Love, Liverpool: an A to Z of Hope // Letter 2
Welcome to Letter 2 which begins on the best street in the world, Hope Street.
Letter 2: Home is where your hope is
Jump to: Audio stories // Picnic by Roger McGough // Video stories // Written stories // Thank you
Remember, you can listen to our audio stories here or download them, wherever you get to your podcasts, to listen to later.
Our story this week walks us down Hope Street with Amina Atiq as she explores in her own words, this space of hope, dreams, love and revolution in A Love Letter to Hope Street.
From the cathedral steps, open mic nights at the Everyman, salsa in The Casa and to the Philharmonic for a quick drink, Amina takes in the views from the top of the cathedral before home to Toxteth.
Our picnic of treats comes from poet and playwright Roger Mc Gough as he takes a walk along the Dock Road and to the ‘pool of life. He remembers Barbara Dickson at the Playhouse, shares a few recipes and reveals his love for Villanelle.
There’s tales of banter, ghosts, wide-eyed strangers, love and loss too with audio stories from Trevor Fleming, Ellen Wagstaff, Marcella Rick, Ginni Manning, Harry McDonald and Jonathan Folb.
A full transcript of our audio stories is available here.
Some friends of the theatres are providing sustenance for the soul along our journeys and this week’s picnic comes from Roger McGough. Take a listen to our audio stories above for a trip to his crazy café and memories of watching Blood Brothers at the Playhouse.
The Crazy Café’s Cupcake Recipe.
Into a large bowl, pour half a bag of flour, a glass of water and two teaspoons of sugar. Using your hands (remember to wash them first while singing three verses of Happy Birthday), make a lovely mush and plonk the mixture on to a cold plate. (Ideally you would use a potter’s wheel, but you may not have one in the kitchen). Fashion into the shape of small cups and put into a hot oven to set.
Cupcakes come in very useful when you want to drink tea and eat cake at the same time.
A Poem.
Roger has been drawn to Killing Eve, bewitched by Jodie Comer’s smiling psycho. Villanelle, the character she plays is also the name of a poetic form, which inspired him to write this for a Liverpool lass and staunch Evertonian:
Villanelle
An actress who is always in the news
Her name is Villanelle
(And she sticks up for the Blues)
If I had to be exterminated, I would choose
this assassin who casts a spell
An actress who is always in the news
The star of Killing Eve, she gets the best reviews
(Oh, Sandra Oh, it must be hell!)
Though it’s a game that neither of you lose
A scouser whom no one can accuse
of being a big ‘ead. She’s nice, you can tell
Otherwise why stick up for the blues?
I tried to write a villanelle
(But like Everton, haven’t done too well)
For an actress who is always in the news,
Jodie Comer, and she sticks up for the Blues.
Here are some more of our public responses, in video...
The Audition by Emily Horrex
A Liverpool Memory by Sue Ruben
Here are this week’s written stories...
Coffee & Love by KC
I
He comes into 92 a lot. He has dark hair and wears a nice jacket. I like looking at him from behind the counter. Sometimes I catch his eye. He doesn’t talk to me for long, ever. He plays chess in the far corner with his friend. He always drinks an americano. Sometimes I give him a discount. (Let’s hope my manager doesn’t realise.)
II
He hands me a postcard and leaves. I say thank you. He’s written his number on the back. I’m happy, and then sad. My boyfriend picks me up.
III
It’s a little while later and I don’t work at 92 anymore. He has my number. He texts me and asks what my name is. I reply like a nerd and he doesn’t text back.
IV
I think of him, friends know about him. I follow him on Twitter and his tweets make me laugh. He does not post often. I listen to his podcast on de Beauvoir.
V
He sends me a message, saying he’ll be back up here soon. He asks if I fancy losing at chess, and why I didn’t reply to his nerdy text two years before. We meet in 92 Degrees, and he buys me some rice cakes.
VI
He’s in the other room. He moves his fingers lightly down my back. He hugs me, hard. He drinks more coffee than I ever have. He says ‘perform’ wrong. He laughs a lot and makes me laugh. He loves DIY. He’s a vegan. He wants to go to a football game with my dad. He beats me at chess. He has around twenty plants. He likes bright colours and big ideas. He’s gorgeous. He has a massive telly. He’s the nicest person I know. He uses too much spice when he cooks. He gets angry when he’s hungry. He’s thorough and thoughtful. He’s the loveliest person I could be with, in isolation and in life.
The Road Runners by Dachlan Cartwright
A Birkenhead Welshman who now lives in Indonesia but remains a Toffee in spite of his shirt colour
Like Bonnie Prince Charlie you were years too late.
Mike Hart’s Roadrunners were our last date.
