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CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE– "Liverpool"
How can one write about Liverpool without evoking the history of the place? The rise of the city as a major port, the cotton trade, the slave trade, Pier Head, the Three Graces, ocean liners, tramp ships, departing emigrants, the blitz, Tommy Handley, “Ferry ‘cross the Mersey”, Merseybeat, the Beatles, the Militant Liverpool City Council, Derek Hatton, Toxteth then and now, Liverpool FC, Anfield, Everton FC, Goodison Park, two fine cathedrals, David Sheppard, Albert Dock, the Walker Gallery, Tate Liverpool, David Henshaw, council government disquiet, urban regeneration, European City of Culture 2008. Liverpool is one of the most eclectic and distinctive cities in the world. When racing on
a yacht round the world in the 1992-93 British Steel Challenge I spend
three weeks in Rio de Janeiro, our first port of call. I was asked
later what I thought of the place. All I could say was that I reckoned
everything, everything, one had ever heard about Rio was true: It
is as wonderful, as dangerous, as decrepit, as magnificent and as
colourful and enduring as one has heard. People much better than me have described very well the history and standing of this fine city, so I shall write of my impressions of the place and leave the proper narrative to others. I emerged blinking and cursing into the sunshine of a post-Friday-night-with-the Eldonians feeling like I’d been hit by a warm, generous, slightly-foreign-feeling welcome bomb! Jayne, fresh as paint, set off to explore the city. I took a call from my cousin Christopher. My father’s best friend at Abingdon School was a chap called Roy Gibaud. He had a sister called Pamela who, one year, made a reluctant partner to Roy at an Old Abingdonians’ Summer Ball. Also in attendance was my father, John Rayson, still a serving RAF Officer and wearing his dress uniform, with his arm in a sling as a consequence of contracting polio in Cairo in 1946 whilst ‘mopping up’ after the Second World War. Mother, as Roy’s sister later became to me, allowed herself to be wooed by the uniform and the injury, and, she later admitted, a little by the chap wearing it! In the early years
we all used to go on holiday together, and spend Christmases together.
By the time the adults had finished building their two families there
were Roy and Janet Gibaud, with Christopher, Hugh and Alison and,
on our side, John and Pamela Rayson with Adrian, me that is, Felicity
and William. As is the nature of things families move apart and other than briefly at weddings and funerals, sadly in recent times those of both Roy and then his sister, my mother, Pamela (what is it with these Gibauds? Can’t stand the pace?) Christopher and I had not met for quite a few years. “I’ll pick you up in the early afternoon and take you to Merseyfest in Croxteth Park. That okay with you?, asked Chris. “Fine,” I said, I met one or two of the Merseyfest lot working alongside the canal yesterday; I’m looking forward to it.” Later he called again to say he’d be along about 3.30 pm. In the event he arrived close to 4.00 o’clock, which was good for Chris, it turns out. Chris is a dedicated
family man and tries to be all things to all people, especially wanting
to be available for his family. By the time Chris arrived in Eldonian Village I had sloughed off effects of the previous night’s hospitality and was ready to take on whatever Merseyfest turned out to be, for in truth I knew next to nothing. “Ah, Merseyfest, mused Christopher as we drove toward Croxteth Park, “well… I’ve been digging allotments all week. Bloomin’ hard work. Getting back to camp each night, making supper, feeding whoever happened to be around, then attending various gatherings, then having people back to the camp for talk into the small hours, then out again early in the morning for more digging and marshalling of the kids…!” Essentially, and using their own words, Merseyfest was this: From the 14th - 21st August 2005, thousands of volunteers came to Liverpool for the biggest week of transformation that Merseyside has ever seen! Initiated by churches
across the region, working in close partnership with Merseyside Police,
Merseyfest was about transforming people places and perceptions and bringing together all people of goodwill to work for the shared vision of Merseyside made safer, stronger, cleaner and kinder. PART 1: COMMUNITY
PROJECTS PART 2: THE WEEKEND
EVENT God was there too. I’m sure of that. This was very much a Christian festival with Christianity in Britain wearing its ‘accessible’ face. Being ‘born again’ is not really my thing, but I get on okay with The Lord and I was very aware of His presence at the Merseyfest Weekend Event, as I am sure it had been at the events all week. We arrived at
Croxteth Park and plunged into all the accoutrements of a Glastonbury-esque
festival. There was a large tended village. There were groups sitting
around talking and enjoying being together in the sunshine and being
together there. Some strummed guitars and there was sporadic singing;
perhaps even the odd banjo player. A benign and happy atmosphere pervaded
all. Chris had a large trailer tent set up in the middle of all this.
