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.
Paperback writer - A shortsighted man
By
John Williams
This morning I had to complete two simple tasks, get my prescription from my GP and take my broken glasses to the optician.
I was kept waiting half an hour in the Doctors and then when I got to the opticians I was informed that my titanium frames could be welded but when I was told the cost of it I was left wordlessly nodding acceptance.
I needed a fix of the second-to-last legal drug so I called at the tobacconists cum newspaper shop.
I also needed pick up my order for the Times Education supplement, which I need as I am still partially active in teaching, mostly as an exam marker, and of course my partner is a teacher too so it's a source of information about everything from education theories to job specs.
As I was queuing I noticed a burly looking man taking a copy of the Murdoch owned Sun newspaper from the rack. I was startled because I was unaware that my newsagent even stocked the rag.
You see The Sun has been almost totally boycotted on Merseyside since 1989 after it brutally slandered Liverpool football fans, blaming them for the death of ninety six of their own fans, a tragedy that was later shown by Lord Scarman's judicial review to be wholly attributable to police incompetence.
We in Liverpool are still seething with rage because of the Sun's calumnies so I wasn't well disposed toward the heavy set traitor, who looked as though he owed his hefty physique to a combination of genes, booze and fast food.
I was further ill-disposed toward him when he increased his pace so as to beat a very old man to the counter before taking his place behind me.
I asked the assistant, an ex-pupil of my partner's who was working to pay off her university loans, for my copy of the Times. I then enquired of the young woman how her course was going.
My query prompted a grunt cum snort from the pig to my rear, as he loudly observed, to no-one in particular, "Went to the university of life myself!"
Thoroughly pissed off already that morning I blindly ignored his size and with a fixed smile I turned to him and snapped,
"Then you must have met most of my relatives `cos they've been there for years!"
Fortunately for me the mouthy bastard just blinked and gave out a forced laugh, while the assistant hid a grin. Then the old man chipped in,
"I'm still waiting for a place, but I can't get a grant!"
I burst out laughing and looked at him and felt cheered by wink he gave me.
The thug simply affected a sudden interest in the sport's pages.
Walking home I was still inwardly boiling because I was reminded of the gob-shites who used to sneer `College pudding' when I was walking home from school carrying my satchel, the mark of the outcast.
I angrily recalled that the pricks who parroted the term never even knew that a College Pudding was an actual confection. For various reasons I left that school at the age of fourteen and re-entered the ranks of the Bakewell Tart eating brigade.
For the next ten years I was inundated with theories that `They' were doing this, and `They' were responsible for that. Then in 1969 I had a severe nervous breakdown . When I was recovering I fell in with a new breed of working class people, who were, in the main, hippies and who understood the reality of Milton's insight,
"The mind is its own place, It can make a Heaven of Hell, Or a Hell of Heaven."
They encouraged me to go back to education, thereby underlining their difference from the people I had known for all of my life until then, who had epitomised the Indian parable about the bucket containing six black crabs and six red crabs. When the black crabs attempted to escape they were pulled back by the red variety.
The encouragement of those people coincided with my own desire to know more about the world I lived in and its effect on me.
I went back to college, got the highest results hitherto recorded and then found myself faced with a choice of universities. I chose Liverpool mainly because I had a house of my own and didn't want the upheaval involved in going anywhere else.
The other reason for my choice was determined when I read the syllabus and saw the university's Latin motto, `Fiat Lux'; Let there be light.
After years of living in the dark, listening to pre-digested opinions that had their origins in the tabloids, the same tabloids that daily castigates students and non students alike as they mock students and intellectuals as wastrels, and the underprivileged as `Scalls' or more recently, `Chavs', I was ready for the light.
So you will forgive my small moment of triumph when I smile at the Sun reading gobeen's discomfort. I went through a fair struggle to get my education so I am not going to take shit from a prick that buys a newspaper with a reading age of nine, and then boasts of his near illiteracy.
Finally, I think of my grandfather, who because of his lack of education found himself unemployed for almost twenty years between the wars after spending four years as a wounded prisoner of war in Germany.
His only job was as an electrician's mate for the generating board, from which he was sacked for reconnecting people who'd had their supply cut. It was he who encouraged my precocious reading skills and I will never forget him for that.
He, like so many others of his class, graduated from the university of life, with honours!