Liverpool Stories
The stories on this site are not included in my book.
The tales are snapshots of my life in Liverpool, the home of the Beatles, and the echo chamber of the Mersey Sound that in the sixties resonated around the planet like an acoustic Tsunami. The stories cover a period of 50 odd years and so they touch on every aspect of my life from the rites of passage to the passing of youth. I hope you enjoy them.
Bat Castle - Tales of a Liverpool vampire
Many years ago, shortly after Bram Stoker had blown Count Dracula's cover, thus alerting the Transylvanian peasantry that there was a bloodsucker in their midst, which sent the sales of Crucifixes and garlic through the roof, the Claret loving Aristocrat decided it was time to move on.
His problem was simple, he had to find a way of getting into the bloodstream of the general population without drawing attention to himself as even one forced eviction in 900 years was quite enough. One day, while sheltering in an abandoned bier kellar in Munich, he found a book entitled,' The Baron's return', which was an account of the rise of the American tobacco grower's association.
It occurred to Dracula that if only he could transform himself into tobacco leaves then he could enter a person's bloodstream absolutely incognito. His first attempt were pitiful and he spent months trying to reverse the spell he'd cast and which had turned him into Marijuana which he deemed useless for his purpose.
Then he struck it lucky, and it was while he was savouring the success of that lucky strike that he read further into 'The Baron's return' and realised that the Barons had built the biggest tobacco warehouse in Europe in a smoky industrial city called Liverpool.
Before you could say 'Lufthansa' he had gathered up his cloak and flown to the city on the Mersey looking for the site of the British American Tobacco company, (he apparently took the acronym BAT as an omen of success). When he saw the huge edifice erected by the Barons, whom he considered as being fellow Aristocrats, Dracula's heart sang.
So eager was he to promote the sales of his chosen medium that the count took a part time position in the advertising arm of BAT as well as freelancing for whomsoever cigarette manufacturer required his able services. His main contribution was to create names for tobacco products which brought to mind natural things of beauty and charm.
Thus it was that cigarettes were sold under such enchanting names as 'Passing cloud; Woodbines; Sweet Afton; and, to appeal to the middle classes, he devised names which reeked of class. Du Maurier; Sobranie; Gauloises; and in memory of another Aristocrat, a Duke, Marlboroughs. Incidentally, When the said Duke lost all his money, after the collapse of www.rentanaristo.com, he was forced to live frugally and lost a lot of weight, which prompted Dracula to create Marlborough Lites.
Sadly for the Count, BAT decided to close down its Liverpool operation and move instead to the third world. Dracula didn't fancy the heat of Zimbabwe or somewhere similar so he took up residence in the attic of a public house which had previously been named in honour of the edifice he had graced for many years.
Castle Bat is now a market, known as the 'Heritage Market', but in people like me Dracula's deadly legacy lives on. Now where did I put my Golden Virgina?
Just up the road from the Castle public house is another public house called the 'Green Man'.
Some historians, in all probability beneficiaries of the Yate's Scholarship for Anglo-Australian cultural exchanges, attribute the name of this pub to the famous Green Knight of Arthurian Legend*, who apparently lived on the Wirral and was sought out by Sir Gawain, who himself introduced locals to the words 'Barlay', meaning 'let's talk instead of fight' and the French 'Jongleur', meaning a story teller which locals corrupted to 'Jangler', a gossip.
However, it is my contention, and I know this assertion will rouse the ire of historians everywhere, that the 'Green Man' was named after the first person Dracula persuaded to inhale a cigarette.
*c/f 'Gawain and the Green Knight'.