Over dinner we were discussing Winnie the Pooh and which animal we most resembled. The Owl, being the most authoritative and sagacious went to our son.
Credit Alexas Fotos
My wife thought she might be Kanga with a touch of Eyore—which sounds like a disease. Our daughter, we agreed had a lot of Tigger in her, though she was not present to argue the case.
I was present, a voice that would not be silenced! Perhaps, I began tentatively, I could be Owl too.
Shot down in flames.
“No, you’re Pooh, a greedy bear of little brain,” they said. I ate my roast potatoes in silence and brooded. “Badger, then,” I said. Gruff, authoritative, a wise old cove.
“Wrong book. That’s Wind in the Willows.”
“Yes, but now we have crossovers.” I desperately tried to remember what was going on in the Marvel Universe, heroes from different comics interacting in bizarre conflicts but sexy costumes. Would Badger look good in a leotard and cape? Who would play Mr Toad? Would they see me as him too?
“A Winnie the Pooh. . . and a Wind in the Willows crossover?”
There was silence for a moment, as though they were giving it serious thought.
What would it be called?
“Wind in the Pooh.”
“Pooh in the Willows.”
“Winnie the Wind.”
I admitted defeat and accepted my new designation as Winnie the Pooh.
The Bible gets a bad rap, dismissed by many as a mishmash of tribal legends, at best fairy tales. With as much vehemence as their opposite number they believe there is no God, Genesis is a myth for simpletons. We have the Big Bang.
The argument continues with or without me, but recently I began to wonder whether we are perhaps looking at those early stories from the wrong end of a telescope; that they are not so much an account of what happened, but prophecies, a warning of what is to come. Those without faith but believe in Carl Jung may reach similar conclusions in archetypes and a collective unconscious.
Genesis describes how God created the world in six days and then Adam from dust animated by His breath. He placed Adam in Eden, a now unobtainable paradise with but one injunction: not to sample the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. The serpent tempted Eve, appealing to curiosity and ambition; and perhaps aesthetics, the fruit looked damn fine. Eat it, and they too would share in the wisdom of God; disobey his command and bite into the fruit.
God’s reaction is swift. Adam and Eve are banished from Eden for fear of them eating more from the tree and so live for ever. His final words are harsh ‘Cursed is the ground for thy sake; in toil shalt thou eat of it all the days of your life; thorns and thistles shall it bring forth to thee….in the sweat of thy brow shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken; and unto dust shalt thou return.’ And, for good measure, Eden was guarded by a cherubim with a fiery sword. Genesis 2:8—3:24
Scientists have disproved the literal truth of the Genesis story. In response, theologians focus on what they see as a deeper meaning and see the seven days and seven nights as a metaphor for the process of creation.
Likewise, in the story of ‘The Flood,’ geologists dispute the possibility of such a world-wide phenomenon, though flood myths are common across many cultures.
In the Biblical version—Genesis 6-9—God is so appalled by the evil of man, he determines on a watery cull and start again with a tiny seed—an Ark of creation: Noah, his immediate family, and a bunch of animals. It’s heartening that God promises never to flood the earth again and marks the promise with a rainbow. It does though leave open more unpleasant options.
The flood comes and goes, but man is incorrigible. In the words of Chumbawamba
‘I get knocked down. I get up again, aint nothing gonna keep me down.’
The next challenge to God is described inGenesis 11:1-9and the story of the building of a great tower that would pierce the heavens.
It was a time when a united human race, sharing a common language, migrated eastwards to the land of Shinar. There, in a spasm of hubris, they began building a great tower, for some a stairway to heaven. God, aware of their ambition confounded them by fragmenting their common tongue. Divided by language and unable to share their commonality, they separate and scatter across the earth.
Not surprisingly, the flood myth was told in earlier Sumerian civilisation and known to the Assyrians. More surprisingly perhaps there are similar legends in Nepal, Africa, Arizona and Central America—all focusing on mankind grown over-powerful before scattered like chaff in the wind.
The myths have one thing in common, self-indulgence, pride and ambition being regularly humbled by a creator. They share one further thing in common. They are now largely derided, or perhaps more dangerously forgotten.
