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 wrong arm of the law - The unusual suspects
By John Williams
Apart from one or two minor transgressions I have managed to avoid police scrutiny for most of my life. Indeed, there have been odd occasions when I have been grateful for a police presence.
I remember one time in the early seventies when I was walking down Prescot Road near to Low Hill when I found myself looking in the window of a glazier's shop, not because I had any broken windows but quite simply because I had never in all my life seen such a grotesque mess of glass, and fly blown mirrors, most of which was in slivers. I was just about to walk on when I saw a badly written cardboard sign stating that the owner, an Italian, had 'No association with the Yid next door'.
Now the building next door belonged to an industrial photographer and even a cursory glance at its smart facade rendered any connection to the Italian owned junk shop utterly absurd. For anybody to have mistaken one for the other would have required a combination of circumstances whereby an impoverished blind man was looking to purchase a badly broken mirror. The glazier was doubtlessly one of the few Italians who had a genuine love of Mussolini, and had wholeheartedly embraced the anti Semitism of his follically challenged idol.
I was so affronted that I immediately button holed a young policeman who was walking toward me. My outrage at the glazier's blatant attempt to ferment racial hatred lent me an eloquence I had never previously I owned and within minutes the policeman had marched into Slivers R Us and threatened him that unless he removed the offending sign 'his feet wouldn't touch the floor'.
Amid much dark muttering The sign came down and, after a few years, the industrial photographer moved on, no doubt because his success demanded larger premises, but the glass smasher stayed on amid his unconscious simulation of Krystalnacht. For the next 20 years I would regularly see him, resplendent in his greasy gabardine mac and crumpled black beret, as he cycled about the area.
Every encounter followed the same pattern, I would look at him, he would glower and mutter under his breath and then pedal away. Although he was an impotent little man these occasions were never pleasant and always left a bad taste. Luckily for me that by the time I needed glass for my house there were plenty of alternative places to buy it as places like Tasker's DIY had opened in nearby Wavertree.
My next encounter with the law was at University where one of my fellow students was a police sergeant who was also in charge of the University gun club. I was in the archery club myself, no doubt reliving my childhood when I adored the exploits of Robin Hood and yearned for a real bow as opposed to those made from privet branches, which evergreen shrubs also provided our arrows.
I could never avoid the feeling that Sergeant Mike Speakman was possibly embarrassed by my presence, possibly because my style of dress was rather less formal than his, and of course, he didn't smoke. Nonetheless, he sometimes asked me to assist in his psychology experiments, which, somewhat unnervingly, were designed to trap liars. He would eventually become the assistant chief constable of Merseyside, a position he still holds.
He might possibly have been even more embarrassed when, after tiring of the archery club which refused to countenance the impaling of cats, the elderly or homeless people on the points of arrows, I opted to learn how to shoot.
I didn't last long at the rifle club and my departure had nothing to do with Mike's role as instructor, but everything to do with the method of shooting. You see, I had thought that I would simply pick up a gun and start shooting from the hip. The reality was that I was trussed up in a device made of canvas webbing which was supposed to steady my arms while I held the firearm but which left me feeling as if I'd been set upon by a bondage freak and then left to stiffen in a freezer. It was agony and after one visit I hung up my guns forever.
Given my generally law abiding tendency you may imagine my horror when, last Friday, May 16th 2003, I went to my door to answer the bell and saw a hand inside the letter box trying to open the lock!
Worse, as I discovered on opening the door, the hand belonged to a middle aged policeman! Astonished, I asked him what he was doing and his reply will live with me forever...
"We have a report that a woman is being raped on these premises."
My jaw dropped and all I could do was stare stupidly at the reading spectacles I was holding in my hand. Just then, two more officers arrived, one of which was a rather formidable and hefty looking woman, who without even benefit of an introduction shot me a baleful glance.
I pointed my finger at the first policeman and gasped,
"You'd better come in."
He did, closely followed by Big Bertha and her mate who barged in uninvited. I was reminded of the scene in the movie 'Jumanjii" where Robin Williams was almost crushed to death by stampeding Rhinos. As I stood aghast at their rudeness a fourth person appeared. As he was dressed in a boiler suit I thought he was an itinerant plumber but he was in fact a member of an armed response team!
Now, given I'd had a stroke six weeks earlier you can further imagine that I was flapping a bit by now. I mean, I had gone from answering an email to to being accused of raping a woman at knife point. I wanted to scream, 'for fuck sake I've never had to force a woman in my life!' But I could only watch open mouthed as the Keystone rejects swarmed all over my house and garden. The Rhinos were even in the garden shed!
After about three or four minutes, when it became obvious that the alleged rape call was a hoax, they still wouldn't leave and I became more and more agitated and demanded that they go and leave me in peace. The more I protested at their presence the more aggressive and hostile they became. One of them even asked me why I was reacting the way I was! Oh silly me, I thought, I should be used to being accused of armed assault. It happens every fucking Friday!
The oldest policeman kept asking the same question,
"Who lives here with you?"
No doubt many of you, being reasonable people, will think that his question was relevant as I could well have had an accomplice who was even then carrying out his dastardly attack, but I suspect he was the house proud type who was convinced I must be a bachelor who was lying about being married because the unwashed breakfast dishes were piled where I had left them as I only start to tidy up when my family members are due home.
Now I know policemen have to follow up all leads, but, as I later found out from a superintendent, who rang me to explain the rudeness and hostility of his minions, the hoax caller had given a description of the alleged rapist, which bore as much relation to me as his goon squad had to the diplomatic corps! They knew, from the instant they saw me, that it was a hoax caller, apparently with a grudge against the police rather than me, but still insisted on doing their macho thing.
Now I know as well as anyone the police have an often thankless job to do but given their overbearing attitude toward me, a totally innocent person, it is small wonder that they are held in such low esteem in spite of the best efforts of men like Mike Speakman who absorbed whatever our Communications course had to offer in order to help create a breed of modern police officer who could exhibit rather more finesse, with regard to the public, than the Neanderthals I encountered.