Tuesday 16th October – The Mersey

After the Potteries I head north towards Liverpool. It will be a brief visit but I want to see what is happening and there is also an exhibition at the Tate I want to see. The motorway is busy and there is the usual spaghetti sprawl of urban motorways. For locals these are part of their mental map, for me it’s a struggle. Should I sit quietly in the inside lane away from the superspeedy? Or is my exit coming up as the motorways split and I should be on the right hand side rather than the left? Fortunately it is mid afternoon and there are gaps in the traffic, so swooping from side to side is relatively easy. I park in the Liverpool One multi-storey car park – mainly because I was in the wrong lane for the docks car park. But it means I discover this most glamorous of car parks. No simple asphalt here, the surface is grey and parking spaces are black oblongs into which we are supposed to place our wheels. Is this behavioural economics nudging in operation? It’s all brightly lit and clean and shiny; the lifts and stairs look as if they are part of the shopping centre and not the scene for some post Armageddon drama (as is the case for many car parks). There are buggies to be borrowed. There are office spaces for businesses offering services and a bank of Amazon lockers close to the payment machines. This is all possible because there are lots of CCTV. As I walk back to my car I see a man watching huge banks of screens; the feeds from all the cameras. It is nice to feel comfortable in a car park but the price is constant vigilance. Is it worth it? In daytime I might question it, at night I’d choose to park here. The shops are new and mid/high end high street – John Lewis is the anchor store here. I don’t stop I am want to cross to the docks. The sun is shining and there is a fantastic view to my left. I look across the docks and a couple of ships moored. The Liver Building dominates but is now framed by the (white) Museum of Liverpool to its left and a dark, nameless modern building to its right. It makes a dramatic image of old and new in harmony. Who knows if they are in harmony but it looks great. I try to look out across the Mersey but it’s blowing a gale and my hair is drifting in all directions, making it difficult to see anything. I am in luck, the exhibition of Turner, Monet and Twombly is still on and it is fantastic. These are three of my favourite painters and it’s a joy to see their work on the same walls. The views from the gallery are equally attractive (and now no wind to distract). The waterfront is a dramatic space, there is a sense of scale that reminds me of New York (and an eight lane highway adds to this). As I wait to cross the main road and return to the car park I realise that one of the new apartment blocks contains a gym – two or three floors of people (about 4th and 5th floors) are on bicycles or running machines – they all face out across the Mersey. It must be a great place to work out; the views spectacular. But from the road it looks strangely hamster like; all that energy expended but going nowhere. I head north towards Crosby Sands and the Anthony Gormley figures. On the way I pass some spectacular 19th century industrial architecture. Most of its is now empty and derelict but would make fantastic living or working space. A couple of buildings have been transformed into self storage spaces. Once they stored the goods of global trade, now they store the things we can’t bear to throw away. All the way along the waterline are windmills and out in the Mersey/Crosby channel is a wind farm. I am in luck, the tide is out as is the sun. The first time I visited it was low tide but it was raining. The second time I visited the weather was slightly better but it was high tide and the figures were not waving but drowning, only a few heads standing proud of the high tide. Today the tide is way out and the figures revealed in their distant glory. The wind is still blowing a gale but it’s keeping rain away and the sun is low and dramatic. People are coming here for a walk after work, dogs are playing and chasing balls, starlings are having a noisy bath in the remnants of an earlier shower, the lifeguards are patrolling the beach.