Day 48. God I had a marvellous time (17/2/19)

(Soundtrack: thirty seconds ago it was The Cure's Seventeen Seconds album because, despite having loved the band since 1979 - though they faded from my radar in the mid nineties - I don't actually own it. Massive oversight, it's obviously excellent. Changed it now. Very deliberately changed it, to Nick Heyward's genuinely very wonderful 'North Of A Miracle' album from '83. Because Nick Heyward is great. Haircut 100 were great, Nick's solo stuff is largely great, he just writes bloody good pop songs. Every indie kid of my age knows this. Seen him live a few times, lastly in a very packed Cavern. We'll come back to the first time in a bit.)

This is how yesterday played out then. The 'genuine, real, day off' I was talking about? We had it. We did it. We actually had a real day off. Only those who've worked in jobs that involve regular, or permanent, weekend work can vouch for how wonderful and odd a genuine weekend is. One of the many wonderful changes brought about by my leaving HMV five years ago (sounds voluntary when you put it like that) is the fact that we have weekends. Like real people.

The question yesterday was 'what to do'. Obviously we had to 'do' something. No football, no commitments, you've got to make those days count.

We talked briefly about The Tate. I can always find something to stand in awe in front of at The Tate. Give me a Rothko and half an hour of contemplation of something that is basically a large slab of red and I'm happy as a pig in the proverbial.

We talked about The Walker. A Michelangelo exhibition if I recall correctly.

And then J said, "Lark Lane. Sefton Park."

"It's just a big park you know."

"I've never been there."

It was something I'd never realised. Surely I've dragged you there for a gig at some point. Apparently not. I've done so many gigs in Sevvy Park, had so many meetings on Lark Lane over the last few years that I assumed we'd both done it together. No.

So we went to Lark Lane. We did the tourist thing in our own city. It's a hell of a thing to do. To look at a place you know really well through eyes that have never seen it before?

From our end of town (the north of the city, to be fair we're not even IN Liverpool, we're in Sefton, neither of us have lived in Liverpool since 1989) you don't head south, you head further north. A day out somewhere? Crosby, Formby, Southport. The beach, the Gormleys, the squirrel woods, the fair.

Think about that. Think about everything we have on our doorstep. Art, museums, culture, beaches, woods. To be precise, the squirrel woods are actually called 'Freshfield Nature Reserve' or 'Freshfield Squirrel Reserve' but those terms are for real tourists. This end of town? They're the squirrel woods. The road that leads to them? Probably has a real name, is known only as 'the road where the footballers live'.

So, yesterday, we headed south.

I'm as guilty as anybody of mythologising a North/South Liverpool divide. Claiming that we don't actually 'go there' but Lark Lane is a beautiful place. It's somewhere I'd spend far more time in if it weren't so bloody far away. When you look at it, with someone who's never seen it before, on a day as clear, beautiful and spring like as yesterday, you realise the appeal, the magic.

It's our own city but it feels like other places of magic. There's a bit of Paris to it, a bit of Greenwich Village. It's the air of the bohemian that's always been associated with it, an air of the artistic and intellectual. It's the small vintage/antique shops, it's the chance to browse a garage full of old gym equipment, aeroplane seating, reconditioned Dansettes, furniture, prints, badges, early 70s annuals. A chance to wallow in unbridled nostalgia. It's the bars and cafes.

And the park at the end of the road.

Under clear blue skies we wandered down to an area that could easily have been Washington Square, we meandered through the tree lined paths, dog walkers, cyclists, scooter riders weaving around us. We treated it as a visit to elsewhere. Which is what it was. We walked down to the bandstand and I tried to figure out where I watched The Bunnymen from in 82. I was sure it was the bandstand. With a  stage constructed round it. But the bank facing it is too shallow to support all those that were there, the water between where band would be and where audience were, too narrow. And I'm on youtube and trying to figure out whether I was right or wrong. And I have no idea. Memory of 37 years ago is clashing with perceptions of today. I no longer know where we were in the park for that and, in the next year, Big Country, The Icicle Works and the night that Nick Heyward made what may well have been his solo live debut with a night of sparkling pop to be met by a hail of bottles that ended the show far too soon.

I'm looking at The Bunnymen from the BBC decades ago and it has to be the bandstand but it's all wrong. Everything's smaller now. Perspective is at question.

So we acted as tourists in the park then headed back to the Lane for lunch and a nice glass of red wine.

Returned home, late afternoon nap. A night with Netflix watching 15 year old episodes of The Thick of It and 6 year old Stewart Lee standup and this is what happiness is.

Happiness is days like yesterday with unexpectedly perfect weather and each other's company, which is always a different thing away from the home and the tasks of the day. Happiness is the small moments of appreciating that you're happy in the now and days like yesterday are a blessing.

And that's what we did with our day off.