Walking Liverpool, Leicester, and a little bit of London

Two smaller English cities connected by football, the letter L, and depression

Ian, at least ten pints in, wanted to give me his “FUCK OFF” ring. I refused. I said he’d wake up tomorrow and regret it. After all, it was special to him. He’d had it all these years. After a few back and forths, he stopped trying, put it on the table, and said “Then take one of those pictures you always taking. But not of me face.”

When I arrived Ian was sitting by himself. He was just to my right, yelling into a phone. He looked like a man you didn’t want to cross, and who thought everyone crossed him. So I regretted my table choice, but it was the only one open.

An hour later, he slammed the phone down, went outside, paced and smoked, then came back and sat still. Everyone left him alone, which was odd, because everyone else was having a grand time. Hugging, gossiping, cheering, laughing, back-slapping. Except Ian who was stewing in some inner thoughts and managed to turn sipping a beer into an intense thing.

Eventually he started talking at me in a voice so low and an accent so thick¹ I had trouble keeping up. So I mostly nodded. Yes I was from the USA. Had he been? No, he’d never been outside of Liverpool. Was I a photographer? Yes and I understood he didn’t want his picture taken. Did I want to know why he didn’t want his picture taken? Not really, but he didn’t hear or listen, and turned chatty and told me he was on parole and wasn’t supposed to be here. Did I want to know why he was on parole? Not really I said, but he ignored me and smiled for the first time. Murder. Well. They pegged him with murder and he was sentenced to real long time, but justifiable homicide was what it was. What it got reduced to. Why he got out early.²

He seemed to expect me to flinch, or at least finish up and move on, but I stayed and offered him a round, which he declined. He could provide for himself you see. Even though he was buying each drink from a shrinking pool of small change.

Was that why he’d never left Liverpool, I asked. Sure he said, but he wouldn’t leave anyhow. I told him I’d noticed that about Liverpool. Everyone was so so proud of the city. Proud of being a scouse.

I might have added I thought place gave the English working class meaning. That although not a good as faith, it still provides a sense of belonging. A sense of being a valued member of something larger than yourself.

But I know my audience and know when being an egghead isn’t cool, so instead I asked if he was proud of being from Liverpool, and he looked at me like I was crazy. For a moment I worried I’d finally crossed him, but he wasn’t angry, just amused. Sorry for how clueless I was. Like I was asking a priest if he believed in Jesus.

Then he pulled down his shirt and showed me his tattoo, “Take one of your pictures.” Then added, “I won’t fight for me country, but I’ll fight for me city.”

I met Ian on my last day in Liverpool and in the last pub of the evening. The first pub I’d nicknamed “Falling down pub” after the large shirtless guy who fell down, twice, while singing “You'll never walk alone.” Each time his mates had to pull him up. I don’t have his picture because it was painful enough to watch him floundering on the floor like a sweaty bloated larva. But he wasn’t embarrassed. He’d lived a lot in his thirty years you see. More than people twice his age, you see. Not that he traveled much, you see. Never left Liverpool actually. Wouldn’t want to.

The second pub I named the shithole pub, because when I mentioned I was walking to Manchester, everyone said it was “a shithole.” Few had ever been to Manchester, but they all knew it was a shithole. The bartender, she had gone. The only other place outside of Liverpool she’d been to, besides London. She wasn’t impressed with either. In fact, giving it some thought, both were shitholes. London and Manchester.

After four days of walking around Liverpool, I’m sure a lot of England thinks it’s the shithole. Its a small drabby city that, to be polite, has a lot of rough edges.