Preface …
Everyone knows about the Great Hunger in Ireland during the 1840s. I am familiar with the West, where many poor farming families and tradesmen sought a better life in North America. My family lived on a small farm in the Mountains of Mourne, in a townland called Kilfeaghan. They farmed poor, rocky land and sold some potatoes, but this wasn’t enough to support their growing family. My great-grandfather was energetic and had good ideas, so by the early 1900s, he set his sights on nearby Liverpool.
They settled first, with a shop in Dublin Street! From there, they moved up onto Scotland Road. ‘Scottie’ Road was blessed with a pub of almost a different brew on the end of each street. It was largely Catholic Irish streets, with the men living inside the bar, the kids playing outside and the women doing all the housework and meal making for everyone at home. Across the world was St. John’s Church, which was the heart of the Irish parish. Mark was the landlord of a number of pubs, up and down the street. He listened to many of the stories of dockers and sailors from South Asia especially. My family often lived upstairs and me Mum would sit on the stairs listening to all to tails, and tears they were.
As for my Dad’s family, they lived in the village grounds near Knowsley Hall. My Dad, because he became the local Post Office, was greatly trusted. After the World War, he used his lovely red BSA to cover the estate village, the outlying farms and, most important of all, the Knowsley Estate, a huge area of pasture and grassland. He must have known all the excising news, especially when Queen Victoria came visiting. I always especially enjoyed the writing of Edward Lear, which is where he drafted his famous poems, when walking through the wonderful, open spaces. My Dad’s wife came from the near-bye town of Prescot. Very sadly, having lived all through the War, his wife and son passed away with the terrible influenzas that caused the most formidable influenzas. My Dad survived, with his only surviving son, my Dad.
The beginning …
Where to start?
Well, I hear sound … No, sounds. Dimmed but excitable. The casual chat between neighbours. Friends perhaps. Yes. Yes, now I know.
I can smell it. Feel it. Just.
I was in a small cushioned box. Bouncing like a padded coffin on springs.
My brother and sister hsd bounced there before me. Me Mum must have scrubbed and scrubbed it clean. She was always like that. Like the doorstep of our place, red as a Cardinal’s Hat, but white like snow before the milkman came or the postie. I rattle a plastic ring and kick things out to get attention.
Kicking makes no difference. No, I don’t want what’s going on now.
I was born into murky, mucky, marvellous world. I was outside the Coop on Lawrence Road. On the corner of Liscard by the Solly. The Salisbury pub is closed now but not then. I could smell last night’s beer. I used to paddle and float matchstick boats there in the grey black puddles, beside the pub, where cars parked, before there were many at all. Then go home with mucky socks for me dinner. Me Mum said, “yer socks are filthy”. “You don’t have to wash them, do you?”
That’s the first thing that comes to mind.
How old am I? Not that long born or as so someone said. Why was I there? Mum never darkened the doors of a pub. She’d an orphan life, living over pubs, up and down Scottie Road (Scotland Road). Her Gran, then her Uncle Mark, looked after her. Well why? Her Grand-Dad drank too much. My Dad too, they say, but I don’t believe it. It was more likely the Spanish flu! Me Mum used to tell me, “It’s twelve o’clock and he’s not here, he’s either false or on the beer. Curse the man, I never loved him but I wish he was here”. Me Gran said.
that again and again. I never met her. She died young too. But though her health was often bad, dodgy heart and all that, she worked in Blacklers’ in town to bring in some money. She was also helped by ‘Grand-dad Fiddler’. No relation. Her boss actually. I learned later he was a Mason ‘cos I saw a picture of him, proud as punch, in all his regalia. Complete with white pinny. I’d would have to be dead to wear that pinny’. Each to their own, I suppose.
After her Mum died, me Mum tried to keep in touch with him and once, now this was something, me Mum and I got a train from Central Station to Macclesfield, where Grand-dad Fiddler lived. Long journey. Dead posh. Like really posh. When we got there, we were treated to a meal, the like of which I had never seen before nor since. Me Mum, despite my protests, got me to stand up on the seat after eating and sing a song for him and his wife. I always hated being the centre of attention. Still do. But I had no choice. I chirped away and the round of applause was thunderous. On the way home, me Mum quietly wept as the smoke from the engine made my eyes water too. She never said why. Maybe my Dad died too young? Poor guy. I would love to have met him. Mum told me I was born at the Maternity, on Oxford Road, near the Radium, where people went in and never came out. John Lennon was born in Maternity but a five years or so earlier than me. Back to the past present. I was outside the Coop because Mum needed some ’99 Tea’ for tea. Dad would be home at 6.03 on the dot, every night, unless the Prescot train was late. “Hello, love, on time?” He worked at the Cables, British Insulated Calender Cables (BICC) in Prescot. It was a regular stop those days. He got off at Edge Hill, where it was always wise to stop. I learned that as a student. We’d run out of tea for tea. I remember now the red and green packet. His favourite. We’d bumped into Mrs Mac from the Parish. We didn’t really bump into her. I’d remember that. No, we met her or at least Mum did. I was just along for the ride. I remember Mrs Mac popped her head around the edge of the pram saying “gooie gooie” a bit. At the time, I was insulted. How odd grown-ups speak to kids. They think we’re as daft as them? I bet she’d probably said, “what a fine-looking chap I was”. Just like Mum’s Dad, who died young but good-looking my Aunty Minnie said. But Mum always kept that quiet. Or at least that’s what I think they were talking about. I learned then women never stop talking. They probably strayed from my many fine features to the latest gossip in St Hugh’s. That’s still up the road, a bit past the Orange Lodge. Then, I filled me trousers. That was always a dead cert for finishing endless natter … Weeeeeeeeee … or a smell you know. “Better go”, says Mum. “To sort out the lad”. Yes!