Clearly it had been a focal point during the week. His three sons,
Jonathan, William and Tobias, were staying in it, and their sister
Beatrice used it as her base also. Their mother, Angela, had kept
the family home ticking over but was omnipresent also. Apparently
it was a welcoming venue and many a young person had sat around in
and without it during the hot balmy nights of Merseyfest. Inside the
place looked like an explosion at the ‘goods in’ side
of a Chinese laundry. Working with second hand pots, washed to order in cold water in a bowl outside, and using a range of sauces from half-used jars and some meat the origin of which might once have been beef burgers, Chris created a savoury pasta dish. The word went out and within no time at all Gibaud siblings and attendant friends, both old and remarkably new (“I was just walking past and someone asked would I like to join you for food, and since I haven’t actually eaten today I will, if I may…!”) stood around sharing plates and forks in general communion. “Come on,” exhorted Chris, many shared plates later, “there’s still a bit left…” If it can be done with loaves and fishes, it can be done with pasta and burgers, it seems. Just need the occasion. After washing
up (where’d everybody go when washing up was mentioned?!) Chris
and I made for the main arena, passing gentle, but highly effective,
security on the way in. More Glastonbury – a huge stage, lights,
big screens, a sound control unit, concessions selling everything
from chips to sushi, and people. Thousands upon thousands of people.
And God. Actually it was all set up in the shadow of a classic Anglican
Church, the tower of which rose above the trees behind the stage.
I was not the only one to spot this. There were some great bands, Y Friday and 100 Hours being the headliners. Christian evangelical music it might be, but it was also a head-banging great night out. These people, the bands, are very very good. I know. I bought each of their CDs and a copy for Chris too. There was actual evangelising too. Very good evangelising; the sort of evangelising that a socially-disadvantaged person living in reduced circumstances in an environment with little prospects who has grown up far too quickly and is already getting old too soon in a place where the idea of a family unit is but an unrealistic hope - the sort of evangelising that that person can understand, and gain succour from. Andy Hawthorne is a remarkable man. I might be more of a singing-in-the-choir-at-the-cathedral sort of worshipper and, because I’ve done a lot of it, get uplifted by that, but I was moved by what was going on in Croxteth Park that night. Many young people, caught up in the moment or with a vision of what might be, entered the tent, the Response Tent, in which people could talk to them and assist them with their declaring a commitment to God. “Make that
step, Adrian. Make that step…!” Angela, Chris’ wife,
is a lively yet enigmatic Irish woman, responsible for bringing Chris
to Christ some twenty years ago, who as well as fighting the good
fight with all her might, also battles daily with a dibilitating challenge,
spotted a certain attentiveness in me. “No,” I replied
carefully, not really me.” However I was aware of perhaps being
a little outside something of which, actually I was on the brink.
