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.
Going underground - Dungeons and Dragons
By
John Williams
In my time I've experienced some terrifying dives, and I'm not talking a la Jacques Cousteau. By far the most awe inspiring of these places was a social club called the 'Bronte'that was apparently founded by Sir John Moores, ostensibly for the enjoyment of the people who lived in the Bullring tenements.
The Bullring in Liverpool is legendary for producing tough honest people who somehow epitomised the old community values of self sufficiency and stoic endurance. The latter quality must have been much in evidence during the May Blitz of 1941 because the 'Bully' was located at the heart of the city and lay directly under the flight path of a Luftwaffe that was intent on reducing Liverpool's docklands to ruin.
In fact, the original Lewiss' department store was destroyed by a bomb less than 200 yards from the tenements that George Orwell had earlier dismissed as 'slums of the air'. However, George was an Old Etonian and so presumably new very little about working class communities and values no matter how hard he tried.
Now, given that brief outline of the Bullring and its people you might assume that Sir John Moores had felt impelled to create a social club that would not have been out of place in a brochure for Shangri-La, but the sad truth is that the 'Bronte' was more reminiscent of Orwell's '1984' than Sir Thomas More's 'Utopia'.
To me, the most striking feature of the Bronte was its windows. They hardly existed and had more in common with the slits in the walls of medieval castles whence archers used to unleash their arrows. Why was this? I mean, Liverpool has two Cathedrals, each of which, in different ways, offer people spectacular examples of stained glass sunlit illuminations of a religious vision of heaven. Yet the Bronte, the gift of a Christian philanthropist, was, in its narrowly confined views, nearer hell than heaven. At least, that was my impression. Ironically the Bronte is less than a hundred yards from the Metropolitan cathedral.
Perhaps the lack of sunlit vistas had something to do with the under current of violence I sensed on more than on occasion. I remember one vividly. I had been playing pool when my partner pointed out to me a man of about seventy odd who looked as if he should have been at home drinking beef tea and being tucked in by his grand children.
He had apparently just been released from Dartmoor for murder. I can recall feeling pity for him when suddenly he leapt up, grabbed another elderly man by the neck and held a broken bottle to the other's throat. My own throat was by then drier than a Nazi's tear ducts, but thankfully the assailant was restrained. It was a horrifying sight nonetheless.
Fortunately, there was more to the Bronte than violence. I can still see the young kids cooking huge pots of stew for the pensioners and marvel at the general cheerfulness of the clientele in spite of their dungeon like surroundings.
I never did understand why it was called the 'Bronte', unless it was short for Brontosaurus because let's face it, the place was a total dinosaur. Perhaps Sir John held drinkers in the same contempt that certain of the Scottish clergy did when they forced men to drink in windowless huts at the outskirts of the village. Then again, although he built a fortune from football and shopping he was not an architect. That said, those people were worth more Mr Moores, a lot bloody more.