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.
A dedicated follower of fashion - Growing old disgracefully in Liverpool
By John Williams
A few weeks ago I went to T.J. Hughes' in the hope of finding a new winter jacket. I had been forced into buying something new because my two boys, both high ranking members of the Fashion Police, had been carping about my beloved green jacket for weeks and in truth I had grown fearful of their daily comments.
I have grown so attached to that coat, with its many pockets and detachable hood, because on any given day I can be carrying a digital camera, a mobile phone, cigarettes, a lighter and a note book, plus assorted letters and scraps of paper that my wife insists I take home with me rather than litter the car. In short, I am a walking bin.
Anyway, I persuaded my eldest son to accompany us to Tee Jay's, a place so far removed from his normal fashion circuit that it might as well have been a charity shop in Woolongong for all he cared. His type of shop has marble floors, minimal displays and maximum prices. Yet, oddly enough, it was my son who discovered a rather smart reefer style car coat and insisted I try it on.
My wife looked at me with a doubtful expression on her face before voicing the opinion that while it was undoubtedly smart it would crease like a dishcloth.
Somewhat relieved that my beloved jacket looked like being on a reprieve I quickly slipped off the reefer jacket and donned my second skin. My son, furious that I had so easily abandoned the chance to look cool, said loudly,
"That's right Dad, don't let anyone change you! I don't know why you don't just cut the bottom off a sleeping bag!"
I headed for the exit, chuckling through my blushes, and when I stepped out into the crisp cold of London Road I suddenly remembered that I had once worked in a tailor's shop almost a hundred yards and a hundred years away when I had been a dedicated follower of fashion.
In my youth I had always tried to be in the forefront of haute couture and most of my money was spent on bespoke suits, Arrow shirts and Slim Jim ties. I even went to the extraordinary length of having a handkerchief peeping out of my pocket, although that was a short lived fashion experiment as one night a young lady who had a bit of grit in her eye reached into my pocket and, because my handkerchief was no more than three triangles of linen stitched to a cardboard base, promptly stabbed herself in the eye. She was a bit snotty with me after that.
That was in the days when tailors occupied almost every house in Seymour Street and the sight of men carrying half completed suits round the adjacent streets was commonplace.
Suddenly, San Francisco and the flower children were in the world's spotlight and within a decade Loons, Cuban heeled boots and Paisley patterned shirts had supplanted hand made suits.
I remember one day in the late sixties passing my old employer's purpose built tailor's shop. It had been built circa 1960 in anticipation of a fashion boom and even had its own machine room for making stylish shirts, but when I went inside to say hello to the proprietor, Solly Abrams, he was sunk in gloom and quite out of sorts as he surveyed an interior that was chock full of merchandise with not a customer to be seen.
The sight of me, decked out in a little denim and Cheesecloth ensemble, appeared to have pissed him off no end and I was sorry because he had always been kind to me.
It was about that time that I bought my last bespoke suit, for a christening. I didn't buy it from Solly as his superbly crafted outfits were by then beyond the reach of my married pocket, but via a combination of a tailor and a thief. I hasten to add that the tailor and the thief were not one and the same man.
The thief, who in reality might well have regarded himself as an early environmentalist who simply cleared the roads of items that had fallen from lorries, had his offices in the Coach and Horses public house in Low Hill, whilst the tailor was an anonymous little man with a shop near Holt Road.
Chaperoned by my uncle John I went to the Coach and Horses for a consultation and was offered a beautiful blue green Mohair type suit length. The seller assured me that it was genuine Tonik and so I parted with my money, picked up my brown paper wrapped parcel and traipsed up to the tailor's shop. The tailor looked judiciously at the material and observed that it was a bit short on length but that he would do his best to create a decent suit from it.
He was as good as his word and the suit fitted me like a glove, of the kind a surgeon might employ. It fitted where it touched and believe me it was so tight that it touched almost everywhere! The only place it didn't quite fit was around my ankles. Indeed, the hem of the trousers was so far above my shoes that on days when the wind chill factor was high my ankles were so blue that I could have got away with not wearing socks!
If that was a Tonik I'll stick to Sanatogen!
In the years that followed my bespoke fiasco I was strictly a jeans person. In fact, I was so out of the fashion loop that when I graduated in nineteen seventy nine I was forced to borrow a suit from a somewhat dubious acquaintance. Given its provenance, I suspect it might have been part of yet another environmentalist's haul.
In nineteen eighty five I was compelled to enter the realm of high class tailoring once more when my son was about to be christened. I paid a small fortune for a suit from George Henry Lee's and wore it only once because I stopped smoking for a few years and gained twenty pounds. My subsequent forays into the world of fashion were restricted to looking for comfortable trousers, which, while a simple enough task in itself, was often complicated by my accompanying children who would ask loudly, of no one in particular, where we could find fat man's trousers!