Day 61. Home. (2/3/19)

(Soundtrack: the new Robert Forster album, 'Inferno'. Ex Go Between, writer of some of life's greatest music, the new album is as Robert Forster as one would hope and expect. Which is obviously a wonderful thing. I went to a book signing by the man himself a while back. My mate Fitzy interviewed him on stage, Robert pulled out a guitar played a few of his band's most crucial compositions and, afterwards, signed his book, 'Grant & I' about his life in and out of the band with his co-writer, the late, much missed and utterly brilliant Grant McLennan. As I had my book signed, the ex-singer of one of the greatest bands most people have never heard enough of complimented me on my shirt. For some of us, that's as big as life moments get.)

I've been listening to a bit of 6 Music from yesterday. Huw Stephens sitting in on the afternoon show. I heard some of it at the time but missed this bit.

Every Friday, for as long as I can remember, Shaun Keaveny's show (once of the morning, now sadly of the afternoon thus diminishing my mornings with the breakfast soundtrack having become a litany of moody art school kids playing synths and singing in half whispers, having convinced themselves that The XX were a good idea. They weren't. buy guitars) has ended with a poem from Murray Lachlan Young.

This week his poem was to be on Liverpool. Not being from Liverpool, he did the sensible thing: he asked the world (or at least our part of the world) to tweet him and tell him what he should include in order to not miss anything vital.

And his poem basically became a list of everything he had been told to talk abut. In the most brilliantly delivered manner imaginable. Must have wound up the South something wicked as it was, to all intents and purposes, us telling everybody how great we are. On national radio. At the licence payer's expense.

And it was followed, thoroughly appropriately, by Ian Prowse's majestic 'Does This Train Stop On Merseyside?' A song reputed to have reduced John Peel to tears. A song that I can well imagine having that effect; it's pushed me close standing in audiences for quite a while now.

The song is a tour of the psychic geography of the city; a journey through the good and the tragedy taking in the folklore of Mackenzie's tomb (the only pyramid in town) the legend of Mathew Street's ley line and the horrors of Jamie Bulger's murder, Hillsborough and the fact of the city's links to the slave trade. It's realistic in it's treatment of the good and the bad and it soars.

It sits as one of THE great songs about the city. And there are a fair few gems in there.

The poem. The poem travels a similar road. It covers Boys From The Blackstuff, our attitude to standing up for justice, the culture, the museums, the bands, Tarbuck, the parks, creativity, the pubs, the daytime karaoke (which I assumed everywhere had but it may well just be Coopers) Doddy, Carl Jung, Hitler living in Stanhope Street, Brookside, the 96, the stance against that rag, the words 'boss' and 'sound', the football, Billy Butler, Pete Best, Probe and the bombed out church.

It captures the spirit, captures the character and it makes you think, "Jesus, we have so much, and so much happens here."

I mean, we know we have but being told it in the voice of an outsider makes you realise.

It may be a somewhat parochial attitude but the amount of creativity in this city of ours is unreal. The list of musicians, writers, poets, artists, sculptors, creators that have emerged from this small part of a small island which has very little desire to connect itself to the rest of that island is incredible. We're a world changing city. We're a major European city. That's important. Much as people resist and ridicule the idea of 'scouse, not English' we don't feel any affiliation to the rest of this sceptic isle.

We'll accept visitors, we'll greet and treat well anybody entering town, we'll make sure they leave loving the place.

Our museums contain great works from the world over. We have Michelangelo drawings and Chinese clay armies. We have Beatles and Lennon, obviously. But we have maritime. We have the labels and the looks and the shops that cater to the exclusive. We're self contained, we need nobody else.

And those who don't come? We don't need them to love us, just appreciate that we're boss.

Place of birth is an accident. We just got really lucky with this place.