The ‘Mystery‘
Weeeeeeee. No, that was not just how I filled my trousers. That was the noise Mum made as she ran, pushed and let go of me, pram facing forward, as we rattled around the Mystery. All I could see above me was the sky. The ‘Misogg’ was just a great wide-open space then, fringed by chestnut trees. It’s still a favourite spot. Back then, I spent hours and hours, mostly with me Mum, watching the ‘Red Rose Express’ from London to Lime Street, as it puffed out smoke and sparks, as the driver waved and the stoker stoked, on the incline at the end of the Mystery, where an old station used to be. Wavertree Station was there, but closed them days. Jubilee class train it was, I think. Me mate Jimmy told me that and Jimmy was usually right. The old platforms were still there, he said. He’d slipped up the bank to have a nosey, not the safest thing to do. But when you are like Jimmy or even me it’s the weeeeeeeeee that made life bearable. I remember when we used to explore his back yard shed. It was full of wonders. Jimmy hated his birthday being November 5. He also had some gas-masks from the War. Not sure which ones to be honest. Anyway, it was great in his shed with the masks on. Very hard to breath mind. That smell of rubber and leather, made you gasp. Hard to hear each other too. I wondered how soldiers talked in the trenches. With Gerry rockets landing too close for comfort, I don’t suppose it mattered, as long as they missed you!.
But I was saying, and before I forget, I used to go to the Misogg, as we locals called the mysterious Mystery. I always liked to call it that because all my life I had trouble with saying the letter ‘r‘. My life always seemed run by them. There with my Dad, not in the pram I hasten to add, but when I was able to hold me own in goal, we played three each way and my Dad was Dixie Dean and me, well I wished I was Neville Southall. Though, thinking about it, it couldn’t have been then because he was still at school, probably in North Wales. That wasn’t far from us. We used to go there on holidays for a week in a caravan, near Pensarn. O’ the glow of the gas mantles, their smell, the tickety tack of the rain on the roof, the rattling of the van as the ‘Emerald Isle Express’ stormed past, a gargantuan beast of coal and sparks and steam. “Mustn’t be late, mustn’t be late, to catch the boat, mustn’t be late”, it used to say . So, it was useless sending us to bed early, until it had passed. When I came back to the caravan one day, having fallen in the stream, which is what I thought it was, at least more a ditch really full of all sorts of rubbish, pulled out by my sister, me Mum stripped me down and washed me from head to foot and told me off. Not too sharply, more relieved I hadn’t drowned, I think. Or picked up some rare Welsh disease. The Welsh could be a bit odd, especially when they spoke Welsh, whatever that was
But back to Dixie, who we saw once from the Roman Walls in Chester, sitting behind the bar of the ‘Dublin Packet‘ pub, looking tired and a long way now from scoring those 60 plus goals for the Toffees, near where my Mum lived as a kid. That’s where Everton FC was and still is. Even though, the new ground is down by the sea. Dixie looked, after the bar there, until it was closed. Since there it has been modernised.
By Everton, me Mum used to cadge pennies looking after bikes in her back yard. With the window open, when the crowd roared, she knew we’d scored, no need for ‘Grandstand’ on the BBC then, with its the ticker tape machine that ratter tap tapped the results out. Round then I also used to go on ‘me tod,’ when I was mad about Billy Boston and Wigan Rugby League. I used to practice kicking over branches by the railway line and hear the roar of the crowd which was never there, I used to go by the No. 60 Bus to the Old Swan. Then along the Prescot Road to Knotty Ash Stadium to watch Liverpool City Rugby League Football Club get a thrashing, as they did every week, except sometimes against Batley or Blackpool Borough who were even worse than us. I used to spend me pocket money on a cup of tea and a meat-pie at half time. Still got their shirt. The ground was owned by the Church, and the nuns, who were a silent order, used to watch all these muscular men running up and down the pitch, from the upper windows. Tut, tut. The main, and only stand, was given to us when the St Helen’s Club were getting modernised. In the end it was all sold for houses. The club played later in Huyton, down the road. Local scally-wags near destroyed the changing rooms. Usually when I got home, me Mum would never ask the score because often it would be 70, 80 even, 100 to 0. She would ask if we scored. When we did, I was dead chuffed. Then she said, “Shall I put the kettle on?” Yes, you’ve guessed it, for a cuppa of No 99 tea to be exact from the Coop on Lawrence Road where I first remember filling my trousers and causing a bit of panic. Me brother used to got to Goodison on his motorbike or scooter to be with his mates at the Bullens Road End. After much bullying, he did drive me once over to Widnes to watch Wigan play. And win! But Liverpool Rugby League was much nearer for me.
‘Paddy’s Day’ and all that …
There were other times though, when I was older and started at St Hugh’s. Just along the road a bit from the Church of the Protestant What’s it and by our Catholic Church. We always got green ribbons and gold harps from the ‘Cross and Passion Nuns’ on ‘Paddy’s Day’. Those days, we ran home as fast as we could, in case the ‘Proddie Dogs’ from Lawrence Road ‘Proddie School’, got us. They wanted to engage in theological debate with us ‘cats’ down a jigger. Come to think of it, I was always a bit too religious even in those days. They used to say, ‘why would I go to Holy Communion most mornings at 8 in the morning when it was not compulsory.’ Because I liked it. It was near empty and quiet. I also remember well where we got school meals, if you signed for them. Just up Earle Road, we had to walk to a dark, sinister-type building next to St. Dunstan’s, where the Council meals were dosed out from metal tins, hopefully still warm. In the same building, we used to march up from school for woodwork classes. I can remember the smell now of fish bones. They used to boil down fish bones to make stuff for sticking your master pieces together. My master pieces were more mini pieces! I still got the letter rack, painted green and white, somewhere. What other colour could it be?
The local parish priest at the time, Father Mitch, had his eye on me, not in the way you might be thinking. As a potential recruit to the One, True, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church, with its HQ in Rome. I used to hide in the bath when he knocked on the front door. He must have thought I was the cleanest boy in the Parish because my Mum always said, ‘I was taking a bath and unavailable!’ It got me off the hook any way. The trouble was, I think, that I was always too enthusiastic. Whatever I liked doing, I used to go to St. Hugh’s Church before school whatever the weather. I liked the privacy of it all. The intimacy, the dark columns, the smell of leftover incense and the bright statue of Jesus looking down at me, sinner that I was, as the teacher told me. Not just me, everyone in the class, but not Father Monty or Father Mitch or any of the others in clerical collars. Never fancied one of those neck squeezers. I couldn’t breathe for sure and dressing up in skirts and stuff, but I loved the idea of a quiet sip of communion wine each time. I even wondered about becoming a Franciscan, with that sack brown outfit and bare feet in sandals or ‘Jesus boots’. I have always been a bit odd like that.