Mind you, one
has to be a little wary of the zeal, perhaps! Some people to whom
Chris introduced me at Merseyfest, he and I met again in a quite different
time and place. Then, after morning coffee, Chris asked about the
chap’s sheep. He’s not a farmer but keeps some fine sheep
in a paddock adjoining his house and we were taken to see them. It
was a lovely summer’s morning, the birds were singing (aren’t
they always on occasions like this? Certainly they are in the written
version) and we were standing in a paddock looking at sheep. That evening Merseyfest rocked Croxteth Park until about 10.30 pm then everybody retired back to their tented village for post-rock conviviation. Chris ran me back to FRILFORD in Eldonian Village. I was all evangelised out, and the next day, Sunday, it was all to happen again. I was, again, looking forward to it. After Merseyfest things quietened down a little, but only a little. Jayne went off to London to sort something and left me in charge of her boat. I was able to take stock, somewhat, of where I was actually moored. Of Eldonian Village I have already written. The other side of the high, intruder-paint covered, fence was the Vauxhall Road. Although now completely redeveloped in that most of the old buildings have been demolished and the road is overlooked by such places as the Eldonian Village, there are echoes of the past in the various pubs which are still to be found along the road. Small, dark often simple one-roomed bar establishments, they are testament to Liverpool’s tough history. One of them, I think the Green Man, was used in the making of Alan Bleasdale’s 1982 TV saga Boys From the Black Stuff, a tale of a gang of tarmac layers on the dole in Liverpool. That show gave people in the south an impression of how desperate life could really be. It was especially poignant as there was huge unemployment in Britain at the time. Yosser Hughes, the most remembered character, was so desperate for work to feed his family that he begged people "Gissa job". The odd little
shop, next to the pubs often, also hark back to hard times. Also small
and dark, these were places huddled on the grimy pavement. They had
no windows, bricked in years ago, and the doors were heavy steel things
with several large padlocks on them. Inside the shops were more like
the small places I’ve seen in Nigeria than anything one would
expect to find in Britain. Dark and unforgiving, there was very little
in them to buy. A few cans of drink standing forlornly on otherwise-bare
shelves. Otherwise Liverpool’s
charm continued to show itself though the people I came across as
I went about the business of having FRILFORD up there. One day I went
to the launderette off the Vauxhall Road. It was closed but the woman
in the shop next door said it would be open again tomorrow. It was
and a charming woman therein took my two full bags of washing and,
for a not unreasonable amount of money, turned it all around for me
in about three hours. Later I went back and, having some time on my
hands, I decided to do my own washing. The place was closed when I
got there but the woman in the shop next door was again on hand with
local advice. “She said she’d be late this morning, but
she’ll be here soon, I’m sure.” First woman was recently back from holiday, apparently, and ready to show off her tan, which was good, from what I could see of it. I got to see more and more of it as various layers of teeshirt came off. “You should see my bikini line” caused me to cough in a rather theatrical manner… Both women turned to me and laughed “You’re alright, love… I’ll see it later!” I’d like
to take washing back there one day. At the other end of the Vauxhall Road is a discount booze shop. In there I found all the stock, the till and the women behind the counter, caged behind thick steel bars. You have to point at what you want and guide the woman to it – a sort of Golden Shot for the 21st Century. “Right a bit, bit more, now down, right a bit more, no, too much, yes: I’ll have two of those” got me a couple of bottles of red wine, whilst all around youths were buying single cans of lager and half-bottles of vodka. Another time I went in there to find just me one side of the bars and a woman on her own on the other side of the bars. “Do you have a bottle of champagne, please?” I asked, again feeling a bit foolish. They did, and a cold one at that. I explained to the woman that I’d just heard that my cousin’s boy, my cousin who lives in Liverpool, has just got his exam results. He’s done well so we are going to have a drink with him tonight. “Oh, that’s nice,” said the woman, smiling, “I’m made up for ‘im…” I’d like
to play the Golden Shot in there again one day too… A Liverpudlian
ex-pat friend of mine said to me on the ‘phone the other day
“Adrian, I was twenty years old before I realised that there
are actually booze shops that don’t have everything in cages…”
I’ve had it so easy, and still do. Another ex-pat friend, a Singaporean, whom I first me in the early 1980s when I lived in Singapore, sent me a text from Auckland, New Zealand saying she was coming to London to see her sister, on her way to Italy and the San Francisco and where was I and could we meet. Her’s is the most cosmopolitan family I have ever met: Chinese and European parents and siblings married to various nationalities and living in various parts of the world. To a Scandinavian and in New Zealand in her case. Talking to her is like having a World Atlas Gazetteer read out aloud for one’s entertainment! For one so international
a trip to Liverpool on the train was as of nothing so one fine day,
together with her young son who was along for the ride and ‘the
education’, we set off on a small itinerary based on input from
said son. We went first to Anfield, home of Liverpool Football Club.
