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 handbags and the gladrags - O bla di O bla da
By
John Williams
Before the world was partially buried in plastic shopping bags nobody knew where anybody else had been shopping because, on the whole, shopping bags were individual, and totally free of store names. Well, I say that knowing that mine had a tiny Prada logo, nothing ostentatious you understand. Of course, I wasn't always so flush, or flash.
I remember one winter's evening, it must have been sometime in 1950, when my mum was on her way home from my Gran's, in possession of the usual gift of a shopping bag swollen with staples. To her horror she discovered when we arrived home that she had left it on the bus. The next day we duly turned up at Hatton Garden's lost property office and enquired as to the bag's whereabouts.
When the guy asked what was in it, so as to establish ownership of the bag, my old girl told him that there were eggs and cheese and 'something else'. Her reluctance to clarify the 'something else' became understandable when the man, grunting with the effort, hefted the bag onto the desk and on opening it revealed eggs, cheese and about a quarter hundred weight of coal. Imagine trying to get that amount of nutty slack in a plastic bag!
Another bag that haunts me was my leather school satchel. It was brown on the outside while the inside, at first glance, it looked as if it had been fashioned from the hide of a Fresian cow, but any resemblance was simply due to umpteen bottles of spilt ink on its original white surface. The flap of the satchel was curled and dog-eared; a perfect match for my shirt collar. Small wonder that one of my school reports noted that both my work and appearance were sometimes untidy. Teachers in those days just had no concept of street cool.
During my brief career as a sea pup I had an assortment of bags but I can only really remember a canvas rope handled grip and I only recall that because of my only foray into the dark underworld of smuggling drugs into Britain. My cousin, Sheila, who was more hip to the Beatnik/poetry scene than myself, had given my dad a pipe which I thought would be fun to fill.
I was on the Empress of England at the time and I can still recall the horror I felt when the bloody customs man opened up my grip and found, inside my sea boots, several six inch long blocks of a brown sticky substance which he triumphantly pounced on and confiscated because I had already used up my tobacco allowance. Perhaps it's just as well as my Dad stopped smoking his briar shortly afterward.
In between my attempts to outwit Her Majesty's Excise I had children, one of whom slept soundly inside a suitcase until he was four weeks old and on my visit to Israel I had a huge green canvas...well...sack I suppose. I looked like a militarized Santa Claus as I humped it from Liverpool to Tel Aviv and back.
Because of its shape it was impossible find things and I used to attract curious looks as I had to shake out everything to find anything. Had you been at any bus stop between Tiberias and Eilat you might have seen lying at my feet a configuration of socks, underwear, bagels and a sand blasted copy of Coriolanus, looking for all the world like a soothsayer reading the entrails of sea turtle.
I rarely see anybody with a shopping bag nowadays that isn't made of plastic generously donated by a supermarket chain who seem impervious to accusations that their generosity is damaging the environment. Of course some supermarkets do try to limit the wanton destruction of our world by charging for the bags which at least attempts to inhibit over consumption by encouraging people to retain their old bags. To no avail in my case as I always forget mine with the result that I have a huge George Henry Lee bag overflowing with smaller bags from many different supermarkets.
Even Kwiksave has finally started giving bags away when once they used to offer two types of bag; a penny bag, for light purchases or a three penny version for heavier items. I somehow miss the inevitable question that Kwikkie's checkout girls must have been coached to ask a customer if the latter asked to buy a bag,
"Do you want a strong bag or a penny one..."
I sometimes couldn't resist the temptation to reply,
"Oh a weak one. The weaker the better. Have you got one in a state of collapse perhaps?."
Sighs all round as the girls knew that their question was loaded and were probably tired of smart-arsed comments.
Of course, many of these bags hold not just groceries but also carry a je ne sais quoi, while others can become the focus of social opprobrium. In short, the humble plastic shopping bag provides yet another manifestation of that quaint British institution, snobbery.
The cause of this phenomena stems from the influx of supermarket chains from mainland Europe, all of whom operate at a lower profit margin than their British counterparts. On average, the profit margins of companies such as Aldi, Netto and Lidl are something like four to five percent lower than Sainsbury's, Tescos or Safeways whose margin is in the region of between six and eight percent. This is financial fact.
Aldi was one of the first to invade the supermarket stronghold, and for a long time they were a cash only company, which illustrates the fact that their target customers didn't necessarily have bank accounts. Their policy led to a situation now legendary in Liverpool, whereby a disgruntled Liverpudlian, on being informed at the checkout point that the German owned company didn't take cheques, retorted,
"They took enough of them during the fuckin' war!"
Amazingly, instead of responding with open arms to the low prices these new stores offer, many people would sooner be carried away in a body bag than be seen with one of their bags. I personally admire their cold meat selections, as well as their dairy products and ice cream. I regularly load up with packets of Ingmar Bergman ham, Berchesgarden yoghurt and vanilla flavoured Strength Through Joy ice-cream.
One day I was at Aldi, putting my shopping into my car boot, when a woman wheeled her trolley up to the car next to mine and I noticed that she hadn't bought any plastic bags. She didn't have to because she had loads of them, all in her boot and all of them from Sainsbury's! I must remember that I thought. Well, I mean, why pay for them every time?
As bizarre as it may seem, but then this is Britain so it may not be that bizarre, even the economically less fortunate are infected with this snobbery. Several years ago when we moved to this house there were no carpets on the stairs and so we got a firm to install some. One of the fitters had recently been released from prison, a fact he was quite open about. He was a smashing guy who had a baby girl suffering with Leukaemia.
Anyway, the conversation got around to supermarkets and he told me that he often went shopping in Netto but didn't dare do it when his other children were at home because they hated seeing Netto's hideously distinctive black and yellow bags. He said that his children referred to those people who openly sported the black and yellow bags as 'Netto freaks'. I was in hysterics.
My answer to this baggism is simple. Abandon plastic bags, buy shopping bags, and make more trips to the shops. That way, we get much needed exercise, help the environment and consign an aspect of snobbery to the plastic dustbin of history.
I'm just off to Aldi and I am not taking a single Sainsbury's bag with me, as I got four bags at Marks and Spencer's the other day. One for the loaf, and three for luck.
Manager standing by the checkout: " Make way for a class act!"