Walking to The Egg

A work meeting for 11:30 in the morning is called off because someone’s sick (get well soon Ann Marie x). So what to do? Shall I fill in the time before my next appointment at 2 in the afternoon with other work or shall I go for a walk in the early spring sunshine? Easy choice, I put my boots on and set off.

So I walk in that general direction, with detours.

Days and sudden spare time like this don’t occur so often that they can be ignored. Living, as I still do, with the attitude of what would I choose to do if I had a year left to live? For all of 2014 I wrote a series of blog posts about this and it quietly changed my life. Read my main conclusions here if you like.

Later on at The Egg a friend and I will talk about a great many things in a winding conversation that begins with work and meanders down many another lane including what would be heaven for each of us. I of course consider that I’m already living in heaven and I’m walking through it now on my way to meet her.

As anyone can see this is actually a stand of several ornamental cherry trees, at the Greenbank Lane entrance into Sefton Park. Sarah and I call it ‘The Tree’ though and late every winter one or other of us will carry home the joyous news that ‘The Tree’s got blossoms on it.’

And I’m not sure if you’ve noticed it over these last few days, but I think we’re all a bit happier. We thrive in the growing light as much as the blossoms and wildflowers do. All of us part of the same nature, this heaven.

From the centre of the park near the café, along the long avenue to The Needle, the new miracle of recent years is once again with us.

 

I know it’s not really a miracle and that they’ve been planted here by Glendales who look after the parks for the City, but their effect on me is always miraculous. Knowing they’ll be here by now, actually seeing them in their many thousands fills my heart with joy and my eyes with tears every year.

Also known as Tibetan Cherry. There’ll be flowers later in the spring. But its shining red bark is a joy and a wonder all year.

Where I find we at last have a date for United Utilities to connect our three nearly completed houses to the water mains. Again not a real miracle, it just feels like one.

If that had been there when my own sixth form in Bootle expelled me all those years ago I’d like to have gone to LIPA instead.

And who knows where I’d have ended up then? Our lives are sequences of tiny accidents aren’t they? And all the more interesting for that.

Rachel and Becky Unthank with the Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, 19th March.

I never get used to this you know, or take the view for granted. Here I am, walking down the hill into Liverpool. And isn’t it just glorious?

Looking temporarily exposed while there’s all that building work going on around them.

Where spring is sprouting from the domes of Grand Central Hall over there. That roof really does need some of the careful attention that I was told it would be getting a couple of years back.

I’ve been coming to The Egg for decades now. Since I had a day job, back in the 1980s (when I think it was just the same but called something else?). I’d even come and review its art shows during my years writing for what’s now Big Issue North.

I love its cosy sunny room, high above the streets and the railway lines. And its unhurried feel of a place where you can sit and talk for hours. As I’m just about to.

Jen here  is Jennifer Graham, and we’ve already done some work together with the Beautiful Ideas Company in North Liverpool. She’s part of Ethos, the magazine whose debates you’ve heard about on here before, and will be writing their weekly newsletter. We’ll also be doing  more work together too, which is what we got together to talk about.

Thanks Egg and thanks Jen. A pleasure to spend time together making up ideas.

It might be work but it doesn’t feel like it. That would be in my heaven too.