And yet the niggle won’t go away. Perhaps as suggested in the opening paragraph, these are not so much myths as prophecies, warnings of things yet to come. Perhaps Chumbawamba’s anthem is less a song of defiance and more the signature tune of Sisyphus, doomed by the gods to roll a boulder up a hill only for it to fall back again every time he nears the summit. We perhaps are nearing our summit, self-indulgent cultures fragmenting as we become more global. Marx talked of class divides and called for workers to unite. Now we have so many divides, it’s hard to keep up. A modern Babel. An exhausted and tarnished planet.
We have to know – the original blessing and curse. Will we master creation or will arrogance and pride bring us tumbling down? Again. An Eden in the cosmos reduced to a cinder or at best wasteland and a fragment of humanity reduced to scrabbling for subsistence. A cherubim with a flaming sword guarding what we once had.
A few days ago, we were drinking tea at the Runcible Spoon in Newent—a less attractive venue than a pea green boat but nice enough. It was there I added one more thing to my bucket list: ‘strong, sweet tea.’
And I had never had it. Add it to my bucket list, I thought, and I might not even need a bucket list.
I’d been given weak sweet tea as a very young child, but early on had noticed my dad drank his without sugar, and I followed suit and have done ever since.
Over very strong unsweetened tea, I shared this new idea with my wife. The sooner the better, we agreed. But not now. This was exceptional tea. Very hot— (our tea pot never retains heat. Memo to self. Investigate)—strong and full bodied. No, definitely not now; sugar would ruin what we had. But this was clearly the tea to buy for the experiment.
I asked the nice lady running the Runcible Spoon, and she offered me a sleek colourful packet. The price made me wince but there was no going back; a treat for the weekend and with it a chance to recklessly add four teaspoons of sugar.
I shall report the results.
Behind the Runcible Spoon is an interesting arcade housing, amongst other things, a ‘Museum of Board Games.’ A small window display gripped me. Not on the scale of Egyptian tomb paintings or the frescos of Knossos, perhaps, but still weirdly evocative.
Update. Maybe I needed to be in severe shock. A strong, sweet tea is not very nice. Lazarus might have chosen the better option.
One night, my uncle John (Birch) was walking past the Aintree Institute and noticed some lads struggling with equipment, carrying it into the club. He came to their aid, struck a rapport and they suggested he might be their roadie. He declined the offer and he and the future Beatles went their separate ways.
Beatles at the Aintree Institute
He never said whether John (Lennon) was drunk or not. Beer refreshed, gave energy, and Dutch courage, though at a price. Once when playing at the Stanley Abattoir Social Club the early Beatles were booed off the stage for being over-refreshed.
Stanley Road Abattoir
And yet life sets its own rules. These early posters are a fascinating reminder of those far off days— the second one especially.
Bribing 'ladies' to see the Beatles.
Unbelievable.
Especially when contrasted with this two years later.
Castle Street Liverpool. And no free gifts
Nothing ever stays the same. The Beatles are no more.
Neither is the Aintree Institute, knocked down making space for housing that never materialised. It's now a carpark.
But on a lighter note, a gentle reminder of Liverpool's weirdness.
It’s easier writing fiction than telling the truth, but as the devil knows, one blurs into the other with remarkable ease. A Liverpool Childhood came with three problems— apart from living it—most of them coming from the abundance of photographs: copyright issues, permissions and in some cases payment; formatting headaches, and above all the embarrassing cost of the paperback. The eBook is priced at £5, still cheaper than a London pint; it also gives me a decent royalty. Normally, the paperback would be in the region of £10. But times have changed.
Paper and printing costs have gone up. The book has an abundance of photographs in high resolution which have added further to the cost. And so, the paperback is an unbelievable, £25, which in the UK gives me a 70p royalty and nothing at all in other parts of the world. I know which one makes more sense, and which I’d recommend, but for those who prefer a real book, I wince and apologise.
The contents shown below are interspersed with photos that didn’t make the final cut but are beauties in their own right. Many more photos in kindle and book.
Record of a Baffled Spirit: A Liverpool Childhood, traces the history of Liverpool from ancient Pangea, skims through the ‘Dark Ages’ and what followed before the arrival of two families, the Keytons and the Parrys. It’s an exploration of ‘slow time,’ impermanence, and the importance of memory. It’s a testament to the family—not just ours—and a culture. It’s a testament to Aintree.
