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.
Liverpool as museum - Where can I find a docker's overcoat?
By
John Williams
The other day I took my boys to visit Liverpool's largest museum. Now until we moved away from the city centre we had been frequent visitors and had always followed the same routine. First we would visit the gift shop and spend an age while the boys agonized about choosing between a facsimile of a roman coin or a plastic dinosaur. Strangely coloured rubber models of Tyrannosaurus Rex usually ruled.
Later we would troop upstairs and, after gazing at the life sized model of an Allosaurus which stood in comic contrast with the Dinky Mammoths and Brontosaurii inhabiting the adjacent display cases which were no larger than a china cabinet, the boys would spend an hour in the 'hands on' section where they would train microscopes on anything from rocks to bones. Our visit always ended in the basement aquarium where I would invariably develop back ache lifting the boys up to afford them a better view of some hideous spider or reptile.
On our recent visit a middle aged guide who was patrolling the 'hands on' section held us in thrall as he explained what the various rocks and fossils represented, and even though he was addressing my son I went away feeling that much richer. All things considered it was both entertaining and enlightening, and only a few years ago it had been a free show.
For the sum of three pounds for a season ticket it was possible to visit all of the museums and art galleries in the area. That sum represents exactly what it costs to purchase a packet of paste board Pokemon cards. So for the cost of a packet of nine bits of paste board it it is possible to visit more than nine places of interest for a full year.
I suspect that something is amiss with our values when I hear people complain about the admission fee. Where else could you see a fully working engine from the defunct Liverpool Overhead Railway and then make tracks to see a genuine Egyptian sarcophagus for the price of admission to see trash like Pokemon the movie?
Since we had a ticket to ride it was decided that we would go and visit the Conservation Museum. I don't know quite what I expected but it was an eye opener, because, exhibits apart, the friendly staff equipped each of us with a phone-like gadget which enabled us to 'dial-up' information about the various displays and then listen to a voice explaining what each display meant.
It was all a bit star wars for me but my youngest boy took it in his stride, even to the point of showing me how to use the silicon guide.
It occurred to me that one of the first things that museum had decided to conserve was old fashioned courtesy. Yet another thought that struck me was that many of the exhibits, which were there to demonstrate how objects are reclaimed and restored to their original state, were ordinary everyday objects which ordinary people used.
This aspect was in marked contrast to the traditional museum, where the exhibits venerated only the great things of the past, which inevitably meant that they were associated with great people, which is to say the ruling classes of the ages past.
That's alright I suppose, but there have been times when I have looked at a finely wrought piece of armour and wondered what the poor folk wore to battle. Was there such a thing as chain mail marked 'slightly imperfect'? Or were there pirated versions of well known blacksmiths' brand names? I can just hear the derisive cries of,
"Ooh Look! The Unicorn is upside down! It must be a fake!"
That's the problem with museums and art galleries, they rarely, if ever , present us with examples of the mundane and everyday objects that ordinary held dear. What was the common pottery like? Did ordinary people drink out of the mis-shapes that the potter rejected? There might have been conversations along the lines of,
Father: " That's my cup you're drinking from!"
Son: "How can you tell?"
Father: " Your's has got three handles and a hole in the bottom!"
What toys did the children of the poor play with and were they home made? What clothes did they wear? I often see kitsch postcards or drawings of Victorian children playing in the street, and they are always wearing those neat little leather ankle boots with pointed toes, yet I know for a fact that my Grandmother didn't own a pair of shoes until she was twelve.
Now, since she was born in 1896, that means that she entered the twentieth century barefoot, and within eight years of owning her first pair of shoes she was wearing gaitered boots because she was a member the army of landgirls who farmed in the absence of the men who were at the war in France. Every picture tells a fable.
Perhaps any museum which exhibited the artefacts of ordinary people, alongside the fabulous possessions of the rich would be too subversive, because the inequalities of millennia would be laid bare for all to see in a way that no political tract could ever achieve.
circa 2000