Ronnie Hughes
After time alone and in silence it’s late Saturday morning and time to step out into the City. To tell you a few things and to take some photographs.
Continue reading “In the City there’s a thousand things I want to say to you”
Sun out, camera in my hands, off out to photograph an ordinary Liverpool Saturday, conscious that it’s been ages since I did this. Having said last week that in future I’d only write about things I’d write about if I only had a year to live this is definitely one of them. Walking around where I live and seeing how it’s doing on an ordinary day. Something that’s very special to me.
Yes, it’s very ordinary photograph of a bus at a bus stop. But will Arriva always run the buses here and will looking like this bus one day date it as ‘how buses looked in the years just before 2020?
Time changes everything, even the things we only notice when we look back at old photographs. Today I’m out taking old photographs. Continue reading “An ordinary Liverpool Saturday?”
A very long circular walk in autumn. Including a great number of beautiful leaves, Boaty MacBoatface being built, finding out the price of a pair of jeans and an update on progress at The Welsh Streets. Good value I’d say.
When I set off walking on this day, the last Sunday in October 2016, I didn’t know exactly where I was going. But I knew it would be a long and autumnal walk.
Well the Pier Head’s bigger than it used to be when we’d come here for days out like this in the 1960s (wonderful photograph of exactly how it felt by Joe Neary). Back then the Albert Dock was behind a big wall and went completely unnoticed by me until its renovation in the mid 1980s.
Guess what, summer’s arrived. Or at any rate as sunny a weekend as we’ve had for many a long week. Saturday dawned as blue skied as my day around Lark Lane on Friday, so me and the camera went out for a nose around town.
Well where else would I go on such a day?
I’ve spent the last couple of Saturdays working in my local library. I love to go there when I want to really concentrate on writing something. I love too the serendipity of finding what I didn’t even know I was looking for when accidentally sat next to an unfamiliar bit of library. These are sacred places.
But today I decided on a change. Decided I’d get the bus down to Liverpool Central Library. The new camera’s not been there yet so is naturally keen on a good look round.
Don’t worry, we are walking towards the library. I’m ‘putting it in context!’ Continue reading “In Liverpool: On National Libraries Day”
That was just to get your attention really. There will be a journey on the 82 later on, but this is principally a Friday Walk. First walk of any length I’ve been on since I injured my ribs the other week. The doctor said there’d be a week of strong pain, followed by five weeks or so of ‘discomfort’. He was right about the pain, and as the discomfort is easing I was keen to make the most of the light on one of the shortest days and get out there walking.
Back in 2003 Sarah and I started a joint venture with one of our customers called ‘Liverpool back in business.’ We’d just been selected as European Capital of Culture for 2008 and our venture was going to take advantage of this renewed interest in all things Liverpool and give visitors to the city ‘insider’ tours of a place getting ready to welcome the world. We bought the domain name, engaged partners, tried it out, set up a website. Did everything, in fact, except sell our idea to enough people. Too far ahead of the game? Maybe, because now it looks like Liverpool really is back in business.
I’m here at West Africa House, opposite the Liver Buildings, for a book launch. And to see and celebrate what two of my friends, Fiona Shaw and David Parrish, are contributing to the well being of our city. And I’m here to talk business.
Yes, normally this blog concerns itself more with the society and structure of Liverpool than the grubby business of making money. But the blog is, let’s face it, part of the website of the business that’s kept me and Sarah going these past 20 years. And it’s business, trading, commerce, creativity and ideas that help pay for the running of the city. That turned the little port into a city in the first place. So business does matter, even though I don’t usually talk about it much.
We’ll come back to David and his book, bur first Fiona and what she’s up to.
Continue reading “Liverpool: Back in business?”
Off then to Leeds, to introduce the great Liverpool film ‘Of Time and the City.’ And to look at a good few glass rooves.
At Leeds I’m met by Phil Kirby of The Culture Vulture. Introduced by our mutual friend Rob Greenland who tells me ‘Phil knows Leeds like you know Liverpool.’ He’s also what some call ‘an urban walker’ too.
We’ll eventually walk out to here, the lovely Hyde Park Picture House for the film showing. But first, time for a walk around the city centre. I’m not a complete stranger to Leeds. But I haven’t had time for a good walk round the middle for many years. And things have been happening. Continue reading “Of Time and the City: Leeds”
So, we go from social commentary on the creep of gated communities to doing an ‘art’ review on a shop window on consecutive days? Yes, that’s the way it is round here.
Early last year Sarah wrote a post on here about her favourite shop in the history of the whole world ever, George Henry Lee’s in Liverpool. The post told the story of the shop, carrying our pictures of its final day’s trading before moving to a new site in 2008. The story was popular at the time and has continued to be read by a good many George Henry Lee fans every day since.
The glorious central staircase, subsequently and senselessly ripped down by the building’s current inhabitants, T.K. Maxx.
So as a public service to all those fans I thought I’d draw attention to something interesting that’s happening in the windows of the ‘new’ ‘George Henry’s’ – now John Lewis in Liverpool One – at the moment. Continue reading “Remembering George Henry Lee – a social history”