Below is a short extract. I believe it's called marketing.
The most important feature of Ribblesdale Avenue was the brick power station at its end. Beyond that was ‘Wrights', a small haulage yard, a few apple trees, and the railway embankment. The power station had a decorative feature on either side of it: red brick protrusions, half an inch thick that allowed us access to the top. The building dominated much of our childhood. It doubled up as the Alamo, countless US Cavalry outposts, Spanish galleons, pirate ships, pill boxes against hard faced Germans, or creepily ferocious Japanese. We never ran out of ammunition for the top of the power station was deeply gravelled, which made excellent grapeshot. Sometimes we would carry up our own stones, when the conflict was serious or the Germans more hard-faced than usual.
Our usual weapon was the invisible gun— two fingers and a whistling cluck; sometimes the invisible rifle, an extended right arm supported by the left, and two rigid fingers you sighted down. On each corner of the building were the machine gunners who’d erupt in loud staccato hiccups when the fighting got tough. We saw off Comanche, Apache, Arapaho; Mexicans charging across endless red plains; we saw off rustlers, Confederates, Japanese, SS, the Afrika corp. Our guns were most effective. The other side dying spectacular deaths, only to get up again after a decent interval, brush themselves down and continue the fight. It was a child’s Valhalla.
When the battle was over, it was time for tea and then bed. And the following day, it started all over again.
How did our neighbours cope? They’d just fought World War II. We were small beer. Once, when pursuing a Mohawk Indian, I hurled a spear (a broomstick handle) which missed but smashed through our neighbour’s window. I was punished, the window fixed, and it was over.
When I think of it now, our neighbours were all remarkable people bound together by remarkable events. All of them had either fought at sea or on land, and those too old to enlist had manned the anti-aircraft guns positioned on the railway embankment just behind the power station. For years after, we scavenged shells, cartridge cases, helmets and gasmasks discarded in bramble and fern. These became part of some quite surreal games of ‘cowboys and Indians’—the latter in gasmasks and feathers. As I remember they looked pretty fearsome, though their whooping was muffled.
When I was young, a thousand years or so ago I played mandolin in a folk/ceilidh band called Devil’s Elbow, fairly well known in the Newport area. Its driving forces were Henry and Lorraine Lutman.
Henry Lutman died a little while back. Though we’d seen each other infrequently over the years, the shock was immense. He was a great musician, and more importantly a good man.
My overriding thought, other than for Lorraine and his family, was what a waste, and my gaze turned to instruments I’d barely touched for almost forty years. They stood gathering dust in the corner, a reminder that life is short and a gift from God, a standing reproach: use it or lose it. The resolution developed gradually. I’d play them again, a tribute and a reminder of Henry and of days gone by.
Muscle memory is a wonderful thing; callouses re-emerged on my fingers. At the same time it seemed kind of fruitless. Then one day the Holy Spirit in mischievous mode prompted me to approach Tony, a fellow parishioner, a fine musician and one who played guitar at church services. (The precondition was that there was no way I was going to be involved in them.) Even so, I caught a visionary look in his eye which gave me a flicker of unease.
Guitar and mandolin. Each lifted the other. I suppose in my mind I hoped we’d find a fiddle and perhaps a flute. It didn’t quite work out that way. Instead, we attracted singers and the collective or group is heavily influenced by the Fureys and the Clancy Brothers with instrumentals included in the mix.
Truth is, I don’t like singing. Years of enforced hymns in school. And, heresy, I’m not over keen on Irish songs. That’s not a judgement. People like what they like. But the bottom line is music is music, and it served as a reminder of the peculiar alchemy—the give and take amongst musicians. I learnt a skill I’d never used before: the mandolin tremolo and learnt to like some Irish songs; I also got to play what I wanted to play in-between them.
To cut the story short, last night we performed our first concert before 140 people. And when I stood to play the first set of instrumentals, just me and a backing guitar, it was with a peculiar feeling of resignation and dread. In the past, there had been Henry, Lol, Reg and various guitarists to carry me. I’d been one amongst many. And not a very confident one. There’s that moment of vulnerability before plectrum hits string and there’s no going back.
I like to think Henry was with me that night; he’d have recognised the seventeen tunes in my five sets. To my relief they went down well. People probably had low expectations and the tunes were well chosen:
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