My Dad was a convert on marriage. He had little choice really those days. But like many conversions, as he got older, the old wiring started to show. I stray again though. So back to school and my First Communion. Because I do not remember my baptism, with all that water dripping down my head and me in a long white lace dress, which my Mum never tired of looking at in fading photos, and showing the girlfriends, especially when I was in the ‘nicky nacky noo’ on the woollen rug. Anyway, when I had my First Communion, I stood on a tilt in the schoolyard afterwards. Or maybe my Dad was a bit wobbly with the old box camera, but I looked “a real dote”. My Aunty Minnie used to say I was just like my Mum’s Dad. I wore a red dicky bow. Red of all colours, why not blue! Now come on, a dicky bow (of whatever colour) round, where I came, from was pretty well a suicide note. But I seemed to survive. It was one of those click on types, so within seconds of my photo, and, after I had swallowed the wafer and not chewed it because that would have sent me to hell for sure, my knobbly knees were freezing. At least, I could ditch the dickie bow at least! My Mum and Dad must have spent a small fortune on those short trousers and matching jacket, but I never wore it again. I suppose it is a bit like marriage. You would look damned silly going into the fishmonger’s and asking for a couple of pieces of cod in a white wedding dress. So, with my dicky bow, which I still have somewhere stuck in a box, it rarely came to see in the light of day. Anyway, how could I wear a red dicky bow, as a Toffee?
Where do the ‘Ghosties’ come from …
Across the main road from us was the ‘Toxteth’ or Smithdown Road Cemetery’, as it was better known. It was for Proddies. But, when your dead, you’re dead. Unless something weird happened at night. It was mostly a short-cut to Green Bank Park, with the ducks and the drakes, and then Sefton Park. No religious questions asked. It never bothered me Mum.
During the summer holidays, we used to go across to the Cemetery. Mum would park herself, on a bench, next to one of the small chapels. I would explore, in sight, many of the old gravestones, including the one where Mum told me that the young man choked by eating too much chewing gum. It wrapped all the way around his inner organs apparently! Poor bloke. Mum was trying to get me off ‘Wrigley’s Spearmint Chewing Gum’, that you could get from slot machines. As long as you eat it all and got rid of the evidence, before coming home, all was well. I felt really sorry for that poor bloke though. Put me off chewie for short while. I seem to have survived though. I used to explore the names, which were often different from me own. Not many Peters or Patricks, too many Harold and Henrys. Some of the graves had immense stones, where you could play hide and seek behind. They must have been dead important people. Maybe people who ran the bleach factory across the road or the makers of the gravestones themselves next door. Anyway, I was dead interested to know what Prods ‘looked like’. Did they look like us? Really? Most like us, I suppose? Some small photos were stuck to the sides of the grave. Made me feel sad. I wonder what they were really like? Very few came to sit by them or leave flowers. That was sad too. I didn’t understand that. As for ghosts, I can still remember, when walking home after seeing my girl-friend near Sefton Park in the early hours, the things I saw which still spook me. Round mid-night, at about the end of Egerton Road (very near our street), what looked like an army of cats, all shapes, colours and sizes jumped over the low walls of the cemetery and stormed, across Smithdown Road, up Egerton in a mass. It made me shelter and pretend I wasn’t there! I’m not joking. There must have been about a hundred or more. I can still feel the cold horror in my back bone, when I think of it!! A chill in the spine. They moved in a group. Like a large pack. And they didn’t speak with each other. Looking ahead. Not to each other. I creeped sad ways. The only things that moved were the cockroaches, that scuttled from next door.
Rough, tough times
On the first day at primary school, we divided into red or blue in the playground. That’s the way it was. We played footy, at break, as two tribes. I was lousy at sport though, a bit of a cruncher in defence. At right back, if they got past me and my legs, they were good. Like Joey, me mate, who lived up Earle Road with a tin bath, in front of the fire. Anyway, it meant a few more penalties than usual, but we had a good goalie. ‘A successful team is based upon a solid defence’. I used to hear that on the radio. On the Blues! My whole family past and present were/are Blues. At one stage, me sister Jenny, decided she was a Liverpool supporter at Sunday dinner. Just to cause trouble. As she hoped that really put the cat amongst the pigeons. My Mum tried her best but at least no blood was spilled. Just private growling.
A solid defence was always helpful in the 50s because the gangs were rough and dead tough, especially the Teddy Boys and their knives, lurking around the pubs after closing time up Earle Road. Thankfully, I was too young to be of much interest to them but you always had to be careful not to look them in the eyes. Otherwise, you were in deep shit. And never say which team you supported. I suppose Tranmere Rovers would confuse them, but only long enough for you to ‘run like hell’ down the nearest jigger and to throw yourself into the nearest friendly open door. Cause most off the houses kept their doors open and round school there was always someone you knew. I am not joking.
I remember how sad the street was when some of our older lads were killed in a motorbike pile up on Speke Boulevard. The street was silent. No-one knew what to say. Like when my sister was killed in a plane crash. What can you say? Our hopes for the future were dead. Crumpled. Lost. Heaven or Hell or not. Just lost forever. The silence. ‘O, the bloody silence” They hit a roundabout in the fog. You know, or probably you don’t, the fogs we used to get those days, before the ‘Clean Air Act’ or something came in. You no longer smelt like sooty, not that I know how Sooty smelt, when I got in from school. ‘Pea-soupers’ they used to call them and they were right. Apart from everywhere being grey or a filthy deep yellow or green and you could taste coal on your tongue. You literally felt your way. More than once I walked into a gravel-covered lamp post and apologised! Though with cuts on my head and knees, it should have apologised to me! Me secondary school was worst. It was in West Derby. There was no alternative but to feel your way home, down roads, streets, over roundabouts. Damnation! It was downright terrifying. And I am not a wimp.