I am not a football fan, as such, but since that visit I have kept
a bit of an eye on what LFC is going – and they’ve been
doing okay since I’ve started paying them attention! I wanted
to get on the Anfield Tour but had already been told the various ones
for that day were fully booked. This caused disappointment in young
son, which turned to joy later as we were told that a coach party
was not going to turn up so there was a Tour Guide and empty tour
slot ready to go. Getting caught up in these things, as one does, we went into the LFC shop where young son was keen to acquire everything. I bought a coffee mug, which I use most days now, and a lapel pin. One of the shop assistants, a large fellow in full LFC shop regalia, spotted what had caused me a bit of concern earlier – that young son was wearing a Fulham FC teeshirt! With mock severity large fellow bent down to young son and asked “That your teeshirt? There’s a five pound fine for wearing it in here!” Young son went white as a sheet but was quickly restored by a friendly pat on the baseball cap by large fellow and the swift purchase of a boy’s LFC teeshirt. Mind you, not
much of a lesson was learned because, the need for football experiences
not sated (mine were; I am now a closet, although it is a deep closet,
LFC fan), me, my friend and young son walked off down the road in
search of Everton FC and Goodison Park. Another regalia shop but this
time more window shopping than anything else. W Young son had a burger en route so back at FRILFORD he was sat down to write an essay about his experiences to date. We had a bit of fun with that. Jacqui, my friend, and I poured drinks and sat in the evening sun talking of old times. Young son, Magnus, struggled with the writing a bit, but with input from Jacqui and me, got down something. Something slightly more surreal than he might have come up with himself, but it’ll make a good reminder of a good day, hopefully. Next day, bright
and early to stick with the schedule, we took a cab to Pier Head.
From there we rode the famous Mersey Ferry on the River Mersey and
sang along to “Ferry ‘cross the Mersey” First Christopher and then Jacqui – is there something about Liverpool which brings people together? Yes there is. Even people who have no obvious affinity with the place choose to meet there, it seems. What I planned
to do in Liverpool, very much wanted to do in fact and I can’t
explain why I didn’t do it, was to go to evensong at the Anglican
Cathedral. I had done so on a previous visit to Liverpool, when we
had ‘Heath Insured’ the yacht on which I raced around
the world, I Albert Dock for some Heath Group corporate flag-waving
back in 1994, and was both moved and thrilled by the serenity of the
service and the majesty of Sir Giles Gilbert Scott’s great edifice.
After a couple of weeks in Liverpool it was time to go. I’d not spent time around the fine metropolitan architecture of central Liverpool, the Walker and Tate galleries had not seen me and I’d not been to the theatre. I'd not given Liverpool a chance to be at her best, perhaps, but I'd done enough to know I'd been somewhere special. Indeed I liked what I had done, and I’d had another wonderful Friday night with the Eldonians in the Village Hall, at which Gerry was on fine form and introduced me to some people who also bought whiskies in twos. Jayne was back from London. She had her mother in tow and had arranged with British Waterways for an escort out to Mughull on 1st September, a day hence. Jonathan, Chris’ eldest son, was to come with me on the trip to Manchester and arrived early in the morning of the 1st covered in intruder-preventing paint. “I couldn’t get in!” he said. After two weeks of fine, warm weather the sun turned to cloud, then to torrential rain and high wind. It was indeed time to go. Liverpool is clearly
a challenging and demanding city. It knows its identity and is happy
with it. It, or rather all the people I came across there, made me
feel very welcome, albeit more than a little foreign. In 2008 Liverpool
is to be the European City of Culture. Part of the development plans
for 2008 are to take the Leeds and Liverpool Canal through Eldonian
Village Basin, down to Pier Head and into Albert Dock. I am so glad I made the effort to get FRILFORD to Liverpool when I did. I shall take her there again, preferably before 2008 and, hopefully, again in 2008. Then I shall voyage through to Albert Dock, but not before staying a while in Eldonian Village and have a couple of whiskies (you can’t have fewer, it seems!) with Gerry and Tony on a Friday night. I’ll do my washing and have a cup of tea, maybe, in the laundrette, and buy a pint of milk on the Vauxhall Road. I’ll visit the women behind bars in the booze shop and I shall go to evensong at the cathedral. If I’m lucky, I’ll get to Anfield for a game. After all, Liverpool is my team now. Take it away, Gerry…. Life
goes on day after day So
ferry 'cross the Mersey People
they rush everywhere So
ferry 'cross the Mersey People
around every corner So
I'll continue to say So
ferry 'cross the Mersey
|
I
have not spend much time in Liverpool, still less finding out about
the place, but as a serious, albeit casual, visitor I can say the
same of Liverpool. Everything which makes it such a remarkable place
reaches out to the visitor. The people, the culture, the aspect, are
not like those of other places. Liverpool is a very special place
with an extraordinary history and magnificent future.