Birkenhead Mike was as talented as Jagger,
But he couldn’t compete with the southern man’s swagger.
They played in the Everyman’s bottom storey,
An existential bar of grope and glory,
State-of-art R&B in the Grand Old Opey,
|But in ‘65 like ‘45 there was no hope.
They haleyed Skinny Minnie at the Uni Union.
They played with Johnny Phillips from Danny and the Juniors.
They ran down the road with the Animals and Diddley.
But the Roadrunners couldn’t catch up with history.
We’ll remember them from Reeperbahn to Gorsey Lane,
The last flame of an era that will never come again.
Sue Mullins
Thursday 10th July 2003, my graduation from Liverpool Hope was finally here after four years of studying in the city (and building up quite a catalogue of favourite boozers). It had been a really hot day and I was flustered from queuing for two hours at the Childwall campus to get my photographs done, while waiting for my parents and ‘lil sis’ to show up from Manchester.
After ‘queuing and cursing’ (I basically had a mini meltdown due to the heat outside and the fact that I was wearing the most uncomfortable shoes ever), I made a quick pit stop back at my house to change my heels into black Doc Martens (best decision ever!)
I met my family on Hope Street, opposite Paddy’s Wigwam, where my graduation was taking place. My dad suggested a trip to the Phil, after asking, “Susan, are you really wearing those boots to graduate in?”
He liked to use my full name, to let me know he was not impressed. We entered the Phil and went into one of the side rooms to the right, (it was the Liszt room).
My Mum and Dad immediately loved the place and the room, though quite dark for during the day it had a big stained glass window, where the sunshine was filtering through , highlighting the rich colour of the mahogany wood panel walls and fireplace. Anyway, dad got the drinks in and I sat next to my mum and asked about my uncle who had been really ill and asking if he was any better. Typical of my mum (she has a way of announcing big events), “Actually glad you asked, mm, don’t know how to tell you this but your uncle is not doing so well, I didn’t want to worry you, but in fact we have to go straight after you graduate, as he only has a short time left to live.”
While I was digesting this piece of information, my dad had already come back, dropped the drinks off and went missing again, coming back about ten or so minutes later with his camera in hand and a big grin on his face. At this point my mum said to him “Where did you toddle off to?”
My dad just looked back and told her, he had been to the men’s toilets and while there, taken some photographs. He had then assured my mum, myself and my ‘lil sis’ that it’s ok because apparently women can go in there once a month to take a ‘look in there’ as the urinals are made of marble. A piece of information gleamed from a previous visit to Liverpool and a tour on a sight seeing bus.
“Jesus, Gary, I hope there was no fellas in there at the time!” was my mum’s response as she was laughing her head off, “you’ll get a name for yourself!”
“Don’t worry Jenny, there was no one in there, besides that, they are quite something else, quite impressive, see if you can go have a look?“
We left the pub not long after that, I graduated down the road (with my dad stood up in the audience shouting and snapping away on his camera, as I literally stomped up in my boots) then they left to get back to my uncle who unfortunately passed away as they made their way to Manchester.
Four years after this, after my dad passed away, rooting through an old box found in my parent’s house, I came across a wallet of photographs. They were of some sort of Rose marble and intricate mosaic mint green tiles, with a flowery border around the rim of the floor. After looking at a couple more photographs, I realised it was the men’s toilets at the Phil.
To this day, I still laugh about that and hope to one day get the courage to ask to go in, when it’s empty of course!
Hope on Hope Street by Daniel Allen
It was three nights before Valentine’s Day and I was due to meet a girl for the first time. While romance may have been in the air for many of Liverpool’s young lovers that night, it remained horribly uncertain just what my evening had in store. We’d arranged to meet at Fredrick’s on
Hope Street. You know, that classic first date joint, where new love can be made, and old love lost, all to the steady rhythms of Afro Beat and jazz funk.
I’m not too sure why, but I was determined to get there early. Maybe I’m just not cool enough to be fashionably late. Or perhaps the hours of sitting around panicking about the prospect of making a fool of myself had finally worn me down and I could just get there early and be done with it.
Sound logic had definitely evaded me that day. There I was, hours of waiting in the February cold ahead of me, stranded in the middle of Hope Street. Only Hope didn't feel like the right word at the time. Maybe something like ‘Anxiety Street’ would have been more fitting. Or, ‘Dear God Dan, Whatever You Don't Mess This Up Avenue’.
More time went by. I’d been stood there so long I started to lose count of how long it had been,
fifteen minutes, two hours, sixteen and a half years, who knew anymore? The cold air now began to set in my bones too, ice over my knees and was now hell bent on paralysing my fingers next.
