by Nick Corble
A few minutes later, I thought I spotted a seat. Notwithstanding the now persistent rain, my feet were lobbying me to stop and take on an energy bar, or maybe some water, anything, so they could have a rest. When I got there, however, it turned out to be a mattress bent double. Initially disappointed, I wondered how the Sustrans people were going to fit it into their black bags.
Around midday the rain decided to step up a gear, and an off ramp to Norris Green beckoned. I hoped to get some lunch and with luck wait out the rain, which was forecast to ease off. Wet and bedraggled, as I made my way into the Pound Café I was concerned I may have looked an unwelcome guest, but I needn’t have worried. As it happened, I blended in rather well, the surroundings possibly best described as basic. True to its name, the Pound Café offered the temptation of a coffee for only a solitary pound. Alas, the coffee machine was broken. The thought of turning on a kettle and nipping over the road to get a jar of Nescafé while it boiled had apparently not occurred to them.
I settled for a light lunch and something fizzy, and I don’t mean a glass of Prosecco. Towelling some of the worst of the damp off my rucksack cover, I tried to look inconspicuous as a small puddle formed beneath me. Staring out of the window towards the other side of the street, I could make out a bank, a slot machine ‘casino’, a Poundbuster (which sounded a little threatening, given where we were), a Specsavers, two empty units next to each other and a Bargain Booze. Meanwhile, directly outside the window, a small crowd was gathering around a middle-aged man sitting on an upturned milkcrate (a possible top tip if the Liverpool Loop’s policy on sitting down persisted), with various younger ‘runners’ darting between him and passers-by.
Before I had a chance to work out what was going on, my reverie was broken by a large woman opposite me, her dyed blond hair showing dark roots. She was rapping loudly on the window. I hadn’t been taking in the conversation she’d been having with what I assumed was her daughter, largely because I could only understand every third word of it. I paused anyway as she wondered ‘What’s ’e sellin?’ in a loud and squeaky voice. She beckoned one of the runners in, who entered the café, less sheepishly than I thought appropriate, clutching a Morrisons plastic bag to his chest.
His hand darted into the bag from which he extracted a small cardboard strip with a pair of earrings attached to it, mumbling something I couldn’t catch. Without so much as examining the goods, the woman demanded ‘’Ow mouch?’ They were one pound fifty. She took two in silver and two in gold, enough to buy six coffees if there’d been any going. In under a minute, the lad made a dozen discrete sales from others nearby and exited. Outside, he joined his colleagues, who meanwhile had swollen in number.
The woman opposite me wasn’t done yet. She got up and dashed outside, mentioning in passing something about wondering what else they might have. Within a minute she was back. Her daughter asked what she’d bought and was told ‘Just some shite like.’ I could have told her where she could have got plenty of that for free, but she didn’t look the walking type. Her heavy make-up would probably run in the rain, and the sunshine tattoo on her wrist would have been oddly ironic. In the brief moment she’d been gone she’d dropped the equivalent of two or three hours of the minimum wage on some cheap earrings and a pile of imitation super-hero comic books.
‘The kids’ll ’ave ’em’ she declared, although whose kids she was talking about, and what they’d make of them, was less clear.
Back on the path, and with the rain was now less determined, there was a hope of brightness on the horizon. On the ball of my left foot I could feel what was probably a blister rise and fall, wave-like, with every step I took, but I tried to ignore it. The remainder of my otherwise straightforward walk was to Knotty Ash, which to people of my generation means only one thing: the recently deceased comedian Ken Dodd. The way was enlivened by a conversation with a Sustrans warden, who overtook me on his bike before applying his brakes. I wondered if I’d done something wrong.
It turned out he was intrigued by me. The volunteer I’d been speaking to earlier had mentioned me and he wanted to check me out. This was the first time someone had done this – approached me, rather than me approach them – and we had a good chat about the Loop and its origins and about the challenge I’d set myself. Our exchange ended with me giving him a card, and it got me thinking.
