Here’s a challenge - who’s going to accept it?

This poster was spotted in Liverpool City Centre over the weekend.

If you can’t make out what it says it says…

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NOTICE

Liverpool

In your ‘year of culture’ I challenge you to deliver

Something that has not been shipped in from the outside world

Something that has not been mediated by experts bought in from the outside world

Something that has not been funded by the Arts Council, the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, or even the A Foundation

Something that is not retro sounding

Something which avoids blueprints that were drafted years ago

Something that is not just sticking two fingers up at the establishment in the hope that it will grab media attention

If you succeed you will win nothing but the respect of all those that doubted you

Something that only Liverpool could do

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So, who’s picking up the gauntlet?

 

Liverpool tops the league - well done lads

No, I’m not going doolally, I’m well aware that the mighty reds are still in 3rd place (just about) , I’m talking about the league table of unhealthy blokes revealed by Men’s Fitness Magazine.

Apparently when things like the incidence of heart disease, alcohol consumption, diet and gym membership (or not) are taken into account, local boys come out tops. This of course has the added bonus in that Liverpool is officially better than our neighbours down the M62 at something - Manchester only scraped into 2nd place, slackers.

 

Snap, crackle and …whoops - there goes the Summer Pops

Now, you know me, I’m not one to speculate (much), but isn’t it a bit odd that in previous years the council has been subsidising the Summer Pops to the tune of lots and lots and lots, on the basis that it brought in much more to the local economy, but this year, despite the level of subsidy needed coming down (aah the joys of competative tender) they’ve decided that “the costs of staging a two-week series of concerts were greatly outweighed by our need to protect front-line services in education, social services and leisure. On balance, I think Liverpool residents would prefer us to spend money providing leisure facilities, good education for children and a decent level of social care for vulnerable people rather than staging a two-week pop festival.”

Me? I’m saying nothing.

 

Free money update

I know you’re just dying to know how the free money challenge is going. Well, to date, I’m £1.51 up on last week. It’s not a fortune, granted, but if I were to keep up that rate of acquisition then that’s nearly £80 a year, which isn’t to be sniffed at really is it?

 

One more reason for going out on a Saturday night

I’ve just turned on BBC1 and seen a man in a big green balloon, competing with a woman with a dancing dog for a £10,000 prize - the woman/dog act won. The programme was followed by an advert for a new series called Any dream will do, which is basically a carbon copy of How do you solve a problem like Maria?

Seriously, what is going on in the commissioning department for BBC light entertainment? Are they jobsharing at the moment so they can’t spend any time thinking up new ideas? How long will be be before we get Celebrity when will I be famous - or did Shilpa Shetty win that last week?

 

‘Work outdoors’ they said, ‘fresh air’ they said, ‘wetsuit included’ they said.

It’s a lovely day here in Liverpool, one of those days where the sky is totally clear and so incredibly blue. It is a bit nippy though (well, by this years globally warmed standards anyway) which is why I was amused to see a chap working on the fountain in Williamson Sq, dressed in a wetsuit, while it was turned on full.

It’s one of those city centre places that is an absolute haven in the summer, with kids using it to cool off by getting themselves soaked through - I’m not sure that it is quite as much fun when it’s only 5 degrees outside.

 

Billy Devine - all walked out

Now, I’m more of a red than a blue when it comes to the football side of things, but I was rather touched by a story I read in the Echo today, about Billy Devine, a life long Evertonian who died last Friday at the age of 83.

Billy loved to walk, he walked all over the place, just for the sheer enjoyment of it - and everytime that Everton made it to a cup final he’d walk to Wembley to watch them, 10 times in all. He’d often stop at police stations, asking to sleep in the cells, and would raise money for various charities on the way. His arrival at Wembley was always announced on the loudspeaker, often well into the match, as he completed the 200 mile walk.

Do they make them like that these days? Not very often.

 

Liverpool, going smokefree one step at a time.

