The Pilgrims’ Progress Pt1: Magical Mystery Tour Edition

A lifetime ago I wrote that San Francisco managed to dispel a bunch of (unfounded) negative preconceptions I had about America. That’s nothing compared with my reaction to Liverpool.

I’m relieved. We’re here entirely at my behest and I’m anxious about what we’ll find. I’m in search of The Beatles and Liverpool Football Club but my expectations beyond that are low. I expect all the deprivations of post-industrial Britain. I expect the tattered remnants of Empire. I expect the place that – as was revealed in declassified documents – Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was urged to let wither and die, a place set alight by civil unrest, a place in the grip of drugs and generational unemployment.

That’s not the place we find. We’re not looking too hard and a tour guide says we can find those things if we ferret them out, but that’s true of any city. The Liverpool we experience, though, is absolutely buzzing, a town determined to rise again, with two fingers metaphorically raised aloft at those who were willing to cut adrift this once great city.

The word on people’s lips is ‘regeneration’. You can see it everywhere but nowhere more than along the river. The contemporary architecture is daring but it complements the historic buildings that flank the Mersey, creating new, dynamic shapes but preserving sight lines and history. It’s a model of what a waterfront can be if you don’t let politics or special interests get in the way.

Clever planning means that, despite recent waterfront development, historic sight lines are preserved on Liverpool’s riverbank

I find what I’m looking for, too. I presume our tour of Anfield, Liverpool FC’s stadium, will be overly reverential but it’s not. I anticipate our Magical Mystery Tour of Beatles sites will be cheesy but it’s not. I expect Liverpool to be hardened and charmless, but it’s  wonderfully, confoundingly, emphatically not.
RICHARD

Strawberry Field: Liverpool landmark. Cheese: author’s own

STRAY OBSERVATIONS

• Thank you to the hotel worker who not only let us check in four hours early but also gave us a view of the Mersey
• Thank you to the driver on our Magical Mystery Tour who responded to our non-Beatles questions about Liverpool with such enthusiasm
• Thank you to the taxi driver who took us on an impromptu tour of the city then refused to accept an extra fee for his efforts
• Thank you to the guy who sold us tickets to the Mersey ferry, and still found the will to laugh politely at my Gerry and the Pacemakers quip, even though he must hear it all day, every day