Of Time and the City

This programme contains some strong language

Into my heart an air that kills from yon far country blows.

What are those blue remembered hills?

What spires, what farms are those?

That is the land of lost content,

I see it shining plain.

The happy highways where I went

and cannot come again.

I met a traveller from an antique land who said,

"Two vast and trampless legs of stone stand in the desert."

"And on the pedestal, these words appear:

"My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings.

"Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!"

Nothing besides remains.

Round the decay of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,

the lone and level sands stretch,

far away.

If Liverpool did not exist,

it would have to be invented - Myrbach.

We love the place we hate, then hate the place we love.

We leave the place we love,

then spend a lifetime trying to regain it.

Come closer now,

and see your dreams.

Come closer now,

and see mine.

No meat on Friday, confession on Saturday,

emerging cleansed and pleasing to God.

Mass on Sundays and holy days of obligation.

Despite my dogged piety, no great revelation came.

No divine balm to ease my soul,

just years wasted in useless prayer.

If I pray long enough, I will be forgiven.

If I am forgiven, I will be made whole.

All I'll need then is the girl.

Suddenly I knew.

Suddenly I thought, "It's all a lie."

Paradise betrayed.

There was no God, only Satan

sauntering behind me with a smirk, saying,

"I'll get you in the end."

Tu es petrus - you're a brick, Pete.

Here, people married.

Here, people died and were buried.

In deconsecrated Catholic churches, now made into restaurants as chic as anything abroad.

Now the congregation can eat and drink in the sight of God.

Who will no doubt disapprove of cocktails in Babylon.

Is this happiness?

Is this perfection?

As you are now,

we once were.

James Joyce.

They that go down to the sea in ships

and that do business in great waters,

these see the works of the Lord and his wonders of the deep.

Anno Domini.

Removed from the sight of happier classes,

poverty may struggle along as it can.

Friedrich Engels.

'Preston North End 2, Blackpool 3.

'Everton 2, West Ham United 0.

'Leicester City 0, Leeds United 2. 'Manchester United 3...'

On slow Saturdays, when football, like life, was still played in black and white, and in shorts as long

as underwear, when it was still not venal, when sportsmen and woman knew

how to win and lose with grace, and never to punch the air in victory.

Match over, pea soup made, my mother calling from the kitchen,

my eldest brother listening to the football results in front

of the Bakelite radio, marking his coupon, hoping to win millions.

Accrington Stanley, Sheffield Wednesday,

Hamilton Academicals, Queen of the South.

And on even slower Sundays, when it felt as if the whole world was listening to the light programme,

Kenneth Horne, promptly at two o'clock,

and long before the repeal of the Sexual Offences Act,

would visit two of his very special friends.

..very uncomfortable it was. And I was recommended to a fashionable firm of solicitors in Lincoln's Inn.

The brass plate on the door read Bona Law. Hello, anybody there?

Oh, hello, I'm Julian and this is my friend Sandy.

I've got me articles and he's taken silk, frequently.

Well, Mr Horne, how nice to varder your dolly old eek again!

-Oh, what brings you trolling in here?

-Can you help me? I've erred.

Yeah, we've all 'eard, ducky. It's common knowledge, innit, Julian?

-Will you take my case?

-Depends on what it is.

We've got a criminal practice that takes up most of our time.

-Yes, but apart from that...

-Ooh, ain't he bold!

But the law proscribed and was anything but tolerant,

as when, contemporaneously, two gay men were arrested and convicted, and were to be made an example of.

And the judge said to them before he was passing sentence, "Not only

"have you committed an act of gross indecency, but you did it under one of London's most beautiful bridges."

Showplace of the north, the Ritz Theatre, Birkenhead, again presents a replica Royal film performance.

# Hooray for Hollywood

# That screwy, ballyhooey Hollywood

# Where any office boy or young mechanic... #

At seven, I saw Gene Kelly in Singin' In The Rain,

and discovered the movies, loved them,

and swallowed them whole.

# ..Can be a top girl

# If she pleases the tired businessman... #

And my love was as muscular as my Catholicism, but without any of the drawbacks.

Musicals, melodramas, Westerns - nothing was too rich or too poor

for my rapacious appetite and I gorged myself

with a frequency that would shame a sinner.

# ..Try your luck You may be Donald Duck

# Hooray for Hollywood... #

But soon, darker pleasures.