At the Cameo, our local cinema, the manager and his assistant were murdered, for what was a low key sum of money. We had become known as ‘Murder Mile’. All the papers like the ‘Daily Wail’ and ‘News of the Screws’ loved it all. Believe it or not, it had been a large Welsh Chapel before then. But my Mum and Dad and many others, who were trying to bring us up decent, hated all that. After all, when they got our house first, after being married in Huyton, there were no windows. ‘Gerry the German” had dropped a landmine looking for the hospital but flattened the local billiard hall instead, at the end of the road. It’s there that Mum and Dad had their first meal in their own house one a dust bin lid turned upside down. So why should we be afraid of ‘yobbos’ around?
Things were serious though. While no-one told me then, because it was all hush-hush like which gang you were in, there was a brutal rape at the end of the road. A few houses from us. Apparently, a bloke got into the back yard of the house and peeked through the gap in the curtains to check he was all clear. The poor lady never recovered. Ever since, I always keep the curtains tight closed. Wouldn’t you? We also had a flasher, half way down the street. No-one worried about him. “Put it away,” “you should be ashamed of yourself”, or “never mind, love. It’ll grow”, is what the local women said to him. They didn’t bother telling the ‘Rossers’, about it because he was harmless. His Mum was looking after him. No harm done. Until all the dog muck started to get too much, you walked to most people down the back entry, when it wasn’t lashing down.
Twinkle, twinkle little star …
To be honest, I miss those mad times now. Like when our upright piano fell through the front room floor That was a pity really, because me Mum used to play a bit, and me sister too before she was killed. They say that it was all due to the River Jordan, or so they say. It actually started under ‘Woodies’ Pools and along the Botanical Gardens, under part of the Edge Hill works and it flowed under our house and Mrs. Zhirinovsky’s next door. Mr Andrew’s lived on the other side of our house. He remembered his Dad saying he fished in it, before our houses were built on top of it, back in the 1880’s. Well, anyway, the Jordan flowed, and probably still does, under our house. As a result, it was a bit on the damp side. I suppose they were too busy laying down lines of houses, ‘Tweedledum’ and ‘Tweedle-dee’, to be bothered too much about a miserable little stream. Apparently, it flowed from the our house under our ‘ouse, down through Greenbank and then Sefton Park Lake, and into the Mersey along Jericho Lane. This is where the otters used to play in their pool. But anyway, despite being called the Jordan, where Baptists used to baptise themselves as Baptists do. It was no damned good for our piano, which one day fell through the floor, in our front room. The noise and the mess it made of our best room. I tried to play down into the hole, but that was no bloody good. It set itself on the soft river banks under the street
Even so, it was our best room by a mile. Here we entertained the priest when he came on a vocational raid and/or after ‘charity. There was usually no other reason except for when Aunty Gert used to come, because we were never sure what to do with her. I used to die each time. She always stuck her legs wide open in front of me, as I played soldiers on the floor. I couldn’t but see her snow-white bloomers. It’s also where my sister entertained her boyfriend of the time. I had to knock on the door before bringing the ginger nuts and the pot of tea in. Yes, straight though the floor it went, scattering everywhere family photos and would not budge. Even worse, it took me Mum’s best carpet with it! She was beside herself. So was I. I used to charge the family to visit the front room sometimes to view my exhibition of toys, chewing gum cards and other treasures. Money was short those days.
Anyway. I stray once more from the beautiful, constantly polished, rarely played piano, the family’s pride and joy. What was the piano tuner going to do when he called next time? In the end, we had to take it to pieces. Bits of it helped make the backyard shed where we sheltered from the rain or where I was sent in expulsion from the house. Other bits made the best bonfire ever in our back entry or ‘jigger’ on ‘Bommy night’. Jimmy’s birthday was November 5th, though he hated that. He always got fireworks! Anyway, the piano’s lacquered wood burned so well, our back wall nearly cracked and fell down. It got very hot in the outside bog next door and the flames leapt to the sky. We all had a bit of a panic. The landlord would not be too pleased either, especially for the controlled rent we paid. Those were the glory days of rent control! But the back end of our house survived, if a little blacker and browner than before.
But what do you do with the strings? For years, they lay sideways in the shed, under its roly-poly asbestos roof. I used to strum them with the axe, as I chopped up wood for the fire. They made the sound of celestial harps. Not that I have ever heard any or ever likely too. But they gave the neighbours a hell of a shock, when I gave them a bloody good lash with my axe from under the shelter of our dodgy roof. Asbestos was the latest thing in DIY at the time. Maybe that’s why I am a bit odd or funny or mad, as people say, depending upon your fancy.
I was always a fan of music and played my recorder on the outside bog, much to Mrs. Jones’ enjoyment. Or when I used to strum my ukulele, which we got from Rushworth and Drapers, in the shed like George Formby, standing by a lamp post where Sooty the cat was chased once by a pack of Alsatians. Even though Sooty had done for Suzie, my first guinea pig, leaving her in pieces, two wrongs do not make a right. What those dogs did was horrible. Mrs Andrews was devastated and even Mr Andrews stopped peeing in the backyard grid for a while. He worked on the Irish steamer. Dublin-Liverpool. Yes, the tinkle-tinkle of weeeeeeeeee was never good for having a kiss in the back yard. Or listening to the shagging going on in the back entry, or jigger as we called it, making our wooden door rattle. If you were in the toilet at the right time, it could be quite educational. My Dad used to bolt the backyard door firmly in case we entertained a couple of lovers in the jigger, as rotten wood gave way to passion. Thinking of matters ethereal, there used to be a lady who worked in the fruit and veg shop at the end of the road who entertained men, in her free time, to meet her particular needs. Or supplement her income. I never knew nor joined the queue. Behind her house. I wonder if her husband knew. She was good looking.
