Liverpool Tales from the Mersey Mouth - A book by John Williams

• Liverpool's alien nation A short history of discrimination
• Guernica Liverpool Manhattan Time for me to get off the fence
• There ain't half been some clever bastards The mendacious cretins who instigated the Shoah
• The scent of a conman Raising a stink in Liverpool
• Show 'em the door The Phillistines are back in Liverpool
• The fourth Grace A new addition to the Liverpool family
• Those base football players How football taught us to clock in on time
• Liverpool Maze Rainy days and Mondays
• Staying alive Travelling light
• A fundamental error Not all Muslims are terrorists
• Upstarts The smaller they are the harder we fall
• Flake An open letter to Fred 'Fruit-cake' Leuchter
• Black is not the only shade Musings on the language of racialism
• Liverpool's Big Macs what Scousers might have been called
• The world's oldest crime A male point of view of women's violation
• Be a sport Fashion for laid back athletes
• Nobody is indispensible The diminished role of men
• Trees When blossom appears to wither on the branch
• What's cooking? The debt that civilisation owes women
• Know thy self Clipping time's wings
• Once there was a way Aberfan and corporate terrorism
• Me granddad's on a preservation order Liverpool world heritage site
• You say potato I say spud
• Doctor Yes Good doctors are the norm
• Top of the world Ma A man of peace
• Like a bird on a wire I have tried in my way to be free
• The writing's on the wall Little known Liverpool sayings
• Fortress Anfield or Maginot Line? Au Revoir Gerard Houllier
• The leaving of Liverpool Adieu Steven Gerrard?
• Working on the chain gang The age of innocence
• In my life Turn and face the strangers
• Suicide is painless it brings on many changes
• Breaking down the walls of heartache The cementing of hatred
• Danse macabre

When I saw that Liverpool's docklands had been nominated as a world heritage site my first thought was,

'Why not? Some of those potholes on the dock road have been around since Ben Hur broke a wheel on it.'

Then I began to wonder what tourists might see when they came to gaze on Merseyside's answer to the great Pyramids. Will there be hundreds of fellahs jostling to sell their souvenirs of the site? Imagine the cries of,

"A genuine docker's hook signed by me dad..."

"A bacon Nudger from Stan Water's Cafe..."

"A silver tea service from the Empress of England..." "A champagne cooler off the Titanic..."

"A number one bus ticket, only used twice"

New hotels would have to be built with names like 'The Welt' in honour of the docker's peculiar working practice of sloping off to the pub while their mates did their share of work in return for a similar favour; or 'The pen', which would immortalise the shaming process of dockers standing like cattle until they were picked for a ship.

There could be enactments of those charming scenes where dockers were given nicknames by their fellows, often without the nominee ever knowing what it was.

Interactive warehouses where tourists could hump back breaking bales of cotton, or be smothered from head to foot in indelible carbon black, would provide light relief for visitors feeling the effects of too many bacon Nudgers.

The visitors could also take classes in the art of skipping off a bus without paying, or smuggling bundles of firewood through the dock gates.

Replica slave ships could sail the Mersey and the awful smell of human misery would be sold in areosols.

Any body reading this who has an entrepreneurial bent should begin recruiting drama teachers, and ex-dockers should start touting themselves as dialogue coaches. Some of them of course could simply remove their teeth, install seats and act as real coaches.

Just think, horse drivers, harness makers and cart manufacturers could come back into their own as might urchins, shawlies and the near extinct scallywags.

'Her Benny' could rescue maidens from being trampled by runaway horses twice daily, and people could be paid to lie in the gutters simulating the curse of cholera. The good times are coming back!

2003

My thanks to Tim Kelly and Brigitte C for the new look to my site

© John Williams Liverpool 1999