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 price of love - A war of wills
By John Williams
I once purchased a heap of dross, which in the end turned out to be pure gold. It was during the spring of 1976 and I had taken a girl friend to view the items that were laid out prior to the auction which was held in Moss Street. Alison hailed from Bath and had never been to an auction. I say hailed, but her voice was rarely raised above a lisping whisper. It must be said that throughout her young and pampered existence the nearest that she had ever been to used goods was when she held my hand.
I had always enjoyed mooching about the auction rooms although in truth the things I coveted were always out of my reach. The objects of my desire almost always resided in glass cabinets and included things like snuff boxes and fine porcelain. Why I wanted a snuff box I'll never know, but perhaps it was because my Grandmother once told me a story of her one and only attempt to ingest the sneezing stuff.
Up until the fifties it was common to see people ingesting snuff, which is powdered tobacco. This commonplace practice was however considered by some to be too common for words, which was ironic as it was originally the preserve of the aristocracy until a shipload of the stuff was captured and given to the victorious English sailors. Within a decade it was being sold to the masses and was the most popular form of tobacco taking.
My own memories of snuff are not pleasant as some of the people who took it had such heavily brown-stained nostrils so that to my young eyes it appeared that they had spent their entire lives sniffing their own bottoms. Those women who opted for the paler brands were free not only of staining but of the social opprobrium that accompanied the habit as it was generally acceptable that men used snuff but when women developed a taste for it they were frowned upon.
Anyway, my grandmother told me that she had been persuaded to try it and so bought some from the tobacconists immediately adjacent to the Granada cinema in Dovecot shopping parade. Now snuff was sold by the gram, which is, coincidentally, an amount almost always associated with other drugs such as amphetamine, cocaine, heroin and marijuana.
When my gran purchased her snuff the young assistant, who was new to the trade, weighed out the precious commodity in the way that was most familiar to her, which resulted in her handing over to my gran a paper bag normally used for the sale of sweets and that contained over a quarter of a pound of the stuff! Rose Anne, unused to the ritual simply put it into her basket and went home.
It wasn't until my gran got home to her house where one of her neighbours began exulting about the bounteous oversight that Rose Anne realised that something was amiss. Within minutes she had returned it to the shop fearful that the young lady's inadvertant generosity in filling the bag would get her the sack.
On that April morning that I took Alison to the auctions my own nostrils were filled with a mixture of her L'air du temps and the musty smell of old wardrobes. La Belle du Bath's nose was permanently wrinkled.
I spotted a box filled with all manner of crockery and kitchen implements which looked as if it might go for a reasonable price and so enable me to at least make the morning a minor event.
The bidding started at a pound so I stuck my hand up with the practiced air of an antiquarian who was completely au fait with auction buying, although I had never bid for anything before in my life, unless you count the occasional failed bid for freedom.
It so happened that there was another fruitcake present at the auction because another bid raised the ante to two pounds. I couldn't see my competitor but that didn't matter as I felt the spirit of competitiveness rising. Eventually I won the the less than glittering prize for the sum of nine pounds. It had been worth it though just to see the flush of combat colour Alison's otherwise pale complexion.
As I carried away my booty I couldn't help noticing that some of the utentsils, in particular a bone handled carving fork still had, well, stuff attached to them. Alison by then was looking askance at the contents of the box, which included amongst other things a chipped Toby jug that was calibrated for measurements. No doubt for the measurement of Tobies.
We hadn't got any further than the waste land beyond the Old Fort public house before I deposited the box and all of its questionable contents on the ground before heading home.
A few months later it transpired that Alison was dallying with another young man. When I confronted her about it she looked forlorn, in the way that the young ladies in women's romantic magazines look devastated when faced with a choice between two lovers and her bright corn flower blue eyes fluttered appealingly as she told me how torn she was.
I remember stroking her ash blonde hair and wishing her well with her new beau, because, at the instant of her telling me of her dilemma, the image of my earlier disastrous bidding war with an unknown competitor sprang to mind and so I decided to withdraw my interest there and then.
It wasn't too long before Alison found herself back on the market because my unknown rival had presumably discovered how tame a love affair can if it is based on the premise of a war, only for the antagonist to leave the battlefield.
So the nine pounds I had spent in purchasing a box of garbage stood me in good stead and that's not to be sneezed at!