Bill the Barbers
Yes. I know I should not mention names. But sadly, only I remain here now and that is why I am writing this ramble. Before my memories go up in smoke or are riddled by worms before long. Well anyway, when me Mum and I often walked down to Aigburth, that was dead posh those days like Allerton, or Penny Lane. There was the barber’s shop, where I went only once. I had no idea what to do, so I asked for a Tony Curtis, who had his picture on the wall. Who the hell was Tony Curtis? I was in a blind panic? I only used him once and my Tony Curtis was never seen again. Not least because the Beatle and Penny Lane increased the cost a good bit.
I always hated the barbers. And the smell of Pomade, whatever that was for. When my Mum sent me out to get me hair cut with two bob, I walked round and round the shop, until it was too late and came home successfully unsuccessful with nothing cut. But, the next day, I was sent back to Joe’s and had to sit, as the only kid, while the men fell silent or talked in whispers about things I tried to understand. Men’s things. I always tried to avoid Saturday’s especially because they used to buy little packets, from a special draw, in case they came in handy later. Barber Bill, who truly was wise, asked me questions about Everton. He got things out of the drawers for the men and wished them a good night. Yes, those ‘jonnie’s’ you are thinking. I did not know about them, until getting off at Edge Hill became too dangerous as a teenager. There were no shotguns in our family, though up and down our street you’d be deafened by them going off. To no effect unfortunately. Most girls, apart from my sister, inadvertently added to the Scouse population in their youth. The girls had to go out to work and their Grannies became Mum’s again.
But back to Bill. The smell of steam and embrocation in small bottles, and the chair that went up and down, and the steam from the hot towels and something called a steriliser, that I stayed well clear off. Yes, we were famous for a moment in the 60s when Trebilcock used to have his hair cut there and he scored the goals at Wembley. ‘Wemberly, Wemberly, O the Toffees were at Wemberly’ again. I always hated going to the barbers, and still do to be honest (some sort of deep Samson complex I think), but Bill was better than my Granddad, who used to cut my hair for a few bob. A sub from me Mum and Dad, I think. He used a basin around my head, as he did in the trenches at Ypres. What a cut and to go to school the next day was hell, like the Toffees losing again. Though we do not do that so often as now. As I walked back from Bill the Barbers, I’d look in the Corner Bookshop, by St Brigid’s Church, at the toys that were too expensive to help pass time. Or, I’d look in the pet shop window on Smithdown Road. He always had a parrot, which never stopped talking, and sometimes he had snakes, which I didn’t like too much. Slithering up the window they would go … at the back he had rabbits and guinea pigs. They were more my kind of thing. One of these days, I’ll get one of those.
My grand-dad lived ‘out in the country’ in a place called Knowsley. Or so it seemed to me. He had a lovely long garden, where he grew vegetables as well as plants. It was really exciting once when he had a tortoise, which must have crawled under the fence sometime and was lost. He checked with the neighbours and no-one had lost one, so it was mine. I loved my tortoise, who showed no sign of wanting to escape further. He had his own house, of an old shoe box, stuffed with bits of the Echo and warm cotton in the winter. He used to sit on my knee and enjoy some of Grand-Dad’s lettuce. He lived for a good few years but one spring he didn’t wake up. That was lousy! Every time we went home, my Mum used to receive a small, bound bunch of ‘Lily of the Valley’, because her name was Lily, which she hated, the name now not the flowers. On the No 10 back to Old Swan, the scent used to fill the down floor bus and the ticket collector used to love it. The kids in school used to get jealous. Who cares?
Nikki the Budgie
I told you at the start, some things I did not talk about. But when I was a wee one, weeing in my pants, or a youngster running like mad to catch the bus to Knotty Ash, or lying on the toilet roof with my Dad’s old box camera catching star trails .Yes, they were good days by and large. Though, looking back, I might change some things. Like sharing a bedroom with my brother, after he had been out on the bevy, drinking brown mix. Had to leave the window wide open and his shoes.! I think they were not bad times. A bit tough for sure but distance makes our memories forget the actual times, the sharp bits, the “O, I wish I had not done that” bits and how they felt I knew. There you go, as the Mersey Ferry pulled into Woodside and I wondered which bus we’d get on Dad’s Day off. Would it be Chester Zoo, or Heswall Hills, or Thors’ Stone, where you could stand and look across the Dee where King Billy got his boat to Ireland or the working wheel spinning colliery across in Wales or the open sands of West Kirkby? “Yes, let’s go there, Dad”. Or, “go on Dad, let’s go there and walk to the island” with the birds, when the tide was out. Or climb the old cliffs and pretend that we ruled the world. One day, I played war games with Jimmy on Thirsty Hill. We pretended it was Vimy Ridge, where Granddad fought with his Canadian Sergeant friend. Before the Sergeant got his head removed by shrapnel. For some, they were good times I must confess. Good times, yes good times.
For my Mum and Dad, this was the first time they got to know “family life”. Both had been orphaned young as only children. For my Dad, Spanish flu had seen off his Mum and other brother, Victor. An unfortunate name as it turned out to be for him. My Mum’s Dad had died young too. Aunty Minnie said I was the ‘spitting’’ image of him. He was a good man brought down by circumstance. He had worked for the ‘Donegall Tweed Company’, down Henry Street in Dublin, in 1916. When the lads in the GPO decided upon themselves a Republic, Rule Britannia didn’t take it too well. So, as some scarpered from the Post Office, knowing all was up this time anyway, me Grandad let them out the back of the shop, while the chasing ‘Tommie’s’ could not catch them. His Unionist employer was not too taken by that. As a reward, he got shipped back to Liverpool ‘pronto’ and went downhill from there. As a kid, I was proud of what he did and I will be until I die myself, which may not be that long. He was raised by a very loyal Protestant tradition, which took a bit of a blow, when he decided to marry my Catholic Gran then.
