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.
There's a place - Where we can go
By
John Williams
There is a line in the movie Blade Runner that for me is one of the most thought provoking statements I have ever encountered. The scene is on the roof of a high building, where Roy, the dying robotic humanoid, has just saved the life of his greatest enemy. As they rest in the drenching downpour the replicant poignantly states,
" I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched sea beams glitter in the darkness at Tannhauser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time like tears in rain...Time to die."
I realised then just how essentially alone we all are, for while we can share the general memories of events, places or people we cannot share the particular moments as they are unique to each individual.
For instance, take a Wembley cup final. We all see the game and the drama unfold and we all agree that there was a winning team and a losing team. That, however is about the limit of our shared experience because all of the other tiny events that each individual person absorbs will not be seen or remembered by anybody else present at the event.
Did the person next to you see the frown on the referee's face when he accidentally bit his tongue and then spent the next five minutes swallowing blood as he did not want to spit in the presence of the Queen? Did you yourself see the tears of the child seated behind you as he watched his team lose?
Roy's sadness stemmed from the fact that the unique and wonderful things he had witnessed in his brief life would, after his death, be lost to the world forever and that is our sadness too.
So often we have stood alone, marvelling at a fleeting sunset, and wishing that there was someone with us to share that moment, because deep inside each of us we have always been aware of the tragic truth of Roy's observation, that the public memories survive but our private memories die at the instant of our death.
On a more cheerful note I would now like to share some of my more personal memories.
I was reading King Rat, a novel about life in Changi's Prisoner of war camp when I came across a description of how whales mate, and in that instant I was delivered of a mystery that had puzzled me for years.
I had been on a ship in the mid Pacific, idly staring at the horizon, when I saw two enormous whales break the surface amid a blizzard of spray, crash into each other like drunken ballet dancers and slip, tail-first, back into the depths.
That majestic scene was replayed several times over, but it wouldn't have mattered if it had been acted out for a month because I still wouldn't have understood that rather than displaying aggression the leviathans, against the perfect disc of a mandarin sun, were coupling.
Again, on the same ship on a similar evening I saw the distant sky supported by what appeared to be gigantic columns, and it was if the world was suddenly an enormous Greek temple, until the pillars collapsed, one by one, as is the way with waters-spouts.
I remember too my first passage through the Panama canal when I was transfixed by what appeared to be a ragged cloud that had risen as vapour from the waters of the artificial lakes but which, to my astonishment, revealed itself as millions of butterflies migrating north across the isthmus.
It was on just such occasions as those that I wished that I had had with me a companion to share the ineffable beauty of such a moment. Of course, that was when I was single. Since the children arrived I have rarely had a moment alone.