remember once many years ago, I drove from Chicago to Washington, leaving The Windy City just as it was getting dark. For the first two hours, I was listening to a chat show on the radio, where Ellen Burstyn spoke about her role as Shirley in the play, which was touring the United States and was at that time running in Chicago. Having heard that interview, I regretted that I had not known about the play, whilst in Chicago, as I would certainly gone and seen it. Ellen explained how she had been nervous to take on the play, as being set in Liverpool, she was worried about the accent. But then Willy Russell had reassured her and she decided to have a go. She said she couldn’t do the accent, but that she could do Irish, as she had that blood. Willy then explained that most Liverpudlians had Irish ancestry, so an Irish accent would do. In the end she made a great success of the part of Shirley.
So now that Meera Syal is taking over the part in London, all she is doing is following a great tradition of playing one of the best parts ever written for an actress.
Liverpool On The Brink?
There is a report today on the BBC that Benitez is going to leave.
No-one seems interested in buying the club, s perhaps we’ll have more of the same rubbish from a once-great club. And of course lots more whinging Scousers.
Liverpool Reborn
Stephen Bayley wrote an article in The Times yesterday about how inspiring architecture is creating wealth, health and happiness.
Cities are living organisms. This means sometimes they die. Pompeii is one example, although no one saw it coming. Detroit’s fate was more predictable, possibly even inevitable: Motor City is stuck in reverse and headed for oblivion.
Liverpool nearly died. Like Detroit, it fell at great speed from economic and social grace. Unesco World Heritage credentials describe old Liverpool as “the supreme example of a commercial port at the time of Britain’s greatest global influence”. It was the New York of Europe.
He talks about how good architects have rebuilt the city and made it fit for the twenty-first century, but observes that politicians in London haven’t noticed. London to me is a city of good modern architecture, but save for a couple of nice buildings, those bridges and Grainger Town, Newcastle doesn’t seem to have been improved. Surely now, in the depths of a recession, we should be encouraging good building to leave a legacy to the future and also provide the jobs and homes we need. I’m not sure you need that many more shops and offices, though.
He ends the article by asking what makes a good building. He believes it is one that makes you feel better. He is absolutely right and having created a few in my time, I like to think I know how to create them. I shall create another when I return to London. Somewhere to live and somewhere where I will probably eventually die.
But then Liverpool in the 1960s turned me from a shy young boy with ideas into a shy young man with ambition, drive and a strong belief in myself. It does that to people. Even now, I go back occasionally to make sure that I know what life is about. It is still the second city of the UK despite what others say.
I shall be buying his book. If nothing else it will give me the faith to carry on in this world.
What If?
You sometimes wonder what would have happened to your life, if just one thing had happened.
I was lying in bed this morning and remembered that when I got my first job at ICI in Runcorn I was paid £1,150 a year. Not a lot you might think but it was 1969. In the end we lived in a rented flat at Rosehill Court in Woolton, but we might have lived in a little cottage in Woolton Village, if only we could have found the mortgage.
The cottage cost just £2,000.
It just shows how time it was for first time buyers in those days.
But what would have happened if we’d stayed in Liverpool? Would I have been the success I have been since, if we’d bought that house?
Live changes on the turn of fate.
German Practicality
Two women have been arrested at Liverpool Airport trying to smuggle the body a dead 91-year-old German home.
Here’s the first couple of paragraphs from the BBC report.
Police have arrested two women after they tried to take the body of a dead relative onto a plane at Liverpool John Lennon Airport.
Staff at the airport became suspicious when the women tried to check the man in for a flight to Berlin on Saturday.
The 91-year-old man from Germany is thought to have died the previous day, and had been put into a wheelchair.
But they should have realised that because we’re not in the Shengen area, that passports would have to be checked.
It reminds of the story of the family in the early 1960s or so, who went on holiday to the South or France with an elderly grandmother. Sadly, she died in somewhere exotic like Cannes and they wondered what to do. They didn’t have any insurance to bring the body home, so they wrapped granny up in a blanket and tied her to the roof-rack.
When they got to Dover, they did what every dutiful Briton would do and reported it all to Immigration. The Officer just looked calmly and said that the roof-rack was empty.
Another Bed and Breakfast Scam
I reported that a friend had had one of these a month or so ago.
They’ve just had another.
i am inquiring for accommodation for 5 people for 25 days from June -10/2010.
Please give me total cost for the period specified including all
applicable taxes).what is your payment options? Hope you accept credit
cards or cheque?
How ever,an agent has been contacted for their flight
logistics,so all am asking from you is to get back to me with the total
cost for their rooms in the period
specified in {GBP-POUNDS}.
You can contact me at any time,your prompt reply will be appreciated.
Duk William,
Director,GLOBAL INC/GENERAL CONSULATE.
P.O. Box 7841
Sud bury, L18 8BY Liverpool.
Cell: +447045709832
I still haven’t figured out how this scam works. But there is a lot of information in this forum.
Incidentally the post code L18 8BY is very close to the halls of residence at Liverpool University. But it’s Carnatic not Sudbury.
Travelling Backwards
Why do we like travelling forwards in vehicles?
I suppose it’s because we like to see where we are going and in most journeys we do in cars, buses and planes we always face that way. I should say here, that I once sat backwards on a powerful motor-bike and was driven through the Mersey Tunnel. I didn’t have a helmet on either! Was it scary? Not really! But it was Panto Week in Liverpool – i.e. Rag Week in the University.
On Wednesday from Nice to Marseilles I travelled backwards, just as we often do in trains and it got me thinking.
It’s probably safer in a crash as you’re forced into the seat and don’t end up as a missile propelled forward to the seat in front. But then you don’t have too many train crashes!
I’ve actually flown backwards a couple of times in de Havilland Tridents, where half the seats were backwards. It wasn’t a problem and neither did my passengers complain when using the backwards facing seats in my Cessna-340A.
So perhaps we’re prejudiced against travelling backwards.
Death of my Son
My youngest son died yesterday from pancreatic cancer, at just 37. He passed away peacefully at home with friends and family.
I shall always remember how he bore his illness very bravely and always thought of others, despite the fact he only had days to live. The support from the local surgery, district nurses and Macmillan was impeccable and meant he was at least as comfortable as possible.
Nothing I can say will really make any difference.
Pancreatic cancer is an awful disease for which there appears to little chance of any progress towards a cure. I do have hope though and it is my wife’s and my old University of Liverpool, that is one of the leaders in this fight.
Read more about their work here.
The Anonymous Widower 