13 posts tagged “liverpool”

My sister's been sorting through stuff at my Mum's house and unearthed all sort of stuff from my youth. Most of it is rubbish (why would I want to keep my guide badges?) but there are the occasional hidden gem such a file of old theatre programs from plays I saw as a student.

It's been a trip down memory lane for example I went to see a production of Hamlet at Theatre Clwyd in Mold (I was studying the play at University in Liverpool so it was organised by my tutor). It was such a memorable performance, in a good way, purely because Getrude was played by a man. I could never remember the name of the actor but now have the program (it was Martin McKellan) and he did such an amazing job when it could have gone horribly, horribly wrong. Such was his performance that you completely forgot it was a man in drag and totally bought into the emotion he was conveying as Hamlet's distressed mother. (And yes I know in Shakespeare's time all the actors were male.)
The performance was also memorable because one of the characters costumes caught light on a candle but no one was hurt fortunately.
However, as well as revealing the name of the fabulous Getrude actor I am now stunned to see a smattering of names who back then were in the infancy of their careers but have since gone on to bigger and better things. For example Jack Davenport of This Life and Pirates of the Caribbean fame played the minor role of Francisco in his professional debut and Rhys Ifans who's been in loads of stuff since but I always remember as Spike in Notting Hill and Jed in Enduring Love (and soon to be seen in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows as Luna Lovegood's Dad) also played the small part of Marcellus.
Sadly Martin McKellan's career doesn't seem to have taken off in the same way. The most recent listing for him on IMDB is an episode of The Bill. Which is a shame.
Other names you may have heard of are Stephen Beckett who went on to play key characters in Coronation Street and Emmerdale and Toby Jones who has one of those faces you know you've seen in a bunch of stuff and will be voicing Dobby the House Elf in the last two Harry Potters.

An upside to the recession is that despite having our work travel budget slashed, a lot of the decent hotels have drastically dropped their prices. So via the power of Lastminute.com booked this gorgeous hotel in Liverpool city centre for the same price as the shitty Travelodge near Cambridge Mosh and I had the misfortune of spending the night in back in March.
In fact we have been staying in nicer hotels for less money than we were able to book before the economy went tits up.

And this was the view from my room:

Anglican and Metropolitan Cathedrals today. Am ashamed to say I visited neither while I was a student and after today I'm doubley ashamed because they are both stunning pieces of art, architecture and culture in their own right. Both built in the last century and completed within a decade or so of each other but completely different in style. The Metropolitan is known locally as the shuttlecock for reasons you can't really fathom from the picture below but if you saw it from a distance you'd understand.

Sad to be leaving tomorrow morning as it's been a fantastic few days despite the bitter cold. Have walk past some old haunts but much has changed in the city and it's heartening to see it on the way up again.
All my Liverpool pics are on flickr

Yep first full day and can I just say it's friggin' freezing, almost too cold to stop and take pictures. Almost, although I admit I'm not spending anyway near as long I would normally trying to compose the shot and pissing around with different settings. So not surprisingly we spent quite a bit of time inside.
First it was the Merseyside Maritime museum which also houses the International Slavery Museum. If you want to find out a bit about the city's 800 year history this is the place to go, particularly in the winter when there aren't any walking tours. Of course the only bits I can now remember are things like the Liver Birds being as high as a double decker bus. It also meant a bit of a trip down memory lane with a wander around the Albert Dock. It all seems marginally more upmarket than I remember and Fred's weather map has gone - boo.

Then a brisk stroll around the Three Graces which always impress me. Good to see they've tidied up the Mersey side of the buildings to give them a proper setting.
The Picton Reading Room was closed so we went straight to the Walker Art Gallery. One of the few cultural things I did as a student was visit here often with my friend Chris who was studying art and then with one of my boyfriends who passed on his love of the Pre-Raphaelite painters to me. It's been over 16 years since I last saw them and I fell in love all over again.
And if anyone is heading to Liverpool and wants a good restaurant recommendation then they could do worse that go to Zorba's Greek restaurant on Leece Street. I don't think I will need to eat for a week.

There is something not quite right about Mosh a) devising the route of a pub crawl in my old University town and b) choosing pubs of architectural interest rather than the price of the beer.
And so our first night in Liverpool started with a trip to The Vines on Lime Street with it's interior (and exterior) pretty much intact after just over 100 years of serving up booze.
Then on for a curry. Well an Indian restaurant called Mayur on Duke Street. It is definitely not a curry house but does proper Indian food rather than the usual greasy slops. They even did me a gluten-free naan.
So strip out the fact that there was technically only one pub in the 'crawl' and it wasn't serving doubles for a £1, and the curry house didn't have red carpet and flock wallpaper and you've essentially got a classic night out from my student days.
Oh and the piccie is the beautiful St George's Hall, decked out in festive lights and the name of the city, just in case you weren't sure. This building was boarded up and virtually derelict when I was student, so glad to see it's looking a bit more loved. I'm hoping it is going to be open to the public so we can see the inside.

