Liverpool's Echo Arena and Convention Centre: a Whale of a Building

Here is Brian's building! Shot by me from the bell tower roof of the Liverpool Anglican Cathedral in January sleet (this is a good picture since it could also be July).

The beautiful building looks like a whale or a ship, cost £146 million and has two halves: Brian's Convention Centre half and the other half which is a 10,600-seat Arena (so the most of Uniontown could sit in there).

For the last five years, all of Liverpool has been gearing up for its truly gargantuan and Big-Deal economically '2008 European Capital of Culture' Hoop-La and Media Frenzy.

January 5th was the Kick-Off Party and Gala Ceremonies, first, a big fireworks display and music from the rooftops for all the People of Liverpool and featuring Ringo Starr (who was on for about 3 minutes and caused everybody to grumble and say, 'We was mis-sold, we was...') and acrobats in high-vis jackets dangling from cranes, and then, at 9 pm, all the smiling waving City Council people and Marketing Managers were then swept away from the grumbling, milling throngs to the more gentle and fitting setting full of flattering light and glitter and champagne: The Wonderful New Arena and Convention Centre.

This of course was 'The Big Night When Everything Must Go Flawlessly'. Naturally, nothing was. The wettest summer in the recorded history of England (which is really saying something in England) meant everything was wet and curling and the roofs weren't on for months. Add to Acts of God, the collection of personalities assembled for this Showcase Build, vitally important, not just for Liverpool, but for Bovis Northwest, reeling from recent billion pound disasters, were a Perfect Storm of dysfunction and now, after three frustrating, soggy years profoundly stressssssed (which is really saying something in England) with glassy-eyed, sniffling team member disappearing for days on end, after vowing to "Right mate: 'Finish Caulking the Grand Mezzanine Staircase: I sure will, Bri. You can trust me, mate."; management stealing truck-loads of construction scrap and aluminum; supervisors pounding on desks, cursing everyone's mothers, and crying in their offices. All until 8:45 pm, and as the beautiful smiling Marketing people in evening gowns were sweeping gracefully up the still-sticky Grand Mezzanine Staircase, the evening was a success. Below is the Glam-Shot of the beautiful building (pirated from here http://www.visitliverpool.com/site/what-to-do/arts-culture-liverpool/liverpool-and-merseyside-must-see/arena-and-convention-centre-liverpool, where you can read Arena and Convention Centre statistics, events taking place there this gala year, and all over the city).





Building buildings is a lot like theater. I'm glad B lived through it, and I'm glad he was gone before the bitter, bloody, caulk-covered melee at the end. I'm glad he was part of it: the beautiful building.






Like a girl getting ready for the big dance, Liverpool has been gussying up for her 2008 European Capital of Culture. For most of the last five years, the city's bristled with tower cranes, and glowed with high-vis. Of course, she's an eight hundred year old girl, and a little battered, but she's being polished. One of her prettier baubles is the Arena and Convention Centre. Set at the river's edge, like a moored ship or a visiting whale, the double curves - half Arena and half Convention Centre containing a revolving drum meeting room within the larger - much larger- space is an architectural innovation that's been pulled off successfully only once before (at Edinburgh's Government Centre).

But is she being polished and brushed beyond recognition? Ask ladies on buses and older folks in the streets and they voice consistent worries about change that is 'out of our hands' and 'Oooh...ah don' know....ahm not sure eet's for the bettah....' and from younger people, '...but how will all this help us out in the estates?'

It's Beautiful! Like Lettuce

The weather is gorgeous with all the best months rolled into one relativlly dry week in August. The temperature is like September, about 75, with that stunning, magnificent "Who Could Have Invented This?" bright, clear watery light. But! in place of the vaguely melancholy, Back to School, Corn Harvest, Geese Flying South, Sun not Long For this World, Hope it Comes Back Let's Build a Henge, sort of feel with all leaves suddenly a dusty weary yellow, and you can practically hear the chlorophyll in the maples and oaks breaking down (crunch crunch crunch sssssssss, or something) - it's got that Great September Light plus the leaves and flowers are still wet and crisp like lettuce in April.



I am sitting in the sun in Doe Park Courtyard. Here is a picture that says a lot: Calves the color of a toad's underbelly, or Malaysian pearls - as you like; if you look closely you can see the progress of my toenails - now the color of ink. But what this photo really shows, you'll be relieved to know is: Blue sky! Sun! Neighbor Dave's Gladioli in riotous bloooom!

