DAY ONE
June 10th 2009
Journal: I just got back from spending 2 days in Birkenhead. I had suggested to my mum that we go see Maggi Hambling paintings of George Melly that were being displayed in Liverpool as my parents used to take me with them to see him when I was little and wonderful he was too
Of course we could never find a time when we both could go until a week after the exhibition ended. By that time Mum had also decided to show me where she had grown up in Birkenhead (the other side of the Mersey from Liverpool.. the place the Ferry goes to and from..). In lieu of Maggie and Melly Mum decided we should go see the Antony Gormley statues that were apparently at the beach at Formby.. but though we walked and walked we never got there me (as usual) stuggling to follow my Mother's striding footsteps..
These pictures were taken within seconds of each other. At this point I gave up and recorded where I had come from to remind myself that I did nevertheless exist..
.. and that we simply took divergent paths.. we never did find the Gormley statues. Some Kite Flyers on the beach told us that they were in fact 10 miles up the beach at Crosby, so we trudged back through the sand towards the railway station. En route we met two park rangers who told us that we in fact needed to go to Seaforth. More interestingly they told us that the Pox carried by Grey Squirrels had decimated the population of Red Squirrels that was here one of the last remaining (we had also passed a dead rabbit, that apparently had had mixematosis.. a variant of Pox), they also told us about the Friends of the Red Squirrel.. If you've ever encountered a Red Squirrel at close quarters you'll know why this matters.... at Seaforth we were told that the nearest station was actually Waterloo (no. not the one in London), at which point we gave up..
... and went back to Birkenhead and Mum's old convent school friend Christine with whom we were staying and who was just finishing teaching a Piano Lesson after which they showed me the big house Mum's Grandparents caretook and where they all lived in the basement (and grew all their own fruit and veg in the big garden of) until Mum was 13, and to the Flat in the Housing estate where they then moved and where her Grandmother died when Mum was 15 and where she lived with her Step-Grandfather, and the land that was once their school and now a more up market housing estate, where Mum had been tutored by her History teacher Sister McVeigh to take her Oxford Entrance (first ever from the school), and where they were all persecuted by the made up sounding Sister Magdalena, Sister Sebastian, Sister Mary of the Rosary...
Then we had dinner in a nice local restaurant and watched telly and drank rose and argued about drugs and politics and slept and got up early the next day for breakfast then Christine took us to take the ferry back across the Mersey and a walk through Liverpool back to Lime Street Station.
My Mum is a Historian. But she rarely discusses her own History. This is the most I ever gleaned. Interesting. Disorientating. Mum now reckons I've inherited Scouse humour from her..hmm
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