Around England

Realising we have owned Beechcroft for 30 years made me reflect how much I moved around when younger. It hasn’t truly been 30 years for me as I lived away for 8 of those years. Since leaving home I lived in Loughborough ( 2 years  ) Leicester ( 2 years ), Merseyside ( in three separate places for 15 years ) Manchester ( 5 years ) rural Oxfordshire ( 1 year ) and  Oxford City ( ( 7 years )

In a way Loughborough doesn’t count as I was in Telford Hall at the University. Leicester was my first independent living. I lived in a one room bedsitter in Stoneygate. For the first year I travelled daily across town and for the second mostly to Loughborough. I suppose my time in Leicester is suffused in a rosy glow as I was near Annette. Very near for a year when she lived about 100 yards away although I was strictly forbidden to visit her lodgings.

After we married we lived on Merseyside, on the Wirral peninsula between the Mersey and the Dee. At first we rented a flat by the Dee at Parkgate. This wasn’t by the river except at exceptional tides. Mostly we looked out across an expanse of coarse grass to the main channel. We found out later that before the river silted up first Chester ( upstream ) and then Parkgate itself had been important ports. In the 18^th century Handel had sailed to Ireland to the first performance of the Messiah there.

There was a minor joke on the seafront in the form of a notice which said “ Next boat leaves Sat 3pm .“ The first day we arrived we thought we must be looking at the estuary at low tide so perhaps the boat left at high tide. It was a few days later the penny dropped that there was no boat just the expanse of grass seemingly all the way to Wales. In the summer ( at a true low tide ) we did walk out to the river channel which must have been a mile out and close to the Welsh bank.

We then moved across the peninsula to Bebington where we had two houses through the late sixties and seventies. We were ( in the second house ) by Port Sunlight village ( about 300 yards). This model village created by William Lever is a gem with varied Tudor style houses and complete ( in those days ) with post office, library, theatre, club rooms and a magnificent gallery. This latter, built to memorialise Lady Lever, holds much Pre Raphaelite work as well a lot besides. In keeping with William Levers taste all is natural with no abstracts and the contents generally date before the 1920’s. William wasn’t a man to waste money and several pictures he bought featured in advertisements much to the artists disgust.

For about 10 months, while on secondment to what was then Liverpool Polytechnic, ( now John Moores University) I was travelling into Liverpool every day. Almost never by car it was usually either train or ferry. I was surprised when first on Merseyside that there is an underground system. Much smaller than London but it reached under the Mersey and partway to where I lived. Infuriatingly one then had to change to normal overground rail to complete the journey. At the Liverpool end I got used to a walk from James Street station through a tunnel to emerge on a street which took me straight to college.

Slower but more fun was the ferry. Car to Birkenhead Pier Head, sit on the ferry waiting for the mirror image ferry to leave Liverpool Pier Head ( by the three graces, the Cunard Building, the Liver Building with Liver birds on top and the Mersey Docks and Harbour Board HQ ) The morning ferries deck would have all the City gents in their bowler hats solemnly walking around in circles, all the same way, taking their morning exercise. Liverpool was a minor commercial centre then, mostly disappeared now.

I was shocked that the ferry which cost 2 and 1/2p then but recently ( in the noughties ) goes on a Mersey cruise( a triangular run with two stops on the Wirral side ) and costs £8

From Merseyside we moved to Wilmslow nr Manchester. This is the fairly posh part of the city ( we lived in the poor quarter nr Handforth ) although not as posh as the Prestbury/ Alderley Edge area adjacent. We were very fortunate in our house which we bought cheaply because it had a large garden adjacent to a railway. Unfortunately I had an awful commute across via Stockport to Hyde.

Having bought Beechcroft largely because of its garden I then left much to Annettes disgust to work near Reading ( actually at Pangbourne in the Thames Valley ) For a year I lived in Bucklebury ( now famous as Kate Middleton’s family home ). This was really in darkest Oxfordshire miles from anywhere. Then I bought a house in Oxford right on the southern fringe. I had a delightful commute, still about a half hour but the easiest drive imaginable along quiet roads with no traffic lights at all..

Brexit update

I don’t  know how to take the latest government statement that they have no idea of the cost of negotiation failure with the EU and reversion to the most basic world trade rules. With the government seemingly set on the hardest possible exit either this is shocking incompetence or, what I suspect, that they do know and the data is too bad to publish.  Either way Theresa May looks very foolish with her threat of no deal better than a bad deal. I know this is to placate the red top press but surely the truth is that no deal is the very worst deal.