I think it gotten up to 23!

Everyone I've talked to said, "Ah Donchanoo, luf, I'm goin' ta poob" which means, "Yes, without a doubt, little lady, I'm going to the pub."

The people who said were: Our Postman, Steve, Our Neighbor Dave, the Airport Baggage Inspector, and whose gladioli those are, and the man who delivered our new little car, a Mini. She is A Peach.



The man (small, wiry, big smile, bad teeth, about 40) who delivered The Peach, I learned, lived in Las Canarias, which is a tiny, sun-drenched volcanic island, belonging to Spain, off the coast of Africa, four hours from Liverpool by plane. He lived there for 7 years and Torre Viejo south of Barcelona for 5 years. He worked as a chef. "Self-taught. That's what you get when there were 11 of us, weren't there?" That's not always what you get, I thought.

In the five minutes I spoke to him, and this is not uncommon, he let me know that he was poor and hungry growing up, he liked Spain, but not the Spanish, and he was going out with the lads tonight, and his partner (which we have come to understand is a long-time girlfriend not technically a wife) is having a Lady's Night, so he's going home now (it was about 11a.m.) to shower and start so that he'd be limbered up for the night ahead.

It's not uncommon to learn about people's kidneys in the grocery line, or their seven grandsons one of whom has cerebral palsy on the bus. And often a lot about the war. They say no one in London talks on the bus. I'm happy we came to Liverpool instead. Especially now the sun is out.

In Woolton: It's rainy...No! Sunny!...No, rainy...No! Sunny!

Went for a run in the rain this morning. From the park, we can usually see Wales. Today, maybe whales. Har Har Har.

There were seaguls grounded by the weather, waiting it out in the fields. They don't fly in the rain?


Then! The rain stopped!..sort of...


and the sky cleared!...sort of..


How beautiful and hopeful and positive! Oh thank you beautiful sun!


At home in the conservatory typing, it really came out! Sparking on the rosemary and the laundry





and making it impossible to see the computer monitor. Damn you Sun! Oh. There it goes.





Come Back!

Oh! Quick! The Sun's Come Out! Write to Josephine!

It is cold and rainy this morning, but I'm typing in the conservatory with the radiator radiating and the wash steaming away. You hear about wives who, having traipsed across the planet after their husbands, and, with nothing to occupy them, take up illicit habits, like gin and baccarat and human rights activism. My illicit habit is turning on the heat and taking off my coat while I type. I've turned it off now, though, so it's OK.

Meanwhile, I've shut myself into the conservatory with the laundry and it's like the Amazon in here. Outside, the rain is clattering down out of the broken gutter, and, inside in the steam, the basil and the rosemary cuttings are sprouting and thriving and you can hear the spiders bursting out of their last, now-too-small exoskeletons.
Now the sun's come out, so I've rushed out to take a picture of the event.


Just as illicit as running the heater, I''m also drinking a D 'n' B soda. D 'n' B soda is a masterpiece of marketing. The bottle is black and glossy and bullet-shaped. The font and print are punches of gold. "D! B!" it snarls, with a bikini'd babe on each arm swaggering frosty out of the refrigerator.
However.
If you read the label, you notice that the "D" is written really big in swaggering solid gold block Sans Serif, but then you see, that beside the 'D' is 'Dandelion' written small and apologetically. And the "B", then they break it to you means "Burdock" for crying out-loud. Then they scrawl on the corner of the label in edgy, graffiti written by either a kidnapper or a three year old the D 'n' B slogan: taLL, daRk,&DriNkSoMe.
Actually, it's pretty good stuff. (I have to admit, I was a Dr. Pepper girl even after I discovered spicy elixir's main ingredient was, I'm pretty sure, something like pressed prune squeezing, and the tidy "10 2 and 4" logo and sophisticated art deco stream-lined clock on the glamorous, sleek glass bottle, took on an embarrassing new meaning. Even when everyone laughed and said, "Ew, that's prunes". I liked it and had an instant affinity of others who chose The Doctor. Although, I've got to say, I they were thin on the ground. I've recently discoved Brian liked Dr. Pepper. :) )

So D 'n' B is pretty good. If, when you hear "pretty good", you think of Vick's Formula 44, which is exactly what it tastes like. It cost 59p, so they're not giving it away. It's also, I read, the Official Soft Drink of the Great Britain Rugby League. An angry bunch. The label goes on to say that the black plastic bottle (very few soft drink bottles are actually black) contains "sparkling dandelion and burdock flavour" and the warning: "If spilt, this product may stain." Who can be surprised?
It's made in Glasgow.

