My Litherland Lil, lovely Litherland Lil

Liverpool can be a mournful melancholic city where the weather decides the mood. On Monday it was baking and Williamson Square was buzzing to the sound of Karaoke at Sweeneys Bar. Tuesday was pissing it down and I ended up on a bus to Garston. I returned to the centre as soon as I could. I felt down and fatigued, weary of the lamenting underbelly. St Vincent de Paul on one side of the road and the Lynsey de Paul on the other. It’s a brave man who dares to criticise the Pool of Life. The aftermath of the Covid plague is everywhere and it does not sit well with sociable scousers. Buses that used to be vibrant with the craic, now silent as the church we are passing. Religion has laid its heavy hand on Liverpool, the two opulent cathedrals and the poverty surrounding them. Chinatown looks like Wuhan at the start of the outbreak. The Baltic Triangle, eulogised by estate agents appears cold and drab. I return every so often, this my first visit in five years. I return but I’m not sure what for.* The down to earthedness of the people. The music in the soles of the feet of the drug addicts. Man can they move. There seem to be less beggars. The ones that are left are more respectable and will engage in witty repartee and banter with the people they have just asked for money. I see other places in Liverpool. I see Newport, Gwent. I see Rhyl. Here also is a Southern Glasgow. You know I was going to say English and you know I’d be wrong. Liverpool is a celtic city, a cauldron of Irish, Scots and Welsh.  It is a Republic. I’m surprised that they don’t burn effigies of Boris Johnson or Prince Andrew in full Navy regalia on Williamson Square. I am staying not a stone’s throw from the bust of Carl Gustav Jung who dreamt of the Pool of Life in 1927. I thought that synchronicity would lead me to it but I was wrong. I had to walk past the cavern club and walk around and approach the old boy from a different direction.

 Well, I have bought a Day Pass on Stagecoach Buses and here I am with my feet up on the bunk at 2.00pm. Best get out there again in the pissing rain to get my money’s worth. Money’s worth of melancholia, old ropeworks and bus tickets. 

You’re dying to know where I went to get my days pass moneys worth aren’t you?! No? Well I’ll tell yez anyway.  Crosby but there was no sign of Stills and Nash. It was pissing down so I didn’t go and see Anthony Gormley’s non gender specific iron folk. A woman in a black bomber jacket with shimmering sequins in the shape of angels wings got on and she gave me a filthy look. I was wearing a mask so I can only presume it was because I am a man.  I only took the bus to dry off so orft in a beleaguered Blundell Sands and back on the next bus to town or the City Centre. Who got back on the same bus but ‘Angel’ who gave me the same filthy look she’d given me on the way in. 

I know how to live eh? Getting me money’s worth out of day passes. It beats running back from Croatia and France. Stay Wet, Go Local. There’s no point mentioning the British Weather. “But your Welsh shouts a man from a bridge” I like Liverpool but I don’t think it likes me. I love its indifference. If you’re not a Scouser you can do one. In fact the Liver Birds could be replaced by a pair of cats. Licking their paws in a “I couldn’t give a toss if you drowned in the Mersey type of fashion”. The auld place has been here for hundreds of years, 1207 in fact founded by King John and it asks of the visitor “who are you by the  way?” As I write this I’m wondering what year Blacklers shut down? When did George Henry Lees close? Seeing parents queuing in the rain for school uniform while a busker played the power of love by Holly Johnson. This is a city like no other. Arrive unannounced and it will have its curlers on in marching down Bold Street. Tell them your coming and somebody will shout “Ya Divvy” from across the road to Lime Street Station. I admire this city and everything its been through but it doesn’t want you to romanticise it. They’ve done enough of that in the past.



I couldn’t find the bust of Carl Jung but here’s one of a man called Flan.

https://sharkfishinginwales.blogspot.com/2013/10/my-liverpool-lou.html

* I remember why I return, to get inspiration for me writing.