So Aigburth and Garston became the stomping ground. Aigburth was lovely in summer the prom took you from Beechwood to Aigburth vale via Otterspool Park. Otterspool Park was a wonderful park with tree?s that surrounded you creating shade and a blitz of meandering hues. The trees came from all over the world and the grey Park path bended its way down to the prom and the wide solemn Mersey. You could see the sailors walking on the decks of Garston bound ships. Small Russian vessels with that sea scarred battle look about them. I once saw a big Russian sailor in the Wellington in Garston he must have been seven foot or more. He was drunk and kept banging on the bar. When he banged on the bar the whole Welly shook and the barmaid just run and got the bear another one. Then there was Aigburth Cricket Club, or should I say Liverpool Cricket Club? It is actually in Garston as the district sign is just outside and it is actually called Liverpool Cricket Club. Sometimes in summer mainly bank holidays they had county Cricket. You could see Hampshire or Sussex or Essex sometimes twice a year. Well look at the wall and ask me did we pay to get in? No chance! Clive Lloyd played for Lancashire and the West Indies in those days. He was tall and Athletic looking and he gave Lancashire certain glamour. We could never get in the beer tent as if you went over the wall it meant you never had a ticket stub. The guys in the white coats who marshalled the event would stand at the entrance to the beer tent checking stubs. So perusing the ground for discarded ticket stubs was often the way round that one. They pulled down the old Aigburth arms and put up the Kingsman. They had glass show cases for the Kings Regiment and memorabilia like tin helmets bayonets and stuff. I was too young to go in the old Aigburth arms and to into football to want to. And that is what we did. We played football 24-7 well not quite but we did play a lot. In the summer evenings we played down by the prom and the bright silent sun would slowly vanish leaving the Mersey to the mercy of the moon. We would pile up to the chippie and share chips and coke relieving the appetites created by the footballing exertions?. I remember how good Jimmy Case was at fourteen he could hit the ball so hard. Yet as he pointed out to me he couldn?t hold a candle to my dancing. And we went to all the dances in the colleges and schools in the summertime in green Aigburth and Allerton and most of south Liverpool. Hedonistic fun loving days. And sometimes in the sought out solitude I walked along the prom alone and dreamt. Make up poems and songs in my head. I always thought how much I would like to write about the place the impressions the will to share and articulate the youthful experience. Right there I kissed Marie in spring dusk and before it was dark walked to the bus stop with her my very first kiss. She has gone now but like every mortal on the planet I remember that very first young and innocent happening. Two kids alone with the Mersey its solemn self and Wales brooding. And sometimes my thoughts would stray to thinking about thinking. Cognition. Forget secondary school and the lack of ambition, focus, and potential. You are a conscious entity. You perceive all you see hear and touch from that premise. That is you have a notion of your existence. So does that bird. Yes but that is instinct. They don?t plan funerals in that existence. How is it then that we can be so close? The thoughts and questions that we grapple with as we make our way through the vortex of data and chimeras that accompany youth. Look over at Wales it has seen so many lives come and go the snow topped Snowdonia is witness to all our joys and sadness. And sometimes on lonely days when as a lad I could not work out my plight. I would just come and walk along the prom. Then you see another person most likely thinking about thinking. Sometimes a dog racing around after a ball. Kids alighting from cars skipping down to the waiting grey Mersey beyond the safe railings.
div>
Fortunately we lived in a time when you could think. I mean if you?re ducking for cover and dodging Jets it doesn?t give you much scope to reflect on matters. Why we go to war is beyond me. The Greeks inscribed over all their temples ?know thyself? So it would be nice if everyone took sometime out to discover who they are and what their potential is and what they can offer to the world they live in. Kennedy said much the same. The Beatles then had gone into their intellectual phase. I liked Revolution the b side to ?Hey Jude? ideology and dogma is not the way forward. Awareness is a raised level of consciousness. Sometimes I wanted a revolution yeah let?s get it on. Then you look at history and the way things get distorted and you see where Lennon was coming from. And we all loved ?Get Back? and the days were long and there was an excitement in the air as there always is for the young. So I sloped off to Libraries without bothering too much about what others thought. The central International Library or the dome as I called it was very interesting and had all the books you could want. Yet a little knowledge is no good, you have to get the whole picture. However you could find out about things to think about on the prom, when you thought about thinking if you get my drift? That was much better than worrying about who was tough or why your girl left you. Pull yourself together man it happens to everyone. So you consider your life opportunities and in south Liverpool there was a time when you did feel secure about jobs and such like. Then in the mid seventies it changed. I have always argued that the eighties recession started earlier in Liverpool It hit the unskilled hardest and with the arrival of home buying and credit quite a few people just jogged along and did not give massive unemployment much thought. However for Speke and Kirkby things changed rather earlier and work was very hard to find in any part of Liverpool after 76. I have been out since then and yet coming back once or twice a year I notice things. Labour intensive industry has gone in this country. The factories that thrived in the post war period are now just shells or standing empty. What?s? new. Service industry and Retail that?s about it. Looking at Speke you can see the industrial Parks are not going to reinstate labour intensive industry. That is how it was for me in south Liverpool on one hand you have the relaxed attitude of living in a nice suburban part of the city. Then on the other hand you rely on industry to allow yourself to make a living and when the cohesion is not there it is one big problem. I remember Whitley Lang and Neal on the Airport roundabout in the seventies. Through the windows you could see all the craftsmen working on their lathes. It made you feel that the area was alive and that industry was dynamic and part of the life of Speke. Then like everywhere else it got boarded up. Then you went passed on the bus and feeling of being from something was replaced by alienation and a certain intellectual ennui. I think through training we can give the young a future. The old exists alongside the new and things move on and looking back is just that looking back the new world of work is different.
Bookmarks