At 15, I saw Dirk Bogarde in Victim,

and discovered something entirely different.

And when I was not at the movies, on Friday nights,

I was at the Liverpool Stadium watching the wrestling.

Not for its pantomimic villainy, but for something more illicit.

And in short, I was afraid.

As I struggled with my adolescent desires, as I waited at the top of the aisle as the wrestlers swaggered

up from the ring, their trunks tight across the buttocks, I could feel their body heat as I furtively

touched a back or a thigh, choking with schoolboy guilt and trembling with the fear of the wrath of God.

Oh, save me from those dark desires which thrill and compel.

The world,

the flesh...

-..and the devil.

-BELL RINGS

Caught between canon and the criminal law,

I said goodbye to my girlhood.

Here, I wept, wept and prayed, until my knees bled.

But no succour came,

no peace granted.

Here was my whole world:

home, school, the movies,

and God.

You who damn, but give no comfort.

Why do I plead?

Why do you not respond, Angel Eyes?

Jesus mercy, Mary help...

..lull me to safety.

Between sleeping and waking,

Earth does not revolve,

and slow turns a life of meagre timbre,

of dullest breath.

Between birth and dying, some lovely moments grow, and sorrows, not known

until tomorrow, cloud the happy hours spent dreaming in the sun.

Between joy and consolation, no easy path.

Some flights of fancy, some colour,

glorious old Hollywood, small comic England, black and white.

Between loving and hating, the real journey starts.

Let go the latter, embrace the former,

then fall to heaven on a gentle smile.

Between waking and sleeping, the Earth resumes its turn.

The soft light fills the room,

the nightly demons perish from the bed,

and all humanity braves another day.

'We used to help one another out...

'and go the washhouse.

'Do washing for anyone. Nursing them if they were sick.

'And then, of course, my mother died on Christmas Eve.

'And she left me, at 14,

'a little baby, 12 months old,

'and another one, erm, four.

'Me dad stayed with us eight weeks.

'Then he got a ship and went away and left us.

'So, of course, he died after, you know.

'Then I had more trouble on me plate, like.

'Me husband never ever got much work

'and I had to work all me life.

'But, thank God, God's been very good to me, and his Holy Mother.'

# I found my love

# By the gas works croft

# Dreamed a dream

# By the old canal

# Kissed my girl

# By the factory wall

# Dirty old town

# Dirty old town

# I heard a siren

# From the dock

# Saw a train

# Set the night on fire

# Smelled a spring

# On the sulphured wind

# Dirty old town

# Dirty old town

The year moves towards November.

Bonfire Night, a penny for the Guy,

someone singing Keep The Home Fires Burning.

As Jimmy Preston and me, the only ones left now,

roast potatoes on sticks.

We sit, quiet at the last.

Jimmy Preston who was a real boy, and whom I envied.

Jimmy Preston who once put his hand on my shoulder, and I didn't want him to remove it.

Don't go in just yet,

please, not just yet.

But he does.

Twilight and evening bell,

and after that,

the dark.

# Goodbye, Betty

# While you're away

# Send me a letter to tell me that you're better

# Goodbye, Betty, and while you're away

# And don't forget your old pal Anne

# Goodbye, Anne,

# While you're away

# Send me a letter to tell me that you're better

# Goodbye, Anne, and while you're away

# Don't forget your old pal Pat. #

# He bought me a shawl of red, white, and blue

# And when we got married he tore it in two

# Oh, gee, I love him, I can't deny it

# I'll be with him wherever he goes. #

I would have liked to have worked on, but they threw me out,

because I was old.

It's a sin to grow old, you know.

We had an old lady here, and erm... She...

Everybody would run and get her a cup of tea, and they'd wait on her,

and do all those little things, but she'd always say, "Nobody wants me."

Well, I mean, if you take that attitude,

you can't expect anyone to want you, can you?

Oh, watch and pray, watch and pray.

Do you remember, you who are no longer young, and you who still are,

do you remember the months of November and December?

Wet shoes and leaking galoshes,

and for the first time, chilblains, with Christmas in the air.

God was in his heaven, and, oh, how I believed, oh, how fervent I was.

And on Christmas Eve, pork roasting in the oven, the parlour cleaned,

with fruit along the sideboard.

A pound of apples, tangerines in tissue paper, a bowl of nuts,

and our annual, exotic pomegranate.

