Quiet Apocalypse: Seacombe to Parkgate

This was the most sociable part of the journey so far. Professor Rhiannon Evans accompanied me on the long trek around the Wirral coast, and we met up with Jennie at the end. A great day of walking, through some once-thriving resorts. Occasional steel frames sketching out the spaces of new buildings – I can [...]

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Concrete sermon: Mersey Ferry

Itinerant puppeteer and social commentator Walter Wilkinson visited Liverpool in the mid-Thirties. In the brief account of the visit (in Puppets through Lancashire, 1936) he and his partner Winifred remark on the Merseyside penchant for building on a massive scale: “The Mersey Tunnel is the largest sub-aqueous work of its kind in the world. The [...]

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Walk the Line II: Liverpool Central to Docks

I meant to stroll, drift and dream the city around me. In fact I rushed, like a droplet in a torrent, following any green man crossing chance, snatching blurry pictures in the evening light.

Liverpool’s outdoor spaces didn’t feel like places to linger, more like places to move. I first came here nearly 20 years ago, [...]

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Vast Map: Approaching Liverpool II

Paul Morley describes Liverpool as ‘…An island set in a sea of dreams and nightmares that’s forever taking shape in the imagination, more a mysterious place jutting out into time between the practical, stabilising pull of history and the sweeping, shuffling force of myth’ (in Living, Mersey Minis Volume Two). My journey needs to include [...]

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