So, getting back to the point, me Mum and Dad spent a lot of time looking after their and each other’s parents. Now I am not saying we were neglected in any way but they had to learn making families as things went along. Me Mum told me they intended more kids but gave up because I used to vomit so much. That dodgy powdered milk I suppose. Dr Preek, at the top of Smithdown Road, always reckoned I was a healthy child. He used to terrify me though when he used to squirt a load of vaccine onto the ceiling, before sticking the needle in me. Perhaps it was because he was Indian and that is what they did. I always got a good apple from the shop next door afterwards as I rubbed my arm on the way home and pulled faces at the monkey in the pet shop. Opposite our house, Mr Wedge had an Amazon Parrot from his sailor days, which swore like a trouper. When Father Mitch was on his visits, always a saintly man, the bird was covered with a dark cloth to make him think it was night-time. But it still swore as Mrs. Wedge blushed. You could hear the parrot cursing in the street, even with the doors and windows closed. It was a great bird. Huge compared to our Nikki, the budgie. He was named Nikki, after Nikkita Khrushchev who saved the World from Atomic War apparently over some argument about Cuba. Me Mum, who was a devout but somewhat liberal Catholic, didn’t know he was a Communist, damned to Eternal Damnation. She thought he was a good man; it was probably his polished head like me Dad. Our priest on his priestly visits was not so sure about Nikki though but me Mum would not be dissuaded. She was always like that, but I’ll tell you more about that later. I remember now Nicki and his lovely yellow colour.
Dublin Lights
Writing as I am now, I could never understand me Uncle Jack (me Dad’s half-brother, another long story) didn’t trust the Irish. Well, I am expressing his views rather moderately because it would be rather nice if this ramble got published. Anyway, me Uncle, a kind and moderate man, said he did not like the Irish because de Valera kept his lights on during the War. Now that was a puzzle for me for many years but, because Uncle Norman and Auntie Else were nice people (even though they were Prods, another long story), may not being a Catholic was a reason. Possibly. But actually no! It seems that because Dublin left its lights on, as a fingers’ up to evil England next door, the German bombs could follow a straight course and bomb the living daylights out of Liverpool. Now since the Germans were Nazis and because they flattened most of the areas I knew in Liverpool, I thought this de Valera bloke (who it turns out wasn’t bloody Irish anyway) should have his lights stuck in a place where the lights wouldn’t shine, if you follow my meaning. Wouldn’t you?
This raises another issue. No, not electricity! The Bombing of Liverpool. As a kid, it was just normal for me and me mates to play on rough patches of land all over the place called, ‘Bombies’. They were everywhere because they reckoned the Germans just wanted to off-load as much of their stuff as possible then fly like a rocket home. Understandable except for those on the ground. So, all sorts of places copped it, not just the Billiard Room at the end of our road. No literally all over our end of Wavertree, Edge Hill, Toxteth and Kensington, there were gaps everywhere. It was just normal. Somewhere to meet. Somewhere to get glass or worse in your knee if you fell. No good for footie as a result. Anyway, as it happens, my Dad was lucky. He was in a ‘protected occupation’. I was never sure how a quiet and good- mannered man like my Dad could add to the fight against Hitler. But he was and, as a result, he worked not just in Prescot but Birmingham and Edinburgh (where me brother was born). Actually, it was in Costorphine, near the Zoo and the Rugby Union ground. When he was a teenager, we used to suffer endless Andy Stewart records because me brother began to feel Scottish. The ‘music’ used to be played full blast at the top of the stairs on our first record player. Damn it, I should have been brave enough to kick the damned machine down the stairs. But then, my Mum would not have been able to play Mario Lanza and the ‘Sound of Music’, which sadly I saw too many times with my Mum and sister. Thank goodness, none of me mates saw me, ‘when the hills were alive!’ Can you just imagine the comments…?
But back to the World War, the Second and hopefully the last one, my Dad in addition to watching Hearts (sorry all Hibs supporters) was a fire watchman a ‘cocky-watchman’, when back home in Liverpool. He used to be on top of a look-out in Wavertree, well Olive Mount actually. Resisting the temptation to run like hell if he saw a bomb or worse coming, his job was to alert the authorities who presumably would issue a general order to run like hell, if they still could in time. Anyway, me Mum and Dad met at British Insulated Calender Cables (BICC) up in Prescot and, for the time it was certainly, a long- distance romance. After going to the ‘flicks’ in Liverpool, the Odeon or such like, they walked home along the East Prescot Road and sheltered in doorways as shrapnel bounced backwards and forwards along the street, during raids. After leaving my Mum where she lived with her ailing Mum then (and I don’t mean drunk) at Norris Green, my Dad walked home to Huyton or Prescot where he worked. He used to talk about Bert Trautman, who had been a German prisoner camp nearby and was now one of the best goalies ever … Meanwhile the shrapnel went ping, ping along the roads and it must have forced my Mum and Dad to be close sheltering in those doorways. The War had many consequences. Take for example … the emergence of ‘Yankee babies’ as a lasting memento of visiting US troops amongst the local population. At the top of our jigger, over the sweet shop, my mate Les, who taught me how to look after pigeons, had a brother who was black, which put me into great confusion all together. After all, if his Mum had one, why didn’t mine? I suppose one answer might be that me Mum didn’t live around Newton-le-Willows and the US Base there. Promises made there were rarely honoured. Les’ Mum was an honourable woman and when I had me tea there, I remember drinking tea from jam jars and enjoying drippin-buttees. After, Les would call down the pigeons by shaking their seed tin. It was wonderful and why I have not forgotten it all. It was damned hard for his brother though. He had to become really tough to survive. After school, Les worked down the pits at Newton-le-Willows and then as a milkman. He was a very good bloke. Sound!
Earle Road v Lawrence Road
Our street had two ends. All streets do, you say. But our street or rather Road (it was posher) had kind of two different worlds at either end. I’ve mentioned before that Smithdown Road had the big cemetery in the middle. It was also a very busy road with cars, trams, buses, bikes and everything else hurtling along like mad, trying either to escape town or head off to Penny Lane or the hospital. At the other end, where Earle Road and Lawrence Road met, it had its busy moments, but was really our local shopping street including a big Coop. It also had great sweet shops, butchers, fruit shops, bakers (at the end of our road and had a wonderful smell of cooking bread, if you were around in the early hours). At night-time though, it could get a bit tricky. There were at least two gangs. One at our end, Lawrence Road. Another up Earle Road past the church, our church and school. Don’t think that religion was part of it but you had to walk very steady down Earle Road if you had been to the flicks in town and it was dark.
