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.
Dancing Queen - Tripping the light fantastic
By John Williams
Nostril hair, enlarged ear lobes and the wearing of slippers in public are generally synonymous with old age or incipient dementia. So far, my nasal coiffure is manageable, without recourse to a lawn-mower, and my ears still have some way to go before I can seek work as a Prince Charles look-alike.
However, when my fifteen year old son bought me a new, and superfluous, pair of slippers for Christmas I heard the unmistakeable sound of the care home shuffle.
I already had a perfectly good pair but perhaps he felt that the McPherson tartan design was inappropriate footwear when padding about the front garden in full view of passers by.
So, on Christmas morning I was the somewhat underwhelmed recipient of a pair of midnight blue velvet slippers that would not have looked out of place at a dancing academy.
I tried to act surprised and delighted, but the shape of them beneath the wrapping paper was unmistakeable and I have never been particularly good at simulating surprise. Not wanting to disappoint him any further I refrained from commenting on the quite obnoxious smell emitted by the rubber soles.
I kid you not, they stank with a noxious mixture of tarmac, paint thinners and freshly deposited dog shit.
As I slipped noiselessly about the house I could not escape the smell that dogged my every step, but eventually my diminished sense of smell came to my rescue and I settled down to eat my late breakfast.
Just then the door bell rang and my next door neighbour was ushered in bearing her customary Christmas gifts. I don't know if she had been nipping the Sherry but this normally diffident lady embraced me heartily and kissed me on the cheek. As I stepped back, slightly alarmed at her unusual behaviour, I couldn't help noticing her nose wrinkling like that of a rabbit inspecting a lettuce leaf.
I realised immediately the cause of her distaste and fled to the back door whereupon I slipped off the offending articles and deposited them at the open door.
I found my old pair and eased into them before going back to exchange gifts with our neighbour, who, to my dismay, kept her distance when saying goodbye at the front door and I had the distinct feeling that next year's gift to me would not be the traditional whisky, but rather Cologne.
I had quite forgotten about the slippers until my son pointed out that he hadn't seen the cat for hours. My discarded slippers had deterred a starving cat from crossing its own threshold!
I surreptitiously took the stinking footwear upstairs and deposited them in the junk room, making a mental note to return them to the cess pit of a shoe shop that sold them to my unsuspecting son.
That evening my eldest son's girlfriend arrived with several other young people and as I uttered the customary greetings I was mortified to see every single one of them wrinkling their noses in what looked like a peripatetic performance of Watership Down.
The evil smell had tired of languishing among the used keyboards and other assorted rubbish and tripped its dainty way down the stairs! I just hope that until the shops open the garden shed can contain it!