Category Archives: Photographs And Images
Liverpool Lights At Christmas-Time
We took the opportunity whilst in town this afternoon to have a look at the festive lights, switched on now a few days ago. This was a quick visit just to the Liverpool ONE area, so much remains for a return trip (and perhaps to write about again); but what we saw was great. The displays are fresh and varied and the mood is good.
Liverpool city centre felt like a place where people will want to come to enjoy their Christmas shopping. There’s something here for everyone.
When In Rome (Ostia Antica)
Ostia Antica is what remains of the ancient port city on the coast to the west just a short journey beyond Rome. It makes for a fascinating day out and seems ideal for children as well as adults. But today we had the place almost to ourselves. It took less than an hour (and just a standard one Euro ticket) from Termini to the station at Ostia Antica, and the cafe there was great for lunch. So where was everyone? This is vast and enormously important historic site you could visit again and again.
When In Rome (The Ancient City: Fora Romano, Palatino and Colosseum)
There’s nothing can be added here to the vast store of scholarship about ancient Rome. I hope the pictures will simply speak for themselves. But I can offer practical advice: It takes hours to see everything. You can enter the venues (Fora and Colosseum) only once each over two days. You’ll need sturdy shoes, a big bottle of water plus maybe nibbles. Rest and cool down where possible. And a vivid imagination is essential. These are places where real people, some still known by name, lived and worked two millennia ago.
Liverpool’s Sefton Park, April 2011
This year April in Sefton Park has been glorious. The ravages of the long years whilst it was being renovated are now firmly behind us, regrowth is abundant, and people in their hundreds – even thousands – are visiting more readily than ever to enjoy this special place.
Whether it’s to take a stroll or get fit, to feed or watch the birds, to take little ones to the playground or meet friends in the cafes, to enjoy a picnic or a concert, or simply to relax in the sunshine, on a Spring morning there’s nowhere better to be.
Liverpool’s Everyman Bistro Is 40!
The Liverpool Everyman Bistro on Hope Street is amazing – a hub of the Hope Street community, that exotic collection of performing actors and artists, students and academics, musicians, hospitality professionals, faith leaders and more. The Bistro has stayed true to its intention (initially thought very bohemian) to offer wholesome local food. And today sees its 40th birthday….
Liverpool Enjoys Sun And Fun
The sun shone warmly on Liverpool’s Lord Mayor’s Parade today (Saturday 5 June 2010), and afterwards people thronged happily in the city centre.
Bandspeople made their way along Church Street past a musician with more ancient instrumental traditions, and in the retail area of Liverpool One shoppers took time out to relax on a fake lawn, in the company of an enormous frog and fairy-tale toadstools. The city centre in the sun was fun, and Liverpool was today indeed a World In One City.
[The instrument this musician is playing is a kora, a 21-string harp-lute used extensively by the peoples of West Africa.]
Wheelie Pretty
They say that going green keeps you healthy, so the owners of these bicycles in London must be doubly fit.
Not only are they getting exercise as they navigate the city using pedal power, but when they arrive they can enjoy these potted tubs of budding shrubs and flowers too.
Once the bulbs and cyclists are out, we know the Summer sunshine can’t be far behind.
Spring Comes To Sefton Park
Last night (20 March 2010) was the Vernal Equinox, which makes today the First Day of Spring.
Nowhere was this more apparent than in Liverpool’s Sefton Park, where the crocuses are out, last year’s cygnet was centre of attraction (with the turtle) near the bandstand, and, after a fallow year or two whilst the park was drastically revamped, the nesting swans have again taken residence on the island in the main lake. 
The Stephenson Rocket Mural In Liverpool Edge Hill
Liverpool Edge Hill was the location, along with its Manchester, Liverpool Road counterpart, of the first public railway station, opening on 15 September 1830. For some years more recently this historic site was marked by a large mural or relief of the ‘Rocket’ steam engine invented by George Stephenson (1781-1848) – an interesting vision in the grim context of our own contemporary Edge Lane access route into the city.
Liverpool & Merseyside Camera & Calendar Historical Liverpool
The Stephenson Rocket was one of four locomotives which ran in convoy on the fateful day when the route was launched, the day which also saw the demise of the reforming Liverpool MP William Huskisson (1770-1830), when he and the Rocket collided at Parkside station.
Sadly, the Rocket mural of more recent times is now in a state of some disrepair; but at least the Huskisson memorial remains, standing proud in the grounds of nearby Liverpool Cathedral.
Less appealing however are the many boarded and painted-over windows of housing about to be demolished along the Edge Lane corridor which passes through Edge Hill, where crass management of highways and the public realm has resulted for far too long in mass desolation along the main access route into Liverpool.
These attempts at jollification through ‘art work’ offer a very different message from the solid magnificence of Huskisson’s memorial – a celebration of the man and his work for the public good – or indeed the Rocket mural, an attempt made much more recently to celebrate the skills of engineering and invention which were the distinctive mark of northern British cities such as Liverpool and Manchester, two centuries ago.
Postscript (23 July 2009)
Excellent news for Liverpool and the whole of NW England: the Liverpool-Manchester route is to be electrified. As anyone who uses the M62 will know, the environmental value here is as important as the economic. Detailed planning work is to start immediately.
But there is already debate about which end of the line should be done first. Let’s just hope that this isn’t the start of another set of disastrous delays such as we’ve seen in developing the Edge Lane approach to Liverpool city centre. There has to be a better way, with mutual respect for views, based on real effort to communicate and get the right things done.
See more photographs and read more at Liverpool & Merseyside, Camera & Calendar and Historical Liverpool.
World Environment Day (1994-2044?)
Fifteen years ago today, this time capsule was ‘planted’ in Ness Gardens on the Wirral; and now we see sitting by it a little person who will be 35 years old when the capsule is opened. What will her world be like? Will we have made it a good and safe place for her and her own children to live in? And are we moving in the right direction, now, to ensure this will happen? Do we now understand what ‘sustainable’ living entails? Can we ensure that future generations – not the ones who felt obliged to ‘apologise’ in the time capsule letters – will manage to live sustainably and well?
Sustainability As If People Mattered
Here’s the text on this time capsule plaque:
Ness Botanic Gardens
World Environment Day
TIME CAPSULE
The Time Capsule placed near this plaque in June 1994 contains letters and objects linked to the many environmental concerns felt by the children of today.
Letters from the adults apologise for the overcrowding, pollution and resource scarcity we fear we will leave behind. They also state our commitment to overcome these problems through individual and concerted action, so that all species may share life together on a safe and sustainable planet.
Our goal is to make the apology unnecessary by the time the capsule is opened on 5 June 2044.
It is better to light a candle than to curse the darkness.
And so, indeed, it is…..
Read more about Sustainability As If People Mattered and Wirral’s Ness Gardens, and see more photographs at Locations & Events