I liked both streets very much but especially Earle Road. I suppose going to church every Sunday and my school might have had something to do with it. Up Earle Road there were all sorts of churches: Catholic, Anglican, Orange Lodge, Salvation Army, Presbyterian, Welsh Congregational. There was our fish shop, where we always went on Friday for fresh fish. There was a holy shop selling all sorts of illuminated, holy things. I got my Lourdes Grotto from there. It gave some light into my bedroom, though I got a bit weary of that after a mate told me they were radio-active!! Earle Road had these Welsh streets up in one side, but sadly they mostly are empty and banged up, to keep the locals out. If you get the bus now, up Smithdown, you look can look across the huge empty space, sparsely filled with the odd new house, all the way across Earle Road all the way to the railway at Edge Hill. It was a huge blow. It seemed that the Council had the idea to knock down those houses but not replace the people with new ones. But most money handy too.
The houses in and off of Lawrence Road were a bit later and have an inside bathroom, but only an outside toilet. They were built around the 1880s, when local government had more powers to make the houses just that bit better. They were still in military type streets, sorry roads, line after line. But it was where I was born and bred and I still like them very much. On Lawrence Road, in addition to the shops I mentioned, was a big Council School. That’s where the Prod kids came from. Catholics were a bit of a minority round here but rarely any problems. Back entries where the way most people went from and to their houses. Apart from the occasional dog muck, they were the best way of getting from A to B and also the quickest if trying to get a bus for going into town. It was where I had that huge bomb-fire which buckled the walls a bit. It was the main area for courting too, after dark.
When I was getting older, say 16 or so, I had great dreams always about travelling. I wondered whether or not I should go to the Marine College, down by Otterspool, especially to get qualified as a navigator. I knew people in our street who worked for Irish Ferries or for large freight or oil tankers. While I’m still trying to learn morse code, I had the idea of saving up and getting a really strong, radio where I could listen to everything from Radio China (rebroadcast by Radio Albania), East and West German, Radio Switzerland, Czechoslovakia radio and so on. East German (DDR) was really keen to send me stuff about the place and to answer all my questions and play request music. The postman must have wondered about me!! I asked them to play and they did, Finlandia. They did not seem to work out that it was written as part of Finland’s successful efforts to be free from Russia. On the serious side though, I remember live radio from Prague, which recorded live the Russian invasion in 1968. I was glued to the info coming through. I have never forgotten, and never will, the brave transmissions from the head office as the tanks got nearer and nearer. The broadcaster was absolutely terrified until his voice became silent. The building was hit by tank fire. I can only imagine what happened to the staff …
On a lighter note, when I was about 13 or so, we got our first record player. My brother as you know was mad on Scottish Music, because he was born there. Andy Stewart was blasted out from the top of the stairs. My Mum was mad on Mario Lanza. My sister was mad on Cliff Richard. My hearing probably started to diminish at this time. A mate in school had started going down into town to listen to this new band called ‘The Beatles’. I wasn’t too fussed to be honest. I have always been uniquely gifted by my powers of fore-sight. My favourites were ‘The Undertakers‘ and especially Johnny Gustafson in the ‘Mersey Beats’. My poor dad didn’t know (or care) about any of them. He worked on the basis that music, whatever type, was good if it kept us off the street. It did for a while. I always liked Eddie Cochran. But he died in a car crash, just after arriving in England. I was really ‘pissed’ by that. I remember getting into trouble in school when I passed on the news that Buddy Holly had died in a plane crash in the middle of a class. It didn’t go down too well with the teacher, but my mates appreciated it.
Irish Christian Brothers
But one day, when I am grown up, I would be a Scuffer and earn loads of money and lock up the Cecil Street Gang. Everyone would look up to me. Yes, they would. Instead of down, when I got my scholarship for a Grammar School. All of my mates from Primary School stopped talking to me for ever: by the old school or even going to church on a Sunday. I do mean forever. So now, I just wanted to get home, as soon as possible from the 60 bus, and listen to Eddie Cochran “be-bop a loola, she’s my baby” and eat a mountain of mashed potato and mince. O yes, mashed potato has always been my vice. And when my mum went all the way on the bus to Huyton to help out my Gran and Granddad, I would come home from school and eat mashed potato, covered with Heinz tomato soup, with a couple of Sawyers doughnuts. Pink iced were best.
I liked those days of freedom from St Hugh’s, which was so good to me. Str. Gonzaga and Miss Walker got me into St Eddies and saved me from St. Tommy Becket’s, up in Edge Hill. St Eddies is still there, in Sandfield Park, off the 60 bus, with its ridiculous purple blazer. I’ve still got one in my ridiculous wardrobe. That made me a sitting duck to the local lads who would not talk to me anymore because I was going there and not to that secondary-mod up Tunnel Road. Yes, it was never easy but things rarely are as I got off the bus for the first time, looking a fool in short trousers, and meeting kids who spoke differently and came from Aigburth, Allerton, Woolton not my neck of the woods anyway. I got used to it but never the lashings, with the strap (and its whale bone inside) by some of the Irish Christian Brothers. Now there’s a ridiculous name. Some were neither brothers nor Christian, except for a few like Brother Hennessey and ‘Chinko’, from Gibraltar, who treated us kids like human beings. ‘Chinko’ was sent for his troubles to Sierra Leone. But he came back to be Head. There is some justice in this world, maybe. I’ll not mention the occasional Brother who lingered too long in the open showers, we had to use, after matches. I am not going there. While I was the only kid from my area there, they looked after me very well and gave me a chance that was more interesting than working in the local Gas Works.
Yes, St Eddies played rugby but the wrong sort for me, Union not League. Fifteen a side, you could hardly ever move. I remember our French teacher who drove a white ‘Triumph Vitesse’ with the top down. I fantasised over her, despite her hairy lip, and dreamed we went to Norway together, dropping down towards the fjord by Bergen for the boat back. That made me Norway mad. I went down to the Central Library in town for a book and 45 rpm records. I tried to learn Norwegian for one session or was it two? I was mad on Ibsen and still am. My family thought I was mad, as these weird sounds came from the front room. But I have always had crazes. Obsessions with writers, who I would never let go, until I had read everything they wrote and had written about them. That have never left me, these obsessions just built the one upon the other like layers of mud and sand, like in the old docks now abandoned off the Dock Road.
