Meanwhile back in Penny Lane
The first surprise was actually a negative one and not a great start to my journey down Memory Lane in Liverpool last Saturday. As I explained here last week I was returning to my old university stomping ground for the first time after a 37-year hiatus. Accompanying me were my sister, Pauline, and my niece, Steph, who had also spent her student days in the city on the Mersey. (She left in the late 1990s.) It was Steph who was our driver for the day and so, at 9am last Saturday morning, the three of us left Steph’s house on the outskirts of Leeds, Steph pointed her car in the direction of the M62, and off we went.
An hour and 20 minutes later we were cruising down Penny Lane (yes, that one) and turning into the road beside Greenbank Park (still exactly the same!) for a quick pitstop at Roscoe & Gladstone Halls of Residence. It was here, on a lovely, spacious green site complete with pond, tennis courts and gorgeous old period house converted to a final-year undergraduates, postgraduates, and staff-only bar/club, that I spent six years of my life, living here first as an undergraduate myself and then as a postgraduate and tutor.
Last Saturday I was shocked to discover that Roscoe & Gladstone was gone! Flattened. A building site. Next time I return a new Roscoe & Gladstone will have arisen from this particular ground zero but last weekend I had to make do with wandering around the site and remembering where everything had once been. Then, after a quick wander down the road to Sefton Park – through which I often walked to the city centre via Toxteth in the old days – we drove to Smithdown Road.
‘I want to stop for coffee at Brook House,’ I declared. Once a Berni Inn and the height of sophistication for a meal (we thought) back in the 1970s (they did liqueur coffees, for goodness sake!) it is now a rather barn-like pub, a bit rough around the edges, but, despite the new interior layout, still full of memories for me.
Then it was time to hit the university proper. Along Smithdown Road we drove, past the premises which used to be a grocery mini-market, and where I was in buying milk when John Lennon’s death was announced on the shop radio in December 1980. Everyone there fell silent at the terrible news and we all just stared at each other in disbelief. From Smithdown, last Saturday, we carried on, skirting Toxteth where the riots in 1981 had just happened a few weeks before I left Liverpool for good.
Parking a few minutes later on Mulberry Street, we wandered through the surrounding roads that constitute university territory. Abercrombie Square with its period terraced properties and its small park where I posed for photos on the day of my graduation in 1978 is still as beautiful as ever.
The History Department where I spent half of my undergraduate years and all of my postgraduate ones still stands sentinel as the first house on the square.
Around the corner, and into more modern architecture territory, I went for a look at the building where I spent the other half of my undergraduate years – the English Department.
Apart from a bit of building work here and there the university terrain hadn’t changed at all in almost 40 years. Our drive from here to the nearby city centre took us close to the Catholic cathedral, and then down Hardman Street where I once saw George Melly play in a wine bar there, around 1977, I’d guess. From there we drove through Chinatown – ablaze with red lanterns everywhere to celebrate Chinese New Year – and on down to the waterfront.
What I was really looking forward to was this, to seeing the city’s Albert Dock which hadn’t been developed when I left in the summer of 1981. I don’t quite know what I was expecting but I certainly wasn’t expecting it to be so impressive.
In my day the occasional disco in the bowels of the Liver Building was the only attraction down here. Now it is not only a feast for the eyes – especially on the clear, bluesky day that we were blessed with last Saturday – but, well, there’s also just so much going on.
People were queuing for the Beatles Museum, as you would expect. But all the other ‘attractions’ were also doing great business, from the Slavery Museum to the Tate Liverpool where we whiled away some time looking at a Roy Lichtenstein pop art exhibition and admiring the work LS Lowry, Picasso and Andy Warhol.
Restaurants abound here, and most have a view of the actual water ‘basin’, making it particularly attractive.
After a wander up from the river to walk along Lord Street (the city’s original ‘high street’) for old times’ sake, and from there up Mathew Street past the Cavern Club, it was time for the leaving of Liverpool once more.
We adjourned to the café in the basement of the Beatles memorabilia shop at Albert Dock for a quick coffee before the off and, as I looked around the walls, decorated with Beatles’ lyrics, I had a smile to myself.
Yes, I had certainly been on a personal ‘long and winding road’ since I left 37 years before, but last Saturday, as I wandered around all my old stomping grounds, I realised that I had also taken Paul McCartney’s advice.
‘Get back, get back to where you once belonged,’ he wrote, back in the day.
And last weekend I’d finally done precisely that. And loved every minute of my homecoming.