It was a strange day. Quiet. The sort of quiet you get when everyone holds their breath. Liverpool 8 after the fighting and before the Garden Festival. Picking up the pieces. Smelling of damp smoke and adrenalin.
Walking down Princes Avenue, police pairs on every corner. Fresh faces drafted into a conflict they didn’t understand. Hanging around in the urban decay, quietly chatting about sheep on the fells and frightening old ladies with their aggressive politeness.
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Down past gutted shops. Temporary boarding that would become permanent sticky-plastering the gaping wounds of the multi-cultural shopping. Down past where my parents lived. Past the railings that broke a young back hit by an attack jeep.
Crossing the line of battle, still scarred and littered, to Rialto corner. A shell long before it burned, storing second-hand furniture, but still a Gibraltar Rock in our landscape. Generations of local kids welcomed to Saturday matinees in the fantasy palace by dinner-suited and bow-tied managers. Gone now.
Down the hill, past the streets of my childhood, named after slave traders and unlucky Victorian politicians. Down towards Hardman Street police station, now housing suspect troops, withdrawn to barracks.
And, in the road, a young duck. Surprised at first, we try to capture it. The duck does not fly but shows an ability to dodge and weave worthy of George Best. Regroup. We form a line and organise a snatch squad. While some of us ‘beat our shields’, others rush forward to capture the youngster in a thrown coat.
We take it into the police station, resisting a common urge to shout “Duck!”, and deposit with the desk sergeant. Solid, stoic and humourless, the sergeant fills in a lost property form and escorts the duck away to the cells.
Further down the hill we emerge from the war zone. Life going on as it had. Survivors.
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