That evening I came up with a theory. I’d popped into a Sainsburys and bought a sewing kit in order to perform some self-surgery on my feet. While I was resting them, laid up on the bed in my budget hotel in the centre of Liverpool, I wondered if it might be possible to categorise different types of what I’d decided to call ‘encounters’. I’d had quite a few conversations with people by now and I could spot some differences between them.
An Encounter of the First Kind would be when I initiated the contact, either through a greeting or a question. An Encounter of the First Kind might also come about because of a courtesy, a good example being the receptionist in the hotel that morning who’d asked if I was going far, resulting in an exchange of both information and a card. An Encounter of the Second Kind would be like the one that had taken place in the café in Crosby, more of a conversation, natural rather than actively initiated. An Encounter of the Third Kind would be when someone approached me, as happened with the Sustrans warden. I wondered if, later in the trip, there might also be Encounters of the Fourth Kind, with people seeking me out because they were actually looking for me, maybe because they’d read about my walk. I’d already achieved some coverage in the local press and websites, and I’d already experienced the power of my Diagonal Walking T-shirts. We’d see.
Having rested up, I wandered into the centre of the city on heavily plastered feet. I was after something to eat ultimately, but my immediate target was to find the arch marking the entrance to Liverpool’s Chinatown, as the weather had cheered up sufficiently to provide a kind light for photographs. This red-pillared, round-tiled-roofed edifice is indeed impressive, at 13.5 metres tall the largest Chinese arch in Europe. It is a testament to the city’s Chinese community, who first arrived in Liverpool as seamen plying the route between the north-west of England and Shanghai, supplemented in the 1950s and 60s by migrants fleeing communism.
I wondered whether the community’s relative success in getting its culture accepted and integrated into the local scene offered a lesson for us now, but it didn’t look exactly thriving. In fact, I was to read later that one of the co-founders of the Liverpool Chinese Business Association described the area as ‘not just in decline, but destitute’. It turns out Liverpool’s Chinese are no different from any other Liverpudlians. Their young have spread their wings to Manchester and beyond, thereby reducing the community’s size and critical mass, producing a declining spiral as fewer Chinese-based businesses serve their own. Maybe this is a success story, I wondered – a sign of absolute integration. On the other hand, maybe it is a shame their identity has become so absorbed.
On my way back into the centre I was surprised, although perhaps I shouldn’t have been, by the high number of homeless amongst the polished glass windows and clean pavements that made up the large shopping complex in the heart of the city. No room for Bargain Booze here. This was a phenomenon I didn’t remember from my previous deep look at the country twenty years before, and it had been catching a lot of headlines. When the shoppers went home, the homeless emerged, some even erecting lightweight tents. It was possible that they were attracted not only by the warmth from the pavements, but also by the two young volunteers offering free hot drinks (they even had coffee!) along with prepared meals in aluminium containers.
I wanted to stop and chat to these Good Samaritans, but my feet were screaming for me to stop, just stop, anywhere (Chinatown had been a bit further than I’d expected), and the sight of hot food was sending a further reminder to my stomach that it hadn’t seen anything hot since breakfast. Maybe I’d be able to catch them the next day, as my schedule in
cluded a rest day in Liverpool.
Resting up was the plan, but events took over. By the end of the following day I’d covered my greatest distance yet, over fifteen miles, nearly all of it on hard pavements in walking boots. I set out wanting to see not only the Liverpool the tourists saw, which was inconvenient as I have no interest in the Beatles, but also some of the other side of the city, where people didn’t usually roam. I’d been intrigued by a television documentary series earlier that year called The £1 Houses. This focussed on an initiative by the local council whereby, rather than knock down some derelict houses, they offered to sell them for a single quid to people prepared to do them up. There was a catch however; actually two. Potential purchasers had to prove they had at least £40,000 cash to do the work with, which had to be done in a year. Then, and only then, would the council transfer ownership.
