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.
I shot the sheriff - Banking on the future
By John Williams
While my mother and new stepfather were looking for accommodation that would be large enough for the three of us I stayed at a friend's house. Every Saturday my stepfather would visit and give me a ten shilling note, or sometimes as much as a pound. In 1958 that was a vast amount of cash for a boy of 13 and so he thought it best to give me a savings box that was shaped like a book.
It was a handsome thing, covered in mock green leather, and defied all of my subsequent attempts to open it. My step-father, Jimmy, would sometimes give me four half crowns so that I could keep one and put the rest in the book. I used to get a Scrooge like thrill when I picked it up and shook it because it was heavy and it played a pleasingly muffled jingle as the coins inside snuggled up to the banknotes.
All of that summer I mentally spent my fortune in various ways until I finally decided that what I wanted was an air rifle. My desire for an air gun was probably a legacy of my involvement with American comics, which always carried images of a smiling boy toting a rifle of some kind.
British comics didn't carry any adverts for guns, so perhaps that's why we don't have a weapons culture here. Anyway, every chance I got I would visit the fishing tackle shop that doubled as an arms dealer and gaze rapturously at the air rifles with their highly polished wooden stocks and gleaming steel-blue barrels.
I wasn't the only lodger in my friend's, he had an uncle who was still single and when he wasn't working or propping up a bar lived there also. He was an unpleasant and carping man who never said anything positive about anyone. His constant drinking made him liverish and irascible.
I should point out that he was never violent, but his constant belittlement of my friend and his mother, the drunk's sister, was distressing. Whenever he was engaged in general abuse I consoled myself with the knowledge that I would soon be joining my parents and the fact that I was close to amassing enough cash to buy my rifle.
One sunny Saturday morning I trekked several miles to the bank, which was located at Childwall Fiveways, to have my book opened. I was accompanied by several of my friends who were all anticipating their chance to play with my gun.
I went inside the bank and the gang followed me and waited with bated breath as the teller inserted the key and opened the book. He shook it open and a heap of copper coins splashed onto the counter. I was dumbstruck when the teller informed me that I had two shillings in coins. One of my mates quipped,
" Maybe you can buy a water pistol!"
I couldn't bring myself to join in the general laughter. All the way home I racked my brain trying to work out how it could have happened. On nearing my friend's house I met his uncle who was on his way to the pub.
He stopped me and did something he had never ever done before in all the time I had known him. He handed me two half-crowns, and, grinning broadly, carried on walking. Years later I met him in the Slaughter House pub in Fenwick Street and, in the heat of argument, rudely reminded him of his theft. He blanched but said not a word. Not then, not ever again. Perhaps it was a small price to pay to silence the pig.