Legends

 I found another great crime series on Netflix and I wanted to share it/plug it here: Legends. It's both a crime drama and a true crime documentary, as it is based on true events: the heroin trade of the early nineties in the UK and the combat against it by a team formed by border officers. A ragtag bunch of misfits as the trope is called. I love ragtags bunch of misfits, especially in crime fiction, even more when they had an origin in real life. I might blog about the trope one day, but I digress. You have two fairly rarely seen (at least in fiction) mob groups as the antagonists, one from Liverpool, the other from Turkey. Anyway, I cannot stress how solid the series is and I cannot recommend it enough.

Spies from Liverpool?

I wanted to blog again about William Boyd's spy thriller Gabriel's Moon. I finished it a little while ago, but there's one funny piece of tidbit which caught my attention. Near the end of the novel, main character Gabriel Dax comes across a woman from Liverpool, who is almost immediately hostile to him. There is not much more to say about her, she may or may not be a spy for the Eastern Block and plays some role in the plot, then pretty much disappears from it. I suspect she will reappear in future novels, as this is meant to be the first title of a trilogy. Anyway, I find it interesting as I lived about a year in Liverpool. I don't think the city qualifies as a city of espionage just yet (so I won't mention it in my blog series on the matter), however it's not the first time I have seen Liverpool mentioned in a spy novel. I might tell you more in another post.

About Liverpool and Ireland

I recently reread Tremor of Intent by Anthony Burgess, my favourite writer. Subtitled An Eschatological Spy Novel, it goes beyond the spy thriller genre or the satire of spy thrillers to become a Cold War philosophical tale about guilt, Catholicism, good and evil, identity, well, a lot of things making our human condition. When I first read it, I hadn't lived in England yet, so this it gave me a new appreciation of the novel. And there is a quite I wanted to share today:

"The best Catholic schools are in the North, since the English Reformation, like blood from the feet when the arteries harden, could not be push so far so easily. And, of course, you have Catholic Liverpool, a kind of debased Dublin."

Now, I lived a year in Liverpool, before I got married. It was a long time ago, almost twenty years. Obviously, I don't know how the city is now. But at its core, when I was there, it sure was exactly that: a Catholic Irish city lost in England. Debased Dublin sounds right, although Liverpool does not look as nice. Then again, I haven't been to Dublin in nearly twenty-five years and I never lived there, so who knows. Anyway, I love that quote.

The Victorian House in Liverpool

For a while now, Wolfie has been obsessing about mansions. Don't ask me why, I'm have no idea how he came up with this sudden interest. But now he loves the word mansion, the concept of a big fancy house, what have you. So now he often plays "mansion", he build mansion with Lego blocks (my idea) and he draw mansions with daddy. I will tell you more about the mansion games and activities in other posts. He also wants to live in one eventually. It's a way for him to go up the property ladder I guess, so he's been saving money in his piggy bank so we can eventually have enough to move house and live in a mansion. 

    And well, it came to my mind that the Victorian house where I was living back in my year in Liverpool could qualify as a mansion. It was a big fancy house and had a rather imposing back garden. I rented a room there for a year and it did feel very posh, even though I was just renting and the house needed serious work on, which the landlady never bothered to do. Anyway, I wanted to show Wolfie the place where I lived, so I did a thorough Google search and found it on Airbnb. It changed ownership and whoever bought it renovated it and it looks absolutely glorious now. Everything is new, but it does not look too modern, if that makes sense. I have no idea how Airbnb works and I think the price must be prohibitive, but I would love to show it to Wolfie one day and maybe make him live the experience of living in a "mansion", even if it was for a short period of time. Even if he found the place not mansion-like enough for his expectations, it is still a big posh Victorian house.

Where to go in Liverpool?