It was a good idea – something different, an attempt to be innovative and encourage people to take personal responsibility for improving themselves rather than waiting for someone else to do it for them. But it was flawed. Legal problems meant the council was unable to fulfil its promises to a large proportion of those involved. Plus the matter of not handing over title until the work was done required not only trust, but also left those who’d invested their cash vulnerable. One family had had their property robbed of all its valuables just before they moved in, their renovated house a beacon to those on the make. Worse still, because they hadn’t yet actually owned the property, they’d been unable to insure their possessions.
The houses were in an area called the Webster Triangle in the Toxteth area. The very name Toxteth carried a stigma. Back in the 1980s it had been the scene of riots, mainly involving young black youths. Paul Theroux visited the area as part of his coastal perambulation. He was greeted with scenes of devastation and an aftershock of dismay from those he spoke to, although he did reflect that what he saw wasn’t any worse than rundown areas of New York. This offered some cold comfort I supposed.
I walked from the centre, past the Catholic cathedral – which, with its crown-of-thorns central steeple, goes under a number of pseudonyms, the least offensive of which is probably ‘Paddy’s Wigwam’ – as well as the nearby Everyman Theatre and university. Cutting through a park, diagonally of course, the housing began to take on the form I’d seen the day before, more terraced and less even in quality, but nothing so bad that you’d contemplate giving it away for the price of a cup of coffee. As I approached the Webster Triangle, I was struck by what my Southport host might have labelled ‘relative prosperity’, although the parameters that constituted that relativity may have shifted. There was a huge high school ringed with a high security fence, a functioning church, a pharmacy, a nursery and a Neighbourhood Centre right on the edge of the Triangle. The last, as far as I was able to make out, was made up mainly of doctors’ surgeries.
It was easy to spot the houses involved in the scheme when I reached them. Some, around one in twenty, had clearly been renovated, with sparkling new doors and even cars outside. Others, around the same proportion, were in the process of having work done, encased with scaffolding and surrounded by builders busy doing what builders do – delivering materials, mixing up concrete, swearing imaginatively, sucking their teeth and looking worried. All the rest remained fit for demolition. Doors and windows had all been shuttered with metal; any visible paintwork was flaked; roof tiles were missing and vegetation was growing out of walls, through chimneys, in gutters and along windowsills. A road sign on Bird Street said it was ‘Unadopted’. It wasn’t kidding.
Looking around the back of the houses, I noticed that one of the renovated properties, identifiable by the fresh tiles on its roof, had erected a high metal wall to prevent people entering from the back – possibly one of those caught in the uninsurable trap? The houses that had been invested in looked good. The owners had painted them, added nice touches like stained glass and, of course, added new front doors. Back when this area was still the subject of riots and it was government policy to sell off council housing, a new front door was always the sign that an ex-council tenant had become a homeowner.
Curious to know how things were going, I called in on the local News and Booze (he was underselling himself, he also sold vegetables, although his shop was an asparagus-free zone) and quizzed the man behind the counter. Young, probably in his twenties, and rake-thin, he was strangely nervous. I supposed that, with my accent and questions he had me down as a journalist – a shout that may have been corroborated by the KitKat I bought to get his attention.
He started by saying it had ‘all been a massive mistake’, although he caved in rapidly when I challenged this, which made me suspect he was parroting a party line.
‘No, okay, it was a good idea,’ he conceded ‘Just that the council was just too slow like.’ In what way I asked? ‘In handing over the keys like,’ he added, confirming one of the conclusions of the documentary.
The ice having been broken, the young shopkeeper went on: ‘I gorra mate who’s got one. Made it into six bedrooms like. It’s great. But he won’t move in like, no’ with the kids and that like.’ Into his stride now, he went on to say that the council expected people to have too much money up front. That said, his mate had clearly managed it, and the application list was now full, so enough people clearly did have the wherewithal to invest.