Do you remember?

Do you?

Will you ever forget?

-LAUGHTER

-Happy days.

My mother, generous with her small nest egg of £25, borrowed from the Leigh & Lend.

Love and cellophane.

My brothers, with their made-to-measure suits, bought on HP.

My sisters and a dab of scent, maybe only Evening In Paris,

but making it seem as if the whole world was drenched in Chanel.

Being taken to the pictures, and in all those movies,

it was always Christmas, and it was always perfect.

Seven Brides For Seven Brothers, Young At Heart,

All That Heaven Allows,

but all, all are gone,

the old familiar faces.

And yet, time renders -

deceive the eye, deceive the heart.

A valediction and an epitaph.

Now, voyager, go forth, to seek and find.

But my eldest brother, lying in an army hospital in Leamington Spa,

he will not go to war.

He will be safe.

Cometh the hour, cometh the man,

cometh the Korean War.

# The road is long

# With many a winding turn

# That leads us

# Who knows where

# Who knows where

# But I'm strong

# Strong enough to carry

# He ain't heavy

# He's my brother

# So on we go

# His welfare is my concern

# No burden is he

# To bear

# We'll get there

# For I know

# He will not encumber me

# He ain't heavy

# He's my brother

# If I'm laden

# At all

# I'm laden

# With sadness

# That everyone's heart

# Isn't filled

# With the gladness

# Of love

# For one another... #

For Queen, country, and the civil list.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Yet, all over the country, street parties were held

to celebrate the start of The Betty Windsor Show.

When the golden couple married in 1947,

the following was lavished on the ceremony -

jewellery from other Royals, a washing machine,

a fridge, 76 handkerchiefs,

148 pairs of stockings, 38 handbags,

16 nightgowns, 500 cases of tinned pineapple,

10,000 telegrams, 2,000 guests,

five kings, seven queens, eight princes, and ten princesses.

And for the 10,000 pearls sewn onto her wedding dress,

Her Majesty allegedly saved all her clothing coupons.

PARTY HORNS SQUEAK

Even more money was wasted on her coronation,

as yet another fossil monarchy justified its existence by "tradition",

and deluded itself with the notion of "duty".

Privileged to the last, whilst in England's green and pleasant land,

the rest of the nation survived

on rationing in some of the worst slums in Europe.

And in bonny Scotland, they gave Her Majesty a 21-hose salute.

Or maybe they were just taking the piss.

# Vivat

# Regina

# Vivat Regina Elizabetha

# Vivat! Vivat! Vivat! #

After Korea, EOKA, and Mau Mau,

India had gone. Soon Africa would go.

Then Suez as a last hurrah, leaving only a fading memory

of when most of the globe was red,

and Victoria was the first and only diminutive bourgeoisie imperatrix.

Betty and Phil with a thousand flunkies.

"The trouble with being poor is that it takes up all your time."

Willem de Kooning.

"The trouble with being rich is that it takes up everybody else's."

After farce...realism.

The heart that beats beneath the heart is tender, is not savage.

It beats in time, though years apart from struggle's silent marriage

of storm and stress, of quiet love,

as when the lights begin to fall and he just smiles

as she just hums, a tune that fitted like a glove,

that tapped its rhyme, still and small, into their room,

when nightfall thrums a kind of peace

that soothes the heart and lets the years fall from nought and down

as they shuffle off to bed apart,

then meet again beneath the eiderdown.

# Someday

# We'll build a home

# On a hilltop high

# You and I

# Shiny and new

# A cottage that two

# Can fill

# And we'll be pleased

# To be called

# The folks who live

# On the hill

# Someday

# We may be adding

# A wing or two

# A thing or two

# We will make changes

# As any family will

# But we will always be called

# The folks who live

# On the hill

# Our veranda

# Will command a view

# Of meadows green

# The sort of view

# That seems to want

# To be seen

# And when the kids grow up

# And leave us

# We'll sit and look

# At that same old view

# Just we two

# Baby and Joe

# Who used to be

# Jack and Jill

# The folks who like to be called

# What they have always been called

# The folks who live

# On the hill. #

By the waters of Babylon, where we sat down,

we wept when we remembered Zion.

And they that carried us away captive

required of us a song, saying, "Sing us one of the songs of Zion."

