Liverpool
An Icon, beacon, rallying point, the secret handshake by which ye shall be recognized as a member of the Liverpool lot: the Liver birds. Knowing the pronunciation (LIE-ver) is key. On the other hand, you’d think “liver” as in our body’s major filter mechanism, the organ most commonly associated with alcohol abuse, would be appropriate for a city of merchant sailors, Irish Navies and generally people who see themselves well in the middle of the chav spectrum.
Leaving Liverpool by ship and returning, down on the docks the Liver Birds watch over it all.
The origins of these birds is obscure – at least to the people who live here. Did they actually exist and went extinct like the Dodo because of rapacious appetites and the tremendous shift of values.
It is a city of doubles: 2 Liver birds at the dock; 2 cathedrals; this side of the Mersey and over there.
The Cathedrals, the Catholic version jokingly referred to as Paddy’s Wigwam, puts it’s Gothic traditions, like flying buttress and spires, into a modern context. It is built on the site of a 19th century workhouse, the place where many of the starving Irish laboured, starved, caught typhus or cholera and died.
And facing the Catholics, at the other end of a relatively short road, stands the majestic Gothic marvel that is the Anglican Cathedral. It was actually started at the beginning of the 20th century but only completed relatively recently. Of course there was a brief hiatus when the Luftwaffe used that spire to set up bombing runs on the Liverpool docks. A couple of bombs bounced off the roof, a few stained glass windows had to be repaired and the south wall has a few souvenir divots from shrapnel and strafing.
Liverpool has survived the Norse, the Normans, the potato famine, the Germans, various Depressions, Recessions, Margaret Thatcher and The Beatles. I have no doubt it will continue to tick along regardless of what the world has in store.
Because the Liver Birds are there no matter what.