Here my brother used to take me to see the boats and meet the captains with their ‘bills of lading’. Yes, they were rare but good times, except when we slipped on ice on the Dock Road and he blamed me for jumping off early to save my skin. Well, I denied it but I did. I never meant to send him rotating down the cobbles covered with black ice that would catch you when you least expected it. Sorry, brother. I remember white icicles hanging from my bedroom window and the ice crystals on the inside of the room and the bitter cold that made you weeeeeeeeee with only the pot under the bed, because the walk down the end of the yard was too far and too cold and just a wee bit sinister on a no moon night. My brother used to hate me and chase me with his trousers down, as I squirted my water pistol at him through the hole in the door of our outside bog. Our only bog actually. Yes, those were indeed the days I thought they would never end until they did with no warning in 1968. But, let us not go there yet. My brother used to work for Cunard. They were next to the grand-looking Custom’s House, down at the Pier Head. He used to drive his scooter there but, after being locked up, it was still stolen. It was very hard to keep anything like that in Liverpool back in the day. Probably not many ride Lambrettas these days. The Custom’s House was a grand building inside, its size, its colours, a sense of poshness, of authority. I was only in once and I have never forgotten it. Down at the Pierhead, I used to enjoy watching the cargo ships down the river, the Isle of Man and Irish ferry boats, the Mersey Ferries, as well as the occasional passenger liner. The old rail station was still there, but not now used. It used to be able to disembark passengers from the steam train and then the customers could have only a small walk before climbing the Empress of Canada and such like. Those days there were boats going back the river either the Garston Docks or the Manchester Ship Canal, across the river. On the way down, I used to enjoy looking in the lovely shop that used to sell ship compasses, all sorts of telescopes and marine equipment. They stopped making these things, as Liverpool shrank as a major commercial port. There was only one guy once that tried to touch me up when looking in the window. I told him what to do with himself. That was a first experience but I’m sure these days its not rare.
Down the Dingle
Down the Dingle was always a special place. It was unique, following the Mersey coast after the Liverpool Docks and before the later idea of the Otterspool Promenade. When the tide was right, one or two freighters would make their way to the Garston Dock. Dingle itself was up on a shelf of a sandstone ridge overlooking the last freighters in the southern part of Liverpool Docks. There was a small stream ‘dingling’ down to the sea. The beach hereabouts was anything but sandy. It was mostly deep brown mud and all sorts of detritus left over from the docks nearby. The Dingle itself was full of life. Ringo Star was from around there. There was a big floured mill, which you see for miles. The only problem though was the rats that enjoyed their life there too.
After studying, and before going to University in Liverpool, I had some spare time to try and help out folk, especially those elderly, because the Council was planning to ‘redevelop’ much of Mill Street and Park Road. Some of the places where terrible, others were in every sense real homes. I can remember one place that was at the back of a shop on Park Road. It had an open fire for cooking on, virtually no light and everything was dirty, really dirty. The old lady that lived there did her best to give me a cup of tea. Her poverty and loneliness made me very angry. There were a large number of Welsh families settled around there and I was told off for not being able to speak Welsh in the local school. Scouse wasn’t good enough!!
There were still two ‘missions’ on Mill Street; the Domestic Mission or ‘Domie’ and the ‘Florie’ or Florence Institute. I was based on the Domie when there. It provided various sports and a music centre also. I always had a long chat with the old Scottish Minister who served there. When it was quiet, I always had a look in the loft at all the stuff needed for musicals, plays and meetings there. One day, there was a funeral for an old man who was on his end at the end. There were so few at the surface that I offered to make up a congregation of two (not including the coffin!).
I went to see the new minister. He lived on the top floor of a high rise, right next to the flour mill. So, he managed to escape the outbreaks of rats that cursed those living on the bottom floor flats. He found that ministry very hard to adjust to I think, having come from ‘down south’. He was a good bloke but did not stay long. I used to help out on the door to the Mission, when there was a folk music group get-together. I used to listen to the music. I promised myself that when I am a bit older, I would get in and lose myself in the Scouse music. And I did.
Just a bit down the road, the Florrie was famous as a boxing club. Being young and getting raised down the Dingle, amateur boxing became a great venue. A number of really good boxers had been good enough to go professional and escape the Dingle. The Florrie went through bad times later but is a brilliant place now. Sadly, the Domie didn’t stand the passing of time. But the Dingle lives on. A few years after, I bumped into a lovely lady who was raised and lived many years at the Dingle. We talked about the Dingle, again and again. She was Welsh.
How Come?
Where does all that leave me now? Well, now I am an old man looking back. Why do I not write forward of those days. I suppose that in some ways, my future has been good in terms of a really good family of my own. My own parents have now gone. I miss them as I miss so many people and things. When I walk around Liverpool now, things appear far less difficult now, compared to then. Most of my home area has disappeared and what that is replacing is for University and College students, not locals, not neighbours, not friends. I suppose that is not a bad thing. It is not a good thing either. The primary school is still there, as well as the church. St. Hugh’s. One or two of the families still go there but must feel like strangers in their own place. Almost all of Earle Road is gone. My local pub has been knocked down to add to the open sites, for what? The damage is far worse than Hitler managed back then. At the end of my road, the Royal pub is a student’s residence. Smithdown Road from the Cemetery onwards is a large supermarket, where the hospital used to be. Further on it is student stuff. The Chinese laundry that used to look after my Dad’s still colours has gone too. She used to breast-feed her child at the counter for many years. Of course, the two local dairies which produced great ice cream are long since flattened. Destroying is so much easier than rebuilding.
I will keep writing as I can. After my sister was killed in that plane crash, with many of her best friends too, I felt enough was enough. I still do. Bit I decided to keep people who needed more needs than me, here or abroad. There were many adventures since then. But I shall take them with me. Some secrets are just to secret to stay that way.
Good night
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Wavertree 