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 maypole - Liverpool airs
By John Williams
I can remember when certain shops in Liverpool had aromas peculiar to them. For instance, there was a chandlers called Appletons that was redolent with the heady smells of fire-lighters, bundles of wooden sticks bound with thin wire surrounding a core of wood shavings soaked in a heavily scented combustible liquid, possibly creosote. They were mingled with the aromas of paraffin, soap, bleach and disinfectant, creating a pungent pot pourri of pine and pitch. Even the briefest visit to the shop could perform wonders for a stuffy nose.
The grocers, green-grocers and bakers were much the same wherever one went, yet one grocers lingers in my mind for various reasons. The Maypole grocer's shop in Finch Lane Parade was no bigger than any of the other shops but it had a sort of grandeur that left the rest stalled on ambition. At the entrance to the shop was a beautifully wrought image of a Maypole, constructed from ceramic tiles. The lovely ladies depicted in the scene were from a much earlier age and were probably inspired by the Romantic poets. One thing is certain, which is, that outside of the local swing park I never saw a real Maypole, much less one that was festooned with delicately attired Keatsian women.
It is difficult to forget the various smells that vied for access to one's nostrils as one entered the premises. The slightly acid sweet scent of strong cheese escaping the grille of the cotton cloth that bound the yellowing moons fused with those of chocolate rinded sides of bacon and both were cloaked by the musky aroma of dried tea emanating from open plywood chests.
Everything in that shop was perishable, nothing was deep frozen and was therfore subject to the ravages of decay. Even the shop itself was living on time borrowed from the supermarket giants and would eventually wither away leaving only the sanitised smell of progress.
I have one unfortunate memory of the Maypole, and that is of the time my father, home from one of his sea voyages, was busy fitting a dynamo to my bicycle and so asked me to go to the grocer's to get some rhoded bacon and eggs for our supper. As I walked across the grass verge that ran alongside Princess Avenue for its whole length I dropped the silver coins that I had been given to make the purchase.
It was November and the dark had already descended, thus reducing my chances of finding the coins. In fact, it made it impossible and so I had to return home and tell my father what had happened. He simply sighed and set about serving up the mashed potatoes and cabbage that had been awaiting the bacon and eggs to make up a meal that seemed to me to be based on the colours of the Irish flag. I vaguely remember my father looking askance at me as if wondering why his otherwise capable child, who could recall obscure facts of history and recite poems couldn't hold on to two shilling and sixpence.
It is perhaps ironic that my next vivid experience of a particular shop-smell should be in the butchers where my step-father used to work, and where his constant carrying of heavy sides of beef would eventually compact his spine and leave his bones friable and vulnerable to osteoporosis. However, in those heady days of the Mersey sound and the rise of Liverpool L.F.C he was a fit and active young man.
The shop he worked in belonged to Arthur Toole, a bluff man with a risque line in banter who enjoyed eating his own products. As you all know there is, unless you are a vegetarian, something irrestibly haunting about the savoury smell of freshly cooked meats. Arthur knew this and his midday meal of pieces of steak, liver, lamb chops and kidneys fried inter alia on a flat enamelled tray was not only his sustenance but also the most exquisitely pungent example of advertising I've ever had the pleasure to encounter. It was impossible to pass his shop at noon without one's mouth becoming a Niagra of anticipatory juices.
Years later I would be drawn to Ken's Kitchen in Kensington Liverpool by similar aromas and that is where, on the basis of the smell alone, I once purchased a delicious whole cooked ham for my eldest son's christening do. Even Now I can't pass by a cooked meat shop without feeling vaguely comforted. In this epoch of New Age thinking it's a sort of Old Age aromatherapy.
In the intervening years between Arthur's shop and Ken's kitchen there was one other shop which had a particular smell attached to it and that was a shop I came to know as Ratface's, from which premises oozed the distinctive whiff of greed. It was a small corner shop run by two Brothers, henceforth referred to as ratface major and ratface junior. The latter just happened to be called Stanley.
Their mark-up on foodstuffs was so high it bordered on the criminal. They were, in my opinion, quite simply bare face robbers. Worse, they were smug thieves who derived great pleasure from informing their clientele of the benefits they had accrued from their exploitation of the inner city dwellers. Stanley once sighed and informed me that he was terribly tired. Bearing in mind that he lifted nothing heavier than a pound coin I was puzzled by his fatigue and foolishly asked him what had caused it. Flushed with triumph he intoned,
" It's hard to sleep when there's a fifty foot conifer banging on your roof!"
Having spent several years trying to kill a six foot rogue Elderberry that was trying its best to dislodge my drainpipe I could only guess at his turmoil.
The advent of the supermarket giants ensured that the aromas attached to foodstuffs would be totally purged. When I go to Sainsburys or Asda the only real use for my nose is when it begins to run, thus informing me that it is about time I got out of the arctic ambience of the frozen food section and head home. Given that these food giants are now multi-nationals it is perhaps ironic that the only shops I know of where scents sweet and savoury can be inhaled belong to Asian and African immigrants. In these aroma emproria all manner of exotic fruits and vegetables are sold and the smell of spices perfume the air still. Like the spice Islands themselves, they are islands of sensual bliss in a chilled and sanitised sea.