Christmases
were either with them or with us but a prefab cottage in Milford on
Sea, farm cottages in Abersoch and Aberdaron on the Lleyn Peninsula
in North Wales, Scarborough, and, later, Estartit in Spain are just
some of the places to benefit from the Gibaud-Rayson circus arriving
in town for a holiday. Once upon a time in Carcassonne in southern
France our meeting in the main post office brought all business in
the place to a standstill as we bellowed affable greetings to each
other. We were thrown out and told not to return. We didn’t!
The Gibauds were on a canal boat; we were camping and had arranged
to leave messages for each other in the post office at Carcassonne
to arrange a time to meet and this was both parties arriving for the
first time to leave messages. Redundant messages as it turned out.
Blood is thicker than water, it seems….
This
makes his concept of time-keeping a little flexible. I have come to
be very fond of Christopher once again and, smilingly, have come to
realise that, outside of his work, at which he is punctilious, conscientious
and timely, when he says ‘I’ll pick you up in the early
afternoon’ it means ‘We have established a concept of
my picking you up today…’, ‘3.30 pm’ or any
definition of a time means that ‘the concept still exists and
has been refined’. A call to say ‘I’m just leaving
now and I’ll see you in ten minutes’, usually made several
minutes after the proposed meeting time, means ‘sometime within
the next twenty minutes or so I shall be getting into the car, notwithstanding
that I think I’m about to do it now’ and the ‘see
you in ten minutes’ bit means’ if there is nothing on
the road and Jensen Button happens to be testing his BAR F1 car between
my place and where you are and I can get a lift with him, I’ll
see you in ten minutes!’
the
local borough Councils and numerous other community partners and local
businesses, Merseyfest is caught imagination of many.
There
were Bands, DJs, Live MCs, Breakdancers, Europe’s Biggest Outdoor
Skatepark, Bungee Jumping, Urban Arts, a massive Fireworks Display,
a Family Interaction Zone with Bouncy Castles, Games, Face Painting,
Robotics and lots of fun for all the family.
Stuff
everywhere. A frustrated cry of ‘has anyone seen my other shoe?’
might just as well have been ‘Does God exist?’ for all
the likelihood of getting a definitive answer, given the complexity
and confusion of the search area. Except that, at Merseyfest in August
of 2005, there were many thousands of people more than ready to explain,
with joy, why and how God does exist and, indeed, to pitch in, with
the same joy, to find the missing shoe. It was a remarkable gathering.
The
Bishop of Liverpool, Rt. Rev James Jones, was invited on stage and
spoke very well. He, too, mentioned the tower in the trees, thus making
the smallest of allusions to the established church standing behind,
or at least with, the event.
Mind
you, it is the overtness of the ‘born-agains’ which I
find so difficult. Despite my occasional loudness and inappropriate
bombast I am not like that about some things. I could not possibly
stand on stage and announce to the gathering that I had embraced God
and that He was my saviour. Not me at all. Indeed I am sure there
is something in the bible about Jesus saying beware of the man who
makes a show of his faith on the street corner, or something, but
then it also says something to the effect that ‘as soon as two
or three are gathered together in My name…’. Except I
have a growing concern (concern? Why should it be a concern?) that
if I were ready to accept God into my life in the way that those around
me, and by that I mean Chris and Angela of whom I was to see more
in the next few months that at any stage in the last twenty-five years,
would like to see happen, then I am sure I would be ready to evangelise.
Suddenly
our light conversation was taken to a different plane as this chap
used the sheep allegory to make an evangelical point about Jesus,
his flock et al. Came right out of nowhere and had me pinned in the
middle of the paddock for several minutes! Also, rather than join
in, as I sense I was being encouraged to do, all I could come up with
was a very weak “Yes, well, er.. quite…”.
