Secured in the epicentre of England, you can stick a pin in any map and find our nest, landlocked and far away from the coast on all four points of the compass. So after exiting the charabanc into a sixty mph south-westerly roaring off the Irish Sea, my feathers were all over the place and I sought sanctuary in the Maritime Museum to batten down my undergarments. Frankly, it was flippin' freezing but after a warming coffee and some moist banana cake, I was revived enough to make a run for the gallery.
Now, modern art has its followers. And I find Tate Modern in London equally soothing and savage depending on my mood; I've even seen Tracey Emin's 'My Bed.' It's a bed, get over it. But nothing prepared me for two live macaws in a cage who apparently get swopped every two months so they don't get distressed. Or for a breeze block filled with hard core.
You didn't believe me, did you? And Chagall? I didn't bother parting with £11.00 in the end because his paintings seem to consist of romanticised, fuzzy goats. But if I had to chose a favourite exhibit, it's called 'Blood of a Poet' featuring a wooden box filled with 100 glass slides, each smeared with a drop of poet's blood; and specimen list.
http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/antin-blood-of-a-poet-box-l02859
Curious, I asked the guide,"Is the blood real?"
"Yeah. All from poets." Result! Did the artist despise poets as much as I do? I needed more intel.
"Why poets?" Why not?
"She knew a lot of them in the mid-sixties and coaxed a drop of blood out every one she met. It's an ironic statement, a bit like getting blood out of a stone." Isn't it just?
"Ironically, our Path Lab's like that. They aren't happy until they've got a large phial and a whole raft of tests to perform. They're expensive too." But they don't check for poetic credentials and certainly don't exhibit; that would be plain wrong. Eventually when I stumbled into a darkened room showing a film of a barking dog I knew I'd exhausted my artistic bent. It was time to take the Ferry 'cross the Mersey.
Except the Mersey looked like Cape Horn and was too choppy for a roosting bird like me. Having suffered grave mal de mer on the Fuerteventura-Lanzarote ferry, I decided to give it a miss and head for the shops. What an education? Now I'm not a total stranger to Liverpool in general. My ex lives in Aigburth, I've spent time at the dairy on Long Lane opposite the Jacobs cracker factory and in my cabin crew days, we used to fly out of Speke. And it's on Lord Street that I experienced the most amazing response to a first-aid situation, in Boots, on a busy Saturday when a girl passed out by the No7 counter. My gay chum, Didier, did what any first responder would do; he raised the young lady's legs to a ninety degree angle thus allowing blood to flow back into her head. I was fussing around, patting her hand when a blunt instrument swooped out of nowhere. The girl's mother, seeing a man holding her daughter's ankles in a compromising way, swung a handbag at Didier's head screaming "Pervert" at the top of her lungs. Poor bloke, he was never the same again, even after his ears stopped bleeding.
And Liverpool will never be the city of the Beatles again because the Cavern Quarter looks more like Temple Bar in Dublin; so loud you can't swallow your drink. Yes, the shops are great but they're the same as in any large city, except for the Harvey Nichols pampering room. Downstairs, there's all the fabulous brands of my dreams and they sell Tom Ford perfumes too; Frangipani's favourite. There I was spritzing and sniffing at the Jo Malone counter when two large glasses of bubbly appeared for customers having a hand massage; a yawning gulf away from the Body Shop's squash and biscuit refreshments. Filled with envy, I so wanted to go upstairs and get "done up" for a night out - mani and pedi, fake tanned from scalp to toe, and a full head of heated rollers in a hairnet to go back to Leicester in.
We rolled away from the docks after a long day filled with Polish rock music, street theatre and a delicious lunch in a real Spanish tapas bar, all buoyed up with hope and energy. Everything there seemed bigger, brighter and inflated by enthusiasm. Yet I had to smile at the contrast between the two great cities [nowhere have I mentioned football yet!] On the streets of Liverpool, it's a common sight to see a young woman arms filled with designer bags and in her rollers bursting with the possibilities of a great night out and no-one calls her a 'chav'. In Leicester, velcros look plain wrong accessorising any kind of ethnic clothing and, as always, my beak went down just a little as we exited the M1 at Junction 21.
Tip of the Blog: My neck of the woods has just been shortlisted for the next City of Culture award and
I'm filled with sense of dread concerning my council tax contributions. Yes, we have galleries, museums and an ancient historic past dating back to Roman times. We also have the bones of Richard III and his statue overlooking the Castle Gardens. I've even done 'the tour' with a group of Japanese visitors and know the very spot he was supposed to have been dispatched but is this enough? Especially as no-one from the Lord Mayor's office has had the courage to ask the '24-hour Diamond White Drinking Circle' to vacate the benches under the great king's monument. Liverpool vs Leicester? You won't get very good odds at Ladbroke's.
Raven
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