 I recently stumbled on this article about the places to go when you are in Liverpool. I found it quite interesting and in a way a bit surreal, for one reason. As those of you who have been following this blog for a while, I lived in Lovverpool for about a year (well, nine months), before getting married. It was for professional reasons: I workedt here. I only returned there once, for a day. But living in a city for nine months leaves a certain impression in one's mind, and while I never felt like a local, I still have a certain affection for the city. Yet, I never truly experienced it as a tourist. In fact, I have barely been in the city's main tourists attractions. So I am neither a Scouser nor a complete stranger. I don't think we will go there for our holiday, but I would like to revisit it again and see how much the city changed. I do miss it, sometimes.

Scouser thug and Stilton cheese

Here is something that can happen only in Liverpool, but it is so bizarre that I first found out about it reading Montreal online newsparers: a drug dealer was arrested by the police because of a photo of a piece of Stilton cheese he took and posted on social media. Usually, I'd think that sort of news would make for a great crime fiction story. But it's just too weird. That said, I lived about a year in Liverpool and it does not surprise me in the slightest.

St-Helens the most romantic place on Merseyside?

Since Valentine's Day is coming, here is a piece of news on the subject of romance that was a bit... staggering. Anyway, one of my old housemates from the time I lived in Liverpool shared this Liverpool Echo stating that St Helens is the most romantic town on Merseyside. Really? I mean you look at that picture of the town centre they used in the article and you wonder what is the least romantic town. It is difficult to imagine any place in Merseyside as romantic, or at least romantic looking. I remember my Valentine's Day there, spent preparing my lectures while my fiancée was watching tellie. But a few days later we went to the city and we had quite a nice time, even though Liverpool is not the kind of city you'd qualify of romantic. In the end, it's not the place, it's not the time, it's what you make of place and time.

Glimpse of Liverpool

A friend of mine, who studied in Liverpool a few decades ago, before I even came to England, recently published on Facebook a picture of her from that time. I easily recognized it, as it was a place I walked by every day when I used to live there. And it reminded me that I have not seen the city in a decade. Funny how things that are familiar once remain familiar to you years later, yet you are really out of touch with how they are now. Liverpool is not a good looking city, but I do miss it sometimes. I wonder if it will feel familiar then.

A Clockwork Orange in Liverpool

Everybody knows the movie, not as many people know the original novel by Anthony Burgess, but there is another medium to (re)discover A Clockwork Orange if you are in Liverpool: on stage. The Everyman Company made its own adaptation. First I have a rhetorical question: why wasn't such project made when I was working and living in Liverpool? If I didn't have family obligations, I would probably take time off to go and see it. Having lived there for a year, I have an attachment to it, I also consider it a very fitting place for a stage adaptation. It's a Northern city with a history of violence. Burgess loved it almost as much as his native Manchester. In fact, the story of A Clockwork Orange could very well be set in a nightmarish Liverpool. Anyway, it's from Saturday the 14th of April to Thursday the 12th of July, for those lucky enough to go and see it. And here is the video of their rehearsal. It does not merely make me want to see the play, I want to be back on stage just looking at it! Or better still: I want to be on stage, in Liverpool, playing a role in an adaptation of something by Anthony Burgess.

My place in Liverpool

Funny little bit of anecdote that happened to me recently: I was contacted by an academic association I am still a member of, asking me of my new address. Apparently, they were still sending their letters to my old address in... Liverpool. Which I left more than ten years ago. I had a lovely big room in a lovely Victorian house. A house that was falling apart because the landlady was stingy and not keen on making necessary repairs. But a lovely house nevertheless. This request about my address made me remember the time I spent in Liverpool and how much I enjoyed my time there and then. I now own my own place, I am married with a child, I am far better off, but if I could choose anywhere to live with my family, with the necessary income to live there, this would probably be this Victorian house.

