Liverpool

My trip to Liverpool didn't start to great. the only bus and ferry that went across to liverpool was at 9pm which meant i got into liverpool about 4am. and its not to easy to get a good sleep on a bus or a ferry but when i finally got into liverpool it was all worth while. its kind of like living in a beatles song, before i knew where i had to go to find my hostel i was walking down Lime street which features in the beatles song 'Maggie Mae'. my hostel is pretty dodgy, there are some pretty strange people here but the old guy that runs it makes up for it. he is really kind and has some great stories. he told me a few about his encounters with the beatles. he saw them play at the cavern and on one occation he was in a battle of the bands with the Quarrymen (which was the beatles name when they first started out). Old Kev even saw Bob Dylan when he played here in the early 60's. its funny though, it seems that everyone here has a story about how they know Lennon and McCartney, your forever seeing plaques saying 'john lennon farted in this room' ok, not really, but you get my point, everybody has there claim to fame and who knows how factual the stories are. it reminds me a little bit of Melbourne, and how everyone knows someone thats 'best mates' with one of the guys from the band Jet.

i was pretty suprised with Liverpool, i had a really working class vision in my head but its not that bad at all. i was really impressed with its arts scene. this year, Liverpool is the European cultural capital and the Tate art museum was amazing, they had a great collection of contempory work with names like Pollock, Warhol, Picasso, Man Ray and even a Dali 'lobster phone' which was pretty cool to see. they had a great exhibition upstairs for kids, where instead of the usual, 'shhh be quiet!', 'don't touch' attitude that most galleries have, this one had music blaring, and you could draw on the walls! it was so good. the kids were having a ball and some of them were really good drawers! i thought i was really refreshing.
there was another part of the exhibition where they had people coming up to people and asking them questions and if a conversation was exchanged you got paid 3 pound. i thought it was interesting and would pay for lunch, so i did it, the lady asked me about the economic crisis, and i was shocked because i like to think i'm reasonably well informed but i felt like an idiot becuase i didn't feel i knew anything, well i knew some, but nothing i felt i could have a conversation about. and that was the point of the piece. to be more informed about the world we live in. incase your wondering, i got my 3 pounds.
the Walker gallery here is quite good also, it had plenty of great work in it, like David Hockney, another self portrait of Rembrandt (man, that guy was so vain wherever i go i find a self portait of him) even a Nolan all the way from Australia!
while i was here i saw a Stuart Sutcliffe retrospective. incase your wonder who he was, he played bass with the beatles before they made it big. he left the band in Hamburg to consentrate on his art, but tragically he suffered a brain hemorrhage and died at the age of 21 and is forver immortalized in Beatles history. his work was quite good. mainly oil on canvas but occationally it was cross media, i get the feeling he was heavily influenced by jackson pollock.
i was pretty impressed with some of there street art too. there was this one kind of campaign this particular artist did where he stenciled facts about society all over liverpool, like 'Most people in society beleive there are smarter than than most people in society, are you one of those people?' they were really brilliant, they really made me question myself. they had had this link underneath them. click here to check it out

i did a Magical Mystery tour (i'm not kidding the bus was painted exactly like the really bus) and it took us to a few main places around Liverpool, like the houses of John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo. up the road from Ringos house is the pub that is on the cover of his 1st solo album. we also went to places where ideas for Beatles songs came from like, Strawberry Fields and Penny Lane and they pointed out the bank and barber shop that are mentioned in the song, also the grave where Eleanor Rigby is buried.
i had a wander around around the cavern and had a drink at the Jacaranda which is where the beatles played there first concert. being a beatles fan it was a bit of a dream come true walking around Liverpool seeing all the things i've read and heard about for many years. i could've wipe the smile off my face. i also did the 'beatles story' which is like a museum of beatles stuff and how the story goes. its was pretty good it had a few of there old instruments, costumes and even a couple of Johns glasses.

something i found out that i liked about Paul McCartney was there was an old school that he used to go tohere in Liverpool and it was shut down in 1985, Paul thought this was a real shame so he went to Margert Thatcher, who was the PM at the time and asked her for some money. her reply was whatever he put in, she would match it. so Paul put 15 million of his own money in and after being repaired LIPA was openned 1996 and hads had some students finding musical success i believe bands like The Wombats and the Zutons have studied there. Paul even teaches there sometimes and every year he hands out the diplomas at the graduation.

Since i've been in the UK i've been thinking quite a lot about the english language, hearing it change from place to place and different saying etc. i remember i was speaking to some guys from Newcastle when i was in Belfast and they were saying they you can move just a couple of towns over and people will speak totally different but also have different sayings. but the funny thing is they still write in queens english! people from other countries trying to learn english must have an aweful time trying to figure it all out, hell i have problems. just read my blog, i hardly know the difference between, there, they're and their. but there was something that really hit me while i was here. i was going through the beatles story museum and i had one of those walkmans on that tell you about whats in each room. the commerary was done by Julia Baird who is John Lennon's little sister, anyway she said this. 'hi my name is Julia Baird and John Lennon was my brother' i know thats correct English to say, but the word WAS is the thing that really annoyed me, just because hes dead doesn't stop him from being her brother. don't you think?

i was quite suprised with how beautiful the city is, they have some amazing old buildings right in the centre of the city. actually heres a something in case you are ever on the TV show 'who wants to be a million' and this question pops up 'what street is the only street in the world that at both ends of it have a cathedral?' the answer is Hope Street. a funny fact about them is the prodostant one is the biggest in europe (trust me, its massive!) and was designed by a catholic who also designed the telephone box (theres one inside the church to pay tribute to him. i think its because Dr Who left it behind) and the catholic one at the other end of the street was deigned by a prodostant. crazy!
something i liked was, not far from the cathedrals is an old church that was bombed during the second world war and doesn't have a roof, which is now a open air cinema, its such a great space, i would've loved to watch a movie there but it was way too cold i would've frozen to the pew!

Liverpool is such a cool place its got such a great vibe, with plenty of great bars and heaps going on, however it really relies on the past quite a lot, it would be interesting to see what Liverpool would've been like if the Beatles never happened. what would be here? but then again, what would the world be like with out the beatles? anyway i'm off to London to spend christmas with my good friend Sarah, i think it will be nice to have some company for a while. bye for now.