I could see where his mate was coming from, though. The scheme needed to generate a critical mass, and while work was ongoing, it looked a way off achieving it. Would the speed of renovation ever gain enough pace to overtake the rate of decay and what appeared to be a growing mood of cynicism? I hoped so and said as much before thanking the jittery young man and moving on.
Before leaving, I called in on the Neighbourhood Centre, which was all shiny new and clean. To my surprise, as my own doctor’s surgery would have been heaving at this time, it was almost devoid of people. Those who were there were either asleep or worse, perhaps homeless or under the influence of something. No one challenged me, so I took advantage of the fact that it was probably the cleanest place around and availed myself of the facilities.
I re-set my phone’s map and set off for my next destination, back towards the river and the site of the Liverpool Garden Festival. This was the brainchild of the then Minister of the Environment, Michael Heseltine. It was a response to the clamours that ‘we must do something’ after the riots in various cities of the realm in the 1980s, in Toxteth and elsewhere. It’s possible that the then Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher had taken the view that it would keep her troublesome minister off her back for a while, but nevertheless, Liverpool’s was to be the first in a series of such annual festivals held in various different cities, and had been open from May to October in 1984.
As it closed its doors for the final time, the festival was seen as a success, attracting more than three million visitors. But its effect was temporary. During the following years a succession of developers put forward plans to build houses on the site, although a portion of it remained for a few years as an amusement park. The focal point of the exhibition, the Festival Hall, was finally demolished in 2006, and after that a thousand new houses were finally built. Four years later, the festival’s Chinese and Japanese Gardens were restored. They along with a small pond are about all that remains of the old gardens. It took me half an hour to walk there, narrowly avoiding a brightly coloured coach offering a Magical Mystery Tour along the way. When I reached the site there was only me and a mum with two small boys enjoying it. Pink blossom decorated the trees in the Japanese Garden, and some promised sunshine was tentatively emerging from high clouds.
Nervous of how I might come across, I approached the young mum, who was welcoming and invited me to sit down. Her name was Jacqui, and she immediately informed me that she was home-schooling her boys, which was why they were with her and not at school. I didn’t think I looked like a Truancy Officer, but maybe they go around in disguise. One of the boys
was taking photographs of the nearby Chinese Pavilion, whilst the other was sketching a coot nesting in the middle of the pond. The obvious question was whether she had any particular reason for removing her children from the school system.
She explained how the elder of the two boys hadn’t enjoyed school, indeed he’d become unwell through anxiety. She was told he’d settle, but he didn’t. When she raised the subject with the headmistress, Jacqui found her blasé about the boy’s problems and unable to offer alternatives. When she brought up the subject of home-schooling, the headmistress offered little insight. After due research, Jacqui decided the best thing was to take both boys out of the system.
She didn’t look back. She found a highly supportive network, and of course there was the internet with its opportunities to connect and its access to resources. This sparked a wider discussion between us about rigid thinking in institutions in education and health, how the monolithic nature of the system makes innovative thinking, of the type the council had tried with the £1 houses, so difficult, and therefore the exception rather than the rule. We agreed that we were sympathetic to those running such institutions. Their job in a time of constrained resources was probably more one of fire-fighter than pioneer. But the issue did raise a bigger question about change and how to bring it about in such important areas, where structures are often stuck using models that are probably at least half a century out of date.
Ours was a meeting of minds. The internet was changing not only possibilities, but how people thought. The educational establishment seemed to see its role as providing knowledge when knowledge was readily available at the touch of a screen. What was needed was a greater emphasis on teaching students how to think, and to think creatively, so they could cope with change, which was coming at a rate faster than most people’s ability to deal with it. We agreed this wasn’t easy. Teachers these days were forced to concentrate on containing as much as nurturing their charges, acting as social workers and substitute parents as much as educationalists, responsibilities laid on them by external forces beyond their control.