Liverpool Lime Street Station (a memory)

I took this picture at the National Railway Museum of York. You might think it looks ugly, but I can assure you the original is much uglier. I took this photo not for its aesthetic value, or lack of, but because when I was working in Liverpool, more than ten years ago, this was the station I was going to and from during my commute. Back in the days when I was still a teacher and an academic, this was therefore part of my daily life. We all form weird sorts of attachment regarding elements from a time in our life when we were fond of and this is one of them. Not that I am not happy now, in fact being a father makes me far happier than I ever was, but professionally speaking, my "Liverpool job" as I often call it has been the one I enjoyed the most in all my adult life. And this reminds me of that time.

Liverpool on the fast lane

It is my brother PJ that made me discover this: Liverpool, the city that adopted me for a year and where I spent one of the happiest year of my adult life, has opened the first ever pedestrian fast lane in the city centre. Now, some of you might think it is a sign of our hectic life being more hectic when one has to walk faster, but I think this is great news. My brother and I come from a family of fast walkers and thus so are we. So for people like us who walk fast, Liverpool understands that we need a way to go at our own beat and speed without being delayed or bumping into people who dowdle, text, are focusing on their mobile for whatever reason. Beside, I hate shopping, so any way that can make me shop faster and be done with it is always welcomed. So make no mistake: I find this lane genuine progress and a great contribution from the Scousers to civilisation. Am I the only one to welcome such a change?

Ray Charles sings... Eleanor Rigby

I have not uploaded on this blog a song from the Beatles since March 2012. Of all the great British bands, you can tell I don't consider them the greatest, even though they are the most famous. I lived a year in Liverpool, where I didn't listen to their music much. I mean I like the Beatles all right, but I don't love them. And since I lived a year in Liverpool, I know how heavy their heritage has been on the city: do anyone remember that the city existed before the Fab Four and that it has a life of its own? All the same, I enjoy some of their songs sometimes. What I find far more shameful is that I did not upload Ray Charles singing since May 2012. And Ray Charles is one artist I love far more. So I decided to kill two birds with one stone and upload Eleonor Rigby, covered by Ray Charles. And, I might add, done far better by him than by the original Scousers. Ray Charles brings pathos and power in the words, as if he witnessed the account of the song. So here it is.

The train to Liverpool

I took this picture at the National Railway Museum in York, where I took a ridiculous amount of pictures. I love trains that much. This wagon reminded me of my time in Liverpool, where I lived for a year when I was teaching there. I used to commute by train from and to the suburbs, in an overcrowded train that was not nearly as nice looking at this one and not nearly as comfortable. It was a very short journey, but it was the most uncomfortable commute I ever been through. All the same, I miss my time there and even the daily commute. My trips from and to Liverpool to see my then fiancée now wife were much nicer, spent in fast trains going from Lime Street Station. So looking at this wagon in the museum made me remember my life there. And just because it is a nice looking wagon with cheerful colour and I love trains, I decided to upload the picture here tonight.

Locked outside

Coming home from work, my wife got locked outside the apartment this afternoon. She recently changed purses and she had forgotten to move her keys from the old purse to the other. As a result, she had to wait for me to be home. In sum, she waited two hours outside. Thankfully, it was sunny and warm. And I was not delayed by anything on the way home. Still, her morale was surprisingly good, given the time she waited. I would have been more fed up.

The same thing happened once to my housemate when I was living in Liverpool. It was in May or June. Back then, I didn't have a mobile phone (nearly ten years ago). I did not have to work that day (blessed time when I was in academia), but I had stopped at the workplace to gather some stuff. I had just walked in my office when the department's secretary told me someone was calling me urgently. It was my housemate, who had gone out and closed the door when nobody was inside and of course had forgotten not only her keys, but her mobile phone as well. She was calling from the retirement house next door. So I left the office without having done the things that I wanted and I took the journey home... to discover that she had been let in by another housemate, who had walked home early. So I missed my chance to be a knight in shining armour then, leaving my office for nothing. On the plus side, I had taken a healthy walk on the hills of Liverpool. And today's anecdote reminded me of this Liverpool memory.