What You Don't Know....

It's been raining for forty days. We arrived in the pretty mountain town of Llanberis, North Wales in a rain that came lashing in from every direction. Coming across the hotel parking lot was like being in a car wash. We couldn't see Snowdon, the mountain that we were going to climb, and it's pretty big. We could barely see the hotel.

The next day the sun came out.

At 3000 feet, Snowdon Mountain is the highest mountain in Wales, which you wouldn't think is saying much - that's less than a mile, the old, ground-down, gentle Blue Ridge are about 3000 feet tall. Plus, Snowdon's clambered over by 500,000 people every year: school groups, toddlers, people in flip-flops. But, as in most things, there are two ways to get to the top: the easy way: a lovely, lake-side stroll and then broad steps up the last 1000 feet.



And then there's the hard way, which means crawling along a ridge called Crib Goch, or Red Comb, made of thousands of rocks the size and shape of hooves and good for grabbing onto and hauling yourself through crevices and notches, but hard on the knees. Some people trot along the ridge in sneakers and stretch pants and make big sighing noises when they have to go around a pile of clinging mortals.





But we just went along until, as you do when you just go along, we got to the top. There's your boy waving from the top of Wales.

And then we walked down the lovely, lake-side, path down broad steps.
and ate McVitie's Plain Chocolate Digestives biscuit cookies and raisins. Although our most gruesome injury was a blackened toe nail,

the whole thing was a little nerve-wracking especially to guard-dog B, who managed to persevere while simultaneously imagining all of us shooting off into the cloud and rocks far below.



But then, there's Scotland....

At Last The House!

Hello! and welcome to our house, Number 2 Doe Park Courtyard. Our house is on the right with the blue door and not nearly as floral as that of our neighbor, Next Door Dave, who plants loads of annuals every spring. This year, it's ivy geraniums and lobelia. This photo was taken in June. I think that's a white rose blooming. We have a yellow rose and perennial fuschias and lavender in pots and rosemary. The lemon thyme adores this cool, wet weather. The rosemary and basil, not so much.




It's raining this morning and every morning since the end of May. Here is the little foyer and hall. The house has got a breezy French Country "Rose-Covered Auberge in the Loire Valley" feel to it with lots of pine flooring, casement windows, and wooden chairs with blue and white striped cushions. I base the entire French Country House thing on those blue and white striped cushions.


Here is the living room, called 'The Lounge' here, which sounds misleadingly swank especially since you can plug in the fireplace. But every night we are very cosy and watch tv and eat dinner on the huge, blue couch. Chicken thighs in all constructions and guises have kept us from starvation since we have a frying pan, but I didn't know how to use the oven for months. It seems that Gas Mark 8 is about 500 degrees. Which is pretty hot. Then we each have three (approximately) McVities Digestive Biscuits, which are wholesome wheat cookies coated wholesomly on one side with dark chocolate.

The house is furnished, but we brought rugs and towels and bedding, family pictures, weights, camping equipment, and books. What else does anyone need?


French doors separate all the rooms downstairs. That's a good idea. I am typing to you from The Conservatory, which also sounds Posh and full of palm trees, and is actually full of light and where we keep the basil and cilantro which were blue and shivering when I put it outside, but is unusable if it rains anything like hard because the upstairs gutter is broken, and the water comes smashing down like machine gunned ball bearings on the corrugated plastic Conservatory roof and you can't hear yourself typing much less people talking to you. Soomeone ends up yelling, "Geez! This is horrible! Let's go in the living room!" And the other person points frantically to her ears and yells, "What?! I can't hear you! Let's go in the living room!" and the other person yells, "What?! I can't hear you! Let's go in the living room!" And it just goes on like that until finally someone just gets up and makes big arm gestures and Navy Seal stabbing and pointing hand signals and mouths "C'mon...Let's...Go...Into...The...Livingroom." It's exhausting. Different kinds of rain sound different on the roof. A light sprinkle sounds like bushels of plastic fingernails.

Oh and spiders! Have we got spiders! This is a picture of a spider, which I realize you can't actually see, but really, I assure you, was impressively massive enough to compare to my lens cover. They're the size of grapes. When Brian goes out the kitchen door in the morning, he has learned to pause in case one is dislodged from the door jamb and is dropping collar-ward from the ceiling. Sometimes, we just leap through covering our heads and screaming, which is pretty funny to watch