Bricking up the Mersey

So it seems I'm writing about coming back to Liverpool again. Alex and I have just come back from three weeks around Italy, Corfu and a day in Albania. Always leaving, always returning.

You most likely haven't heard it yet, but Ringo Starr has just written a song about leaving Liverpool for his new album. Interestingly, his album is entitled "8" and seems to correlate to the Liverpool 08 European capital of culture events. However, he claims they are totally unrelated and somewhat ironically, due to his performance of this song at the opening ceremonies, Liverpudlians feel that Ringo is no longer "related" to their home town. The chorus goes, "Liverpool I left you, but I did not let you down", but with too much emphasis on the leaving part for Liverpool's liking. Anyhow, the scouse people are a very proud breed and you mustn't place it in the shadow, no matter how much the locals berate it for all its faults. ("What the hell are you doing in Liverpool Lad, its shite over 'ere?", they say me when I tell them where I'm from)

I digress because we have just come back from a local theater production called, "Bricking up the Mersey". It was absolutely hilarious and played heavily on the prejudices of the people from the Wirral peninsula, just a ferry or a tunnel ride across from downtown Liverpool, towards the people from Merseyside (Liverpool) and vice versa. The people of Wirral, or Wirraliens, enjoy being painted as slightly more upper class than their thieving, uncultured and brash big brothers across the Mersey. The snobbish attitudes and bickering between the two has existed for a long time but the people of Liverpool, forever the victim in Britain's psyche, are fed up of taking verbal abuse from people who for the most part, work in Liverpool. As one of the actors put it, "if you ever hear someone talking shite about the hand that feeds them, give them a slap". The play was very funny and made use of cultural anecdotes, scouse colloquialisms, regional predjudice and good old Liverpool humour.

By the end of the play they had bricked up the tunnel, blown up the bridge at Runcorn and the play closed with one actor portraying John Wayne in a Lacoste trainer suit and cowboy boots, taking his wife up to the bedroom with a cowboy hat handing from his twig and berries. You can try to picture it, but it won't make sense.

I think the people here are very interesting, full of interesting dialect, quick wit, big dreams, bad taste and warm personalities despite the wet weather. This is the second local production I've seen and it is truly entertaining. However, you almost have to have lived here a while to fully appreciate the hypocrisies and idiosyncrasies of this city. Once considered the New York of Britain, what remains of this image is still Manhattan size pride, just without the Manhattan size buildings. Its a lot of fun to learn about a city that used to be the most important port city in the British empire, perhaps the world and has since fell into a state of despair, only to be on the verge of possibly regaining some of that with the help of European investment and tourist dollars. Time will tell I suppose.

Anyhow, this blog was supposed to be about where we've been in Italy and such, but as often is the result of my mind's workings, I've wound up in a distant universe, miles away. Thanks for tuning in and until next time!

Le Grand Duc