But how shall we sing in a strange land?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

# For goodness sake

# I got the hippy, hippy shakes

# Yeah, I got the shakes

# I got the hippy, hippy shakes

# Ooh, I can't sit still... #

And in an era when pop music was still demure, before Presley,

before the Beatles - John, Paul, George and Ringo -

not so much a musical phenomenon,

more like a firm of provincial solicitors.

When they are given the freedom of the city, Teddy Johnson and Pearl Carr,

Dickie Valentine, Lita Roza, Alma Cogan,

sedate British pop was screamed away on a tide of Merseybeat

and the witty lyric and the well-crafted love song

seeming as antiquated as antimacassars or curling tongs.

After the rise of rock and roll, my interest in popular music waned.

And as it declined, my love of classical music increased.

Sibelius, Shostakovich and my beloved Bruckner.

Then, in my overwrought adolescent state of mind, I discovered Mahler

and responded completely to his every overwrought note.

And in classical music, they had such wonderful foreign names -

Amy Shuard, Otto Klemperer, Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, Anneliese Rothenberger.

Furtwangler and Munch, Knappertsbusch and Gauk,

Robert Merrill and Jussi Bjorling, the Pearl Fishers.

But there was still ballroom dancing,

as staid as a funeral parlour.

Hectares of tulle, Brylcreem, and the Fishtail.

accompanied by Victor Silvester and his famous orchestral whine,

as thin as a two-step, as quick as a foxtrot.

ALL CHANT

ALL CHANT

A thousand-throng Aintree racecourse for the biggest event of the steeplechasing world,

the Grand National.

Umbrella weather won't stop the crowds coming to this racing classic.

All of Britain listened to the Grand National on radios as small and brown as Hovis, made bets,

off-course and absolutely illegal,

but it was only once a year and a shilling win, so where was the harm?

Sundew, ESB, Early Mist.

Even Mum opened her purse for her annual little flutter and said,

"I really fancy Quare Times... each way."

M'as-Tu-Vu has a slight lead from Sundew as they turn away

from the stands and back towards the 14 jumps they have to tackle again.

Bob Danvers-Walker, the voice of British Pathe,

Michael O'Hehir, Peter O'Sullevan - the voices of racing,

listening to their controlled excitement pouring through the wireless.

And Quare Times, who cost his owner only 300 guineas,

has won the National. A 12-lengh victory...

Mum, smiling at her small win, and those who've lost think, "Well, there's always next year.

"God willing."

The 12th of July and the Orange Day Parade through the city,

winding their way towards Exchange station and Southport

to toast King Billy,

and say, "Fuck the Pope, and all those Fenian bastards."

Whatever, whoever they were.

And on the train coming home,

slightly the worse for wear, howling at the papist moon.

But no religious divide in my street,

just quiet acceptance that Catholics did everything in mysterious Latin,

while Protestants sang Jesus Wants Me For A Sunbeam

in plain, no-nonsense English.

Although, sometimes,

it felt as if one's entire world was one long Sunday afternoon.

Nothing to do, nowhere to go.

Then Mum or one of my sisters would say,

"Lets have a day out next week,"

and the ensuing seven days were streaked and gilded.

But you still had to wait.

Those days, queuing was de rigeur,

queuing modestly for modest entertainment at the local fete

in posh parts of the city like Stoneycroft,

where they sounded their Hs and knew what sculleries were.

A jumble sale, a fancy dress parade, a foot race, with someone collapsing of heatstroke,

because the temperature rose a couple of degrees above freezing.

The scouts, darts, and a May queen crowned.

A nation deprived of luxury, relishing these small delights.

Decorated prams and bicycles,

a smattering of applause, all the fun of the fair.

So to New Brighton, only a ferry ride away,

but happiness on a budget.

They board in black and white,

then disembark in colour, for things were changing.

World War II was over - peacetime, and hardship eased.

And all day on the beach, completely unsupervised,

with no factor 200 sunblock, and safe as houses, little baby Joyce.

Tarquin and Gemma being, as yet, unknown.

Stiff at joy time with Auntie Lil.

Bathing beauty competitions, in their day harmless, now as quaint

as the bustle, now as unacceptable as Chinese foot-binding.

Pretty young women being kissed by the Lord Mayor, given a sash,

a trophy, and some small modest fame.

-And, oh, how we laughed.

-LAUGHTER

A stroll along the prom, deckchairs and the floral clock.

