Never Walking Alone

We have a whiteboard in our house on which we have written the places we want to go once it is safe and permitted to do so. The list goes:

• Uffington White Horse

• Lincoln 

• Scott Polar Museum

• Japan

• Yorkshire and Scotland to see the two sets of in-laws

• Welsh coastal walks

• Liverpool

As you can see, it’s something of a mixed bag, and we can’t do them all in the same afternoon.

Linda looked at me quizzically when I added the last item. I explained that it is one of my favourite cities. She didn’t ask why, but it got me thinking about why, and about the history of me and Liverpool.

When I was a student I used to get a couple of weeks work as a pipe fitter’s labourer in the first two weeks of the summer vacation. A team of specialist fitters would come up to Fife from Sheffield to overhaul an oxygen plant, but they would hire the unskilled labour locally. Incidentally, the skilled workers had very traditional South Yorkshire ways of speech, and I recall one saying to his pal when we found the canteen unexpectedly closed, ‘Thee’s fucked for thy bacon sandwich, Vin.’

Anyway, it involved long hours and hard work, and I earned shedloads of money in two weeks. I would then take a little holiday and blow most of it, come back to Cowdenbeath and work as a barman for the rest of the summer. In 1977, I decided to use my wages to go to Dublin for a week, sailing overnight from Liverpool. I alighted from the train at Lime Street at noon on the day I was to sail, so I had all afternoon and early evening to explore the city.

I found it fascinating, although in terms of urban dereliction, Liverpool took a lot of beating in 1977, particularly as I recall down on the waterfront near where I got on the passenger ferry to Dublin. However, the centre was buzzing, as it still was just before the pandemic, and I had a great dinner in Chinatown and a pint or two in some welcoming pubs.

Strangely I only went back to Liverpool once after that in the 20^th century, on a massive anti-unemployment demonstration in the early Thatcher years. However, since the year 2000 I have often visited the city, to work with colleagues in the University and the NHS there on lung cancer studies (sadly, there is a lot of lung cancer in Liverpool). I have enjoyed every minute I have spent there.

The city can be rough and ready. It is the one place where I have been asked to pay for my food in advance in a restaurant, in case I headed for the blue horizons after stuffing my face but before paying my bill. Although the docks area has been impressively redeveloped, there are still places, fairly central, where you see branches of shrubs growing out of third floor windows in derelict buildings, and outside of the centre are some pockets of the worst deprivation in the country. Life expectancy in some of these areas is disturbingly short.

But the city has so much to recommend it. If I were leading you on a guided tour, just in the centre of town, I would start at the Anglican Cathedral (not the Metropolitan Cathedral, also known as Paddy’s Wigwam). This massive brick edifice was designed by Giles Gilbert Scott, who was the architect of the classic red telephone boxes. The place looks big enough from the outside, but inside it seems even larger, sometimes scarily so. It is magnificent. Incidentally, I recommended it to my great friend Kevin Connelly, who followed my advice and visited it, inadvertently gatecrashing Ken Dodd’s funeral.

We would then walk along Hope Street, with impressive views of the Wigwam in front of us. We would pass John King’s quirky sculpture of piles of suitcases and guitar cases on the pavement. We would turn left down Hardman Street and see the haunting shell of St Luke’s Church, gutted by Luftwaffe bombs. Just across from there, up a small side street, I would buy you a pint in The Roscoe Head, a lovely little pub, a little like drinking in a very friendly neighbour’s living room. I do so hope that it survives the lockdown and reopens afterwards. Incidentally, don’t confuse it with the Roscoe Arms round the corner. Nothing wrong with the Roscoe Arms, but it’s not the Roscoe Head.

We might then have dinner in Chilli Chilli in Chinatown. This place does some very hearty Chinese soups and stews, and like the Roscoe Head has rather a cosy, homely atmosphere. One word of warning: once I had pig’s ear with chilli as a starter, and although flavoursome, in terms of texture it was like eating a burst football.

Thereafter, we might return to Hope Street and have a nightcap in the Philharmonic Dining Rooms, a magnificent Victorian gin palace. Apparently, it is famous for its ornate lavvies, all gleaming brass and antique porcelain, but who cares. It sells drink.

The following morning, we might go down to the waterfront, see the Liver Building and other iconic sights, and admire some of the statues in the refurbished Albert Dock area. They like their statues in Liverpool. The picture above shows Bessie Braddock and Ken Dodd in Lime Street Station, and it is a funny experience, as they are not on pedestals, just walking through the station like you or me. My favourite statue, however, is the one of Billy Fury, down at the docks.

But I haven’t said a word about the people. What impresses me about the people is the positive attitude. Despite the wrecked economy, the deprivation, the short life expectancy and all that, there is a real corporate spirit, local pride and as I say, a positive attitude. They still seem to make a go of it, where lesser mortals might sink.

I once attended an international conference on lung cancer (sorry to harp on about it) down at the docklands area. Our hosts treated us to the conference dinner in the Adelphi Hotel, a characterful early 20^th century pile, all peeling stucco and faded grandeur, but first they gave us an old double decker bus trip around the sights. Some of my colleagues were rather contemptuous of this, making amused and superior remarks about the old and new landmarks which we passed. I thought, You pompous, overprivileged, patronising bastards. The people of this city have endured privations that you can’t imagine and look what they have built with it! I was particularly puzzled by the US colleagues’ joining in with this, as most of them came from cities which, as I recalled, seemed to be rectangular grids of identical buildings, with the occasional area, across a major highway or railroad, in which people lit fires on the pavement. I didn’t actually say anything, however. I just sat there on the upper deck of the bus, with a face like a yard of tripe.

Sorry if I have offended US friends with the above, but I was briefly in the grip of strong emotions.

I hope this has given some idea of this great city and why I like it so much. A last word about Ken Dodd. My colleague Gerry Collins, who drew my attention to some of the great landmarks of Liverpool listed above, noted that in relation to Ken Dodd’s ‘diddy’ catchphrases and to his tax evasion activities, the people of the city had a saying: ‘Diddy pay? Diddy fuck.’