I was up at the Bold St end of town today seeing my excellent framers (R Jackson and sons - very, very good, experts in their field, if you need artist supplies or have some work to be framed, they are the people to go to, really, I’m not exagerating, they are *that* good. I once spent 20 minutes in the room at the back with them trying to work out which shade of off-white mount worked best with the art I’d brought in) and I popped into Coffee Union which has for a long time been one of my favourite places to sit down for a cuppa.

They do a great cup of earl grey in there, the yoghurt and crunchy stuff is pretty good and the new york cheesecake is a particular vice of mine, but there’s always been one drawback in going there. From 3pm onwards it always seemed to be filled with smoke as people came in for a coffee and a fag in the afternoon. But, no more. Coffee Union went smoke free at the beginning of the year, and it’s now an even nicer place to pop into.

I have a certain amount of sympathy for people who smoke who feel like they are being forced out of society with all the new changes. But, you know what, in 20 years time we’re going to look back in wonder at the fact that people would smoke in public in the first place. It happened with seatbelts in cars and with drink driving laws, and it will happen with smoking too.

And if it helps cut the rate of lung cancer in Liverpool (which is the highest in the country) then surely that’s worth a bit of inconvenience while people adjust, isn’t it?

 

Giving it all away

Well, not all of it, but I am in the process of giving away 2 cars at the moment. Both were pretty good cars but both needed more work doing on them than made it worthwhile for us. And given that we live about this far from town (you probably can’t tell, but I’m doing that thing where you hold your thumb and index finger about half an inch apart, hold your hand up to your face and squint though the gap), that I can’t park near work for less than £6 a day and that Dad cycles most places anyway - we decided to get rid of them.

The economics of these things are just daft.

One of the cars was a good runner, but some prat in a van had stuck a scaff pole through the back quarterlight and dragged another down the side, meaning there was a bit of bodywork that needed sorting out. The insurance, of course, took one look at the figures and decided that it was cheaper for them to write it off than to repair it - whether that was what we wanted or not.

The other was a really good runner, except it was a Rover 400, so the headgasket had a habit of going every 6 months (as it had just done).

So two cars, neither that new, but in no way would they be described as old bangers. And what was the best offer I got from a scrapyard?

£45 for the pair.

And daft though it sounds we’d rather give them away than sell them so cheaply, so they went on freecycle.

The people who were taking the rover picked it up last night, and they were a really nice couple. The car is for her to drive up and down from Liverpool to Dundee (288 miles aparently) and he loves to mess around with cars, and rovers in particular - which is handy, with the head gasket thing.

It’s a pretty good car, but it wasn’t worth anything to me, because I wasn’t willing to spend the money needed to keep it on the road. It is however worth quite a lot to them, and just being able to give it to nice people who are going to appreciate it (and send me photos of it when it’s done up again) is worth way way more than the £22.50 I would have got from a scrapyard.

It gave me a nice warm feeling inside.

 

Museum of Liverpool - a step (and £11m) closer

The Heritage Lottery Fund have approved revised plans for the new Museum of Liverpool on the waterfront and awarded £11m towards the fit out of the building. They’re still £10m or so short at the moment, but what’s a million or 10 between friends eh?

There are those that are worried that building this slightly contraversial building next to the 3 Graces is going to ruin Liverpool’s tourist industry forever as we are thrown off the list of UNESCO World Heritage Sites, and fundamentally damage the heritage of the city.

Personally I think not building it could fundamentally damage the future of the city - a city that is a living breathing creature and that needs to develop. Liverpool has a great past, and it’s important that we celebrate it and don’t forget it. But not at the expense of generations to come.

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And on the subject of dock developments - here’s a (really blurry -I blame the 3 glasses of red wine) picture of the new Liverpool Arena, being built to the south of the Albert Dock.

This one is apparently on schedule and on budget - is that sort of thing allowed on projects of this size? Rumour has it that they are even trying to tempt the most powerful people in the world to hold the G8 summit there.