A
few tired newspapers on the counter, some dusty jars of sweets and
some packets of biscuits. In one I bought a paper, the Daily Telegraph
(I felt a bit foolish: I was not around Daily Telegraph readers, but
they had one in the shop, so I bought it. I think the woman behind
the counter was as surprised that I’d bought it as she was that
she’d sold it!) and a loaf of bread, which appeared from beneath
the counter and was popped quickly into a brown paper bag (contraband
bread?). I asked if they’d got any milk. With a look that was
not unkind but was rather you’re-certainly-not-from-around-here,
the woman disappeared into the back and came back with a pint of milk
in a glass bottle. I can’t remember when I last saw one of those.
I used to deliver them years ago when I worked as a relief milkman
for the Co-op in Oxford, but that was back in 1973. For all I know
she’d got it out of her own fridge. I was most grateful. I paid
and after a friendly exchange, her side of which I did not understand
at all, I left with my simple, but entirely satisfactory, purchases.
I tried shopping there again a few days later, but the place was shut,
as it was a few days after that. It was not the only such place like
it on the Vauxhall Road. I wonder if she’s okay, that woman
behind the counter.
She
was, although it was not the same ‘she’ as had been there
on the previous occasion. I swapped some change for the machine, got
it going then sat down on the bench to read my paper. Shortly another
woman arrived, laden with bags of washing. Clearly part of the local
scene she and the launderette woman chatted amicably as several machines
were pressed into service. After a fag break (how are these people
going to manage when the smoking ban comes in? This place was only
held up by cigarette smoke..) the second woman called to the first
“I’m going out the back: you want one.” More of
a statement than a question she did not wait for an answer and before
long she was back, carrying a tray on which were three mugs of tea.
One for first woman, one for her, and one for me! “Here’ya,
love. Meant to ask but forgot. You’ll have one though won’t
you…?” Hot, sweet tea out of a faded mug. It coursed through
my veins like a tonic and, having drunk it, I reckon I could have
taken on the world.
We
saw it all, went ‘behind the scenes’ heard all about it
and sat in The Kop. Our guide has been supporting Liverpool man and
boy, as had his father, and was exactly the sort of dedicated fan
one hears about but cannot believe really exist. They do, and he was
admirable in so many ways.
indow
shopping done with a Liverpool FC carrier bag much in evidence! I’d
been carrying it at one stage but I had engineered to give it to someone
else before we got to Goodison Park! They were all friendly in the
shop but Everton is Everton and Liverpool is Liverpool. Couldn’t
we hide the bag?! Later, after walking up and down in Everton searching
for other football regalia (“They only have Liverpool, Everton
and England stuff here – I want to buy a Chelsea shirt….!”
“I don’t think you’ll do that here…”
was all I could contribute to the situation.) we found a cab and drove
back to FRILFORD in Eldonian Village.
which,
inevitably and charmingly, gets played every trip, and then, on disembarking,
made our way to Albert Dock and The Beatles Experience. I was to meet
Christopher who was meeting the Chairman of Merseyfest later. I wanted
to shake the Chairman, Phil Pawley, by the hand and congratulate him
on what I hoped was a great success. So it was after a relatively
quick tour of the shops in Albert Dock and a bite to eat at a waterside
café there, Singaporeans love both shopping and food and we
were well served by Albert Dock that day, we met Chris. We took Jacqui
and Magnus to Liverpool Station for the trip to London and Chris and
I went off to find Chairman Phil. It was great to see Jacqui again
as it had been probably ten years since I’d last seen her.
I
have been back since and had ‘the tour’, although I have
get to make evensong; an error on my part. Christopher has dealings
with the cathedral at a high level and has wide access. Tobias, his
son, was a chorister there for many years and, with my having been
a chorister at New College Oxford, I was very aware of the atmosphere
of musical study and singing excellence which pervades the intensely
private choir rooms behind the high altar, where the subdued hubbub
of the cathedral seems so far away. My vertigo was tested as we stood
on ‘The Bridge’ and my knees went physically weak as we
looked high into the dome above the nave and Christopher explained
that at the Millennium Service a soprano had sung a solo from up there.
Unbelievable! Or maybe not. Mysterious ways, and all that.
Since
coming away from Liverpool I’ve heard various people say that
there’s no way they’d take their boat to Liverpool now,
but will do so if they ‘fix the canal’ for 2008.