The campsite I
stayed in for the stormy night was close to Ainsdale, near Southport,
and in the morning the warden told me there was a good train service
into Liverpool from the village. I parked in a residential street and
(£3.80 return for Seniors) set off for the city, half an hour away.
I walked around the city centre and then down to the dock area where
much of Liverpool's regeneration has taken place. The Eye – similar
to London, but smaller – gave a good view of the city. At the
Tate I saw an exhibition of the Dutch artist, Piet Mondrian. It was
mainly neo-plasticism – his blue, red and yellow shapes, strong
straight black lines – which is how he got from abstract (an
abstract version of a known form) to total abstraction - from the
purest state of the human mind. I loved them, and was glad I took the
headset!
The docks are
regular brick wharflike buildings, listed and wonderfully restored, and made into flats above the shops. The Liver Building (Royal
Liver Assurance) was the tallest building in Europe when it was
built in 1911, with its three iconic 'Liver' birds on the top.
They're 18' high and are mythical birds. A local sculptor/artist was
commissioned to make them and was told they should look like eagles.
He'd never seen an eagle but had seen plenty of cormorants around the
dock so he made huge cormorants, and then someone told him eagles
didn't have webbed feet, so he took the legs off and added clawed
feet.. .!!? Or that's what I was told by Chris, the wonderful Scouse
guide on the Hop on Hop Off tour bus I joined by the Albert Dock.
Those buses are so good and I only wish I had recorded what he said
because he was so warm and funny and interesting.. He was very proud
of his city and made it clear just how important Liverpool had been
in the 19thC, with the White Star Line and Cunard, the dock crammed
with people heading for America etc. It was, and still is, a buzzy place, and the most multi-cultural
community. (Scouse comes from the Scandinavians... they brought with
them a poor man's pie or stew with lots of vegetables and a bit of
meat or fish. Delicious! Chris still has it once a week.)
The Anglican
cathedral is wonderful and vast (the biggest in the UK) and was
completed in 1978. At the other end of the road the Catholic
Cathedral which was originally to have been designed by Edwin Lutyens
(actually, back in time, there were other ideas too).
On the way back to
Ainsdale I got off the train a few stops early (Hall Road, Northern
Line) to walk down to Crosby Beach to see the Antony Gormley statues,
Another Place. They are amazing! The tide was almost out and the
statues, 100 identical cast iron figures weighing 650 kilos each, are
staring calmly out to sea, (“human life tested against planetary
time” Gormley said) -taking all that comes at them. They are spread
out over 2 miles of the shore and that day the most battering wind
was blowing off the sea. They have such an ordinariness about them
and yet they are utterly extraordinary.
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