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.
The in crowd - The time of our lives
By John Williams
Where my kids are concerned I am unashamedly paranoid, as is my partner and so last night was the first time in 21 years that we found ourselves without one or the other of our sons as both had attended different parties.
As I dropped off my fifteen year old at the venue for his shindig I tried to recall the last time I partied on down. It might have been to celebrate England winning the 1966 world cup, or perhaps the safe return of Apollo XIII but one thing I am sure of, and that is I was wearing flared trousers so wide that for years I was inadvertently providing shelter for an escaped convict in one leg and a recovering agoraphobic in the other.
Anyway, there we were with no plans as our `baby' had sprung his party on us at about 7 pm. Not that we would have gone anywhere because our old friends live so far away that I would have had to drive and so been unable to drink so there would have been no point.
So we did what all party poopers do and waited for the entrance of the new year accompanied by a succession of Rock musicians on the Jools Holland show, only leaving the house at midnight to hear the sound of ships' horns booming and witness the pyrotechnics that illuminated the first sky of 2007.
As the peals from the churches rang out I emptied my fourth or fifth glass of Bell's and mused on the utter emptiness of the roads around me while feeling a tad nostalgic for the hooch and smooch fuelled revels of yesteryear.
A kiss is still a kiss, a sigh is just a sigh...
My partner went to bed about one o'clock so I settled down to await my younger son's return and occasionally email or chat to friends.
By 3.30 he still hadn't arrived and I was getting nervous as he is still only a child. As the fingers of the clock clawed deeper into the first day of the year I operated on the principle that no news is good news, which is pretty stupid given that there are still parents in the American mid-west who are waiting to this day to hear from their alien abducted offspring.
At 3.45 am he and his best friend arrived and to my immense relief betrayed no visible signs of alcohol or drug abuse, which is more than he could say about his father who was by then totally rat arsed drunk and only capable of slurring a new year greeting before staggering to bed. He must have felt as embarrassed as I had on beholding my old man's celebratory over indulgence in the water of life.
Plus ca change plus c'est la meme chose.
Happy New Year everybody.