A Weekend in Liverpool
May 5th, 2008Yet again, I am experiencing that rather empty post-election feeling that comes around most years at this time. Another May Day Bank Holiday Weekend which involved much travel, this time to the great city of Liverpool. We managed to visit both Cathedrals. George and I agree that the Anglican Cathedral is the better of the two, although I must say that the Catholic Cathedral has grown on me considerably since my youth, when I positively detested it. The story of the construction of the Anglican Cathedral is a fascinating one, involving every monarch since Edward VII, two World Wars and lasting for seventy-four years. Sir Giles Gilbert Scott, designer of the red telephone box and a Roman Catholic to boot, was the Cathedral’s architect. It is vast without being monstrous and dark without being oppressive. I have now visited nearly every Cathedral in England; a boyhood ambition is slowly being realised.
A journey on the Yellow Duckmarine, which is a wartime amphibious landing craft, took us through the heart of the city and into the docks. I was as excited as Millie and George. We had gone to Liverpool because George’s godmother was getting married. George had ring bearing duties to perform. He was entrusted with an important looking box, and managed to carry it down the aisle without incident. The box contained a ring; it was thought safer not to entrust the ring to little fingers, but nonetheless the spectacle was marvellous.
If you like loved and unloved old buildings, then Liverpool is the place for you. So much of its Georgian past has escaped unharmed. Its Victorian splendour largely survived the War, and it was spared the wholesale redevelopment of the late 20th Century that disfigured so many other cities. Sadly, many of the projects that should have been ready for this year, which marks Liverpool as the European City of Culture, have not been completed. There is much finger-pointing at the LibDem Council, which just managed to retain power on the weekend when an independent (ex-Labour) Councillor defected to them. Where the LibDems are in office, the story is often not a happy one, it seems. Its easy to hold yourself out as different or morally superior when in opposition, but much more difficult to live up to those claims when in office.