Some people laughed when I said Mosh and I were going to spend a few days in Liverpool. They couldn't quite understand why.
I've loved Liverpool since I spent three years hear at Uni and would have stayed after graduation if I could have got the job I wanted.
Work takes me back and from the glimpses I get of the city in between meetings it is obvious that it has changed dramatically in the last 16 years as chunks have been regenerated. It is for this reason that I've wanted to go back but also because there is so much history and culture that I either never explored as a student or want to rediscover. It is European capital of culture this year after all.
We've hired a small, smart one-bed serviced apartment in the city centre and have two full days to explore. And I can't wait. We've got broadband so hopefully will get the chance to post as I go along.

And not because of Christmas. Yes it's a great excuse to meet up with friends and I'll be doing plenty of that over the next few week but the reason I'm so excited is because it means I have only two weeks and two days of work left this year. And I have veritable feast of culture and entertainment planned between now and the end of the month: Hamlet, Twelfth Night, Gethsemane (fingers crossed Mosh's MAF is able to get us tickets), James, Gogol Bordello, Dylan Moran, ice skating at Somerset House with Nadia and a trip to Liverpool with Mosh.

And then there are all the things I want to do while I'm off like visit the Andy Warhol exhibition at the Hayward Gallery, Byzantium at the Royal Academy and the Annie Liebovitz exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery. There are tons more but these are top of my list.

I'll also be able to queue up for cheap day seats for a some plays and catch up with some films I've missed.

All in all shaping up to be a very good month.

The train I caught up to Manchester last week was all decked out to promote the Manchester International Festival and in particular Monkey: Journey to the West which I'd read about on AKA Vasquez's other blog:

I asked the Manchester-dwelling, half-scouser what the Manchester International Festival actually was and his reply was that it was to wind up rival city Liverpool - which celebrates being European Capital of Culture next year - by proving that you can throw together some sort of cultural celebration in about six weeks and also to do something like the Edinburgh Festival.
Naturally, I am looking forward to his review but in the meantime this is what one reviewer thought of Monkey: Journey to the West which I believe premiered last night.

Was in a shop in Edinburgh this morning and they were playing some old Terence Trent D'Arby that brought back memories of the Sixth Form socials I used to go to at the local yacht club. Despite the fact that most of us were under age the bar served everyone, with some interesting results.
Anyway those are stories for another day.
But it got me thinking about other music that conjures recollections of particular events from my formative years. After a bit of web searching because I couldn't remember the name of the track, I came across this one which is Killer by Adamski/Seal.
It reminds me of my 19th birthday which I celebrated in Liverpool where I was at Uni. Me and my friends used to go to the most strange mixture of clubs, never the truly cool ones.
On this occasion we went to the club underneath the Aldephi Hotel which back then we thought was posh but in hindsight was at best representative of faded grandeur and at worse a flea pit.
I can't remember the actual name of the club, it certainly wasn't a student haunt and was quite expensive to get into. I do remember I was wearing my friend Jackie's strapless black polka dot dress. We'd probably been somewhere first that offered the means to get cheaply tanked up and were inevitably quite wrecked by the time we arrived.
Jackie and co. requested this song for me and I remember the DJ calling out my name and announcing it was my birthday at which point we all dashed up onto the dance floor.

It's been a bit of week of blasts from the past. Had to go up to Liverpool for work for a couple of days and as it's my old University town thought I'd see if an old college friend, Jackie, was around to meet up. We haven't seen each other for nine years and I'd lost all contact.
Tried the internet for clues as to her whereabouts but the search drew a blank.
So I tried googling another mutual college friend whom I haven't had any contact with since I left Uni 15 years ago and not only did I find her but also her work email address.
A couple of emails and 24-hours later I had Jackie's mobile and the arrangements for meeting up were made.
It was a lovely evening. There was loads to catch up on, obviously, and lots of reminiscing and the whole thing felt just like old times yet surreal at the same time. We met in one of our old student haunts. Miraculously after 15 years of fickle bar trends it still has the same name and, just to make us feel our age, is still a student haunt.
And if that wasn't enough, I emailed my old down stairs neighbour this week (her tenants have been causing me a bit of grief but that's another story) and we've arranged to meet up in a couple of weeks. We always got on well when we were neighbours and socialised a bit. I enjoyed her company, so I'm looking forward to seeing her again.
I feel bad that I waited until I had a gripe to get in touch.
When I was a little kid I had an autograph book which I got my mum to sign and she wrote: 'Make new friends but keep the old, one is silver one is gold'.
She was quite right. Wrists slapped, lesson learnt.