Sand in the egg sandwiches,

tea at three, then a snooze.

New Brighton rock, as sweet as sick,

and gobstoppers that would last until your middle age.

A ride or two, then the miniature railway.

Then maybe to the dance, maybe a jive,

maybe a gin and orange, and maybe love.

Kiss me quick and roll me over, announce an engagement, plan a wedding.

Taffeta skirts and blue serge, youth that cannot end,

hopes as high as Blackpool Tower, when all the world was young

and knew no bounds.

BAND MUSIC PLAYS

Then the journey home, tired.

Cocoa and toast, and happiness unlimited.

"The golden moments pass and leave no trace."

Chekhov.

We had hoped for paradise.

We got the anus mundi.

Rise. Oh, rise.

Oh, surely thou shalt rise.

But not before the opening of the Metropolitan Cathedral of Christ the King,

inaugurated by Cardinal Heenan in his brand-new frock.

The Vatican's response to Schiaparelli.

I had lived my spiritual and religious life

under Popes Pius XII, John XXIII and Clitoris the Umpteenth, which is enough to turn anyone pagan.

As far as I knew, Holy Mother Church still wanted me, but I no longer wanted her.

For I was now a very happy, very contented, born again atheist.

Thank God.

Oh, come all ye faithful,

have another plateful.

Municipal architecture, dispiriting at the best of times

but, when combined with the British genius for creating the dismal,

makes for a cityscape that is anything but Elysian.

MAN HUMS LULLABY

Out to sea, the dawn wind wrinkles and slides.

I am here or elsewhere.

In my end is my beginning.

We meet our destiny on the road we take to avoid it -

Carl Jung.

I said to my soul, be still and let the dark come upon you, which shall be the darkness of God.

I said to my soul, be still and wait without hope,

for hope would be hope for the wrong thing.

Wait without love, for love would be love of the wrong thing.

There is yet faith, but the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.

The rest is not our business.

At the still point of the turning world, suspended in time between pole and tropic

and all is always now.

Home is where one starts from.

As we grow older, the world becomes stranger, the pattern more complicated, of dead and living.

There is a time for the evening under starlight,

a time for the evening under lamplight,

the evening with the photograph album.

Love is most nearly itself when here and now cease to matter.

I said to my soul, be still

and accept this, my chanson d'amour for all that has passed.

But where, oh where are you, the Liverpool I knew and loved?

Where have you gone without me?

And now I'm an alien in my own land.

O tempora, O mores.

O the times, O the fashions.

Tread gently, stranger, as you softly turn the key,

to unlock time and cause the years to fall towards their end.

Speak low, love, but speak wisely

for frail time hangs by a thread above the world

with only hope to keep us safe.

Tap lightly at the door, then close it with a silent shock,

but never, ever yield to the night.

We shall return with hope to the good earth,

and you, my dear children,

you are the earth.

But, I reason, earth is short,

and anguish absolute,

and many are hurt,

but what of that?

I reason, we could die,

the best vitality cannot excel decay,

but what of that?

I reason that in heaven, somehow it will be even,

some new equation given...

..but what of that?

We shall not cease from exploration,

and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started

and to know the place for the first time,

through the unknown remembered gate,

when the last of earth left to discover

is that which was the beginning.

A condition of complete simplicity costing not less than everything.

And all shall be well,

and all manner of thing shall be well.

If all the world and love were young

and truth in every shepherd's tongue,

these pretty pleasures might me move

to live with thee and be thy love.

But time drives flocks from field to fold,

when rivers rage and rocks grow cold,

and Philomel becometh dumb,

the rest complains of cares to come.

The flowers do fade, and wanton fields to wayward winter reckoning yields.

A honey tongue, a heart of gall

is fancy's spring, but sorrow's fall.

Thy gowns, thy shoes, thy beds of roses,

thy cap, thy kirtle, and thy posies

soon break, soon wither, soon forgotten,

in folly ripe, in reason rotten.

Thy belt of straw and ivy buds,

thy coral clasps and amber studs,

all those in me no means can move

to come to thee and be thy love.

But could youth last and love still breed,

had joys no date, nor age no need,

then those delights my mind might move

to live with thee and be thy love.

We are being gathered in

at gloaming.

Is it sleep

or is it death?

Good night, ladies.

Good night, sweet ladies.

Good night, good night,

good night.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd

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