Liverpool touristique (perspective québécoise)

J'ai récemment lu cet article de La Presse sur Liverpool, article auquel par ailleurs j'ai chipé la photo que vous voyez sur ce billet. Comme mon lectorat le sait, j'ai vécu un an à Liverpool. Je ne prétends pas qu'après un an la ville n'a plus de secrets pour moi, en fait je trouve que je n'ai pas assez profité de mon temps là-bas, mais je considère néanmoins Liverpool comme une ville d'adoption. Je n'y ai pas vécu en touriste. Ca fait toujours un peu étrange de lire au sujet de Liverpool dans un journal québécois.

Dreaming of St Paddy's in Liverpool

I will be on holidays next week, so will be free on St Patrick's Day. And, although I don't think I will do it for a number of reasons, I am tempted to go u north and celebrate it in Liverpool. I lived a year in Liverpool, I celebrated St Paddy's there once and it was by far the best, most atmospheric, most frantic one I ever been a part of. Here we have one Irish pub. There they come a dime a dozen. In fact, Liverpool is in many ways an Irish city that happens to be in England. especially on St Patrick's Day. There will be Guinness here too of course, and even authentic Irish to pour it, but nothing had ever topped, in my experience, the atmosphere in Liverpool on St-Patrick's Day.

A new/old Liverpool memory

Sometimes the smallest thing can trigger your memory and make you feel nostalgic. It happened to me this evening: I turned the TV on and saw a glimpse of Hollyoaks, one of the silliest TV drama/soap the British ever invented. I quickly changed the channel, because I don't watch stupid programs. That said, I did watch Hollyoaks when I was living and working in Liverpool, nearly on a daily basis. Even though I did not know and do not remember any of the characters and storylines. After a day of work and my brain turned into mush, it was the only kind of thing I could focus on. One of my housemates was watching every time it was on. She thought it was stupid, but she watched it anyway. And every time, she was commenting on the stupid plot and silly characters and bad acting, and it made it quite an enjoyable experience. In fact, watching that dumb show became one of my guilty pleasures. My housemate also used to tell me when she had seen stars from Hollyoaks, because they all lived around (according to Wikipedia the scenes are mostly on Abbey Road).  In a way, it was not such a guilty pleasure. It was trash, but the sarcastic editorials of my friend gave the whole experience a sort of cultural dimension. I had a great time and I remember it fondly. And now, I cannot watch Hollyoaks. It just wouldn't be the same, and it's a stupid soap anyway.

Liverpudlian (counter)culture

One of my Facebook friends put on her wall this silly internet article, 22 Things Only Students In Liverpool Will Understand. Well, I never was a Liverpool student, but I worked as a teacher in Liverpool and many if not most of my students were Scousers. So reading this silly article brought back some memories. Among them that I never quite got their accent, however charming I found it. Some of the vocabulary I never got either. Anyway, reading this, even though it is exaggerated and overall rather silly, really made me miss my time there. I do disagree with one thing: I am not certain the Beatles and their heavy heritage is as popular as the article seems to claim. And I have a confession to make: I don't remember the lambananas. Which is a darn shame, as I love that kind of quirky stuff. I guess I will need to revisit the city at some point.

Scouser talking

A friend on Facebook put this link on her wall, a small article dating back from January, about Liverpool saying. Even though a lot of it is not exclusively from Liverpool (a lot of Brits say birds for women for instance), it was a still a trip in nostalgia land for me. I lived a year or thereabout in Liverpool and it made me remember the very distinctive linguistic environment I was living in. Liverpudlians, or Scousers, have a very distinctive accent, the Scouse. I cannot honestly say that I ever mastered it, or even got vaguely familiar with, but I remember the sounds of it. It is a cliché to say that a particular language or accent is musical, and it is an inaccurate cliché. But I did find Scousers very musical in their way of speaking English. Maybe it was because I was a foreigner. Still, reading this short article made me want to walk the streets of Liverpool again. Ah, memories!