Worse still was the countless ‘let ons’, ‘alright mates’ and ‘what's happening lads’ I had to suffer through. Then a homeless man passed by and asked for some change. I had 1.80 in my back pocket, I put it there in case the night really didn’t go to plan and I could blag a kid’s ticket on the 14 home before the busses went off. He needs it more than me I thought, so I happily handed over the change.
Time continued on, and I now began to lose hope entirely, and started to believe that every person with a scouse accent was in town that night other than her. But suddenly, after nearly two hours of waiting, a taxi weaved through the cold mist and there she was in the back. I tried to not look at her for too long, I didn’t want her to catch my glance so I could play it cool when she arrived.
I’m pretty sure she caught me, but that wouldn’t stop my plan. The taxi drove on a little further, giving her a short walk to the spot which I was now completely frozen to. I don’t think I could have moved if I tried to be honest, my limbs felt frozen in place. Don’t get me wrong, this whole situation was my fault, but it was starting to feel like I was part of the furniture of that bloody street, the newest art installation, the most realistic statue the city has ever seen.
And, as if I weren’t nervous enough already, just upon seeing her I felt my heart jump to the back of my throat and I started to wonder how I’d ever get a word out. Finally, my agonising wait was over. There she was, and she was even more beautiful up close.
We hugged that awkward first date hug and as we did, my icy, now almost purple hand scraped the back of her shoulder. ‘God, your hands are cold’, she laughed, taking mine in hers. I instantly warmed up, and there we were, away on a night, that turned into a week, that turned into a month, that turned into now.
Guess I didn’t need that 1.80 after all.
Time And The Sea by Jonathan Thornton
The Silver Rose looked around cautiously. Calico, her partner in crime, loomed silently behind her. The dock extended around them on either side like cracked and broken arms reaching into the murky water. The gutted ruins of abandoned warehouses, tottering precariously over the water, extended through the sagging arches. Ahead of them, the sea beckoned, stretching out beyond the confines of the dock to the horizon where it merged with the starry sky.
“You sure about this?” he grunted.
“No,” she sighed. “But we’re running out of options”. She pulled the rope around her waist and threw him the other end. Chanting under her breath, she moulded the skin of her neck into gills, and dived into the water.
She felt the icy thrill of the cold water against her skin, but it wasn't that which made her shiver. Living in Yrcalla is like perpetually waiting on the brink of a sneeze; you can feel the Forbidden Realm encroaching through the thin walls of reality. To pass through it was to burst through the constant tension in a momentary rush of ecstasy.
As the delicious sensation faded, her other sense slowly began to tug at her. One could never control exactly where you would end up, but this dimension could not be far removed from the one she had just left. She could still breath the water; perhaps it was a bit cleaner than the tonnes of waste and sewage Yrcalla pours through the mouth of the Myrk. Rose found herself comfortably warm, the sea around her a soft red, filled with sparkling light. As her eyes adjusted, various shapes, huge and crumbling, began to loom out of the sea like figures emerging from the mist. As she walked towards them across the ocean floor, she saw that they were buildings. Ancient, overgrown with barnacles, corral and seaweed, the docks of another city, a mirror image of Yrcalla, spread out in front of her in the red water. She walked among sunken warehouses and taverns, the crumbled remains of houses and shacks, the rusted corpses of hideous metallic monsters. Swift movements out of the corner of her eyes drew her gaze to broken windows and cracked cobblestones, only to reveal itself as the wafting of the seaweed or the flight of a school of fish. She peered in through windows into the murky depths of buildings and glanced into the intestines of the metal beasts, but nowhere could she see any sign of once-living remains, human or otherwise.
The further she moved into the sunken city, the stranger and more varied was the architecture that rose up around her. Towers of stone or other obscure masonry, edifices of glass, a cone with cracked and shattered stain glass like a grounded spaceship, a massive Gothic cathedral whose towers must have broken the surface of the water; all these loomed out of the wreckage of more familiar houses and bars. Some of the letters on faded signs seemed to spell out “LIVE” or “POOL” or various combinations of the two mysterious words; most of the writing was indecipherable.
Rose was losing track of time. She had to find something useful and return to the surface; the spell that powered her gills would wear out in a matter of hours, and as the moon shifted down the sky the connection through the Forbidden Realm to this dimension would become more tenuous. She did not want to be stranded here in these alien seas. There was nothing for the scavengers in the empty gutted buildings or on the sunken streets.
A thank you from local actor Kevin Harvey. If you are in a position to help us continue to create brilliant, inspiring & entertaining work, help us continue to work with our communities & develop talent and young people then please do consider a donation, we'd be so grateful.
You can find out more about how to support us here.
Thank you to everyone who contributed.
We hope you enjoyed this weeks letter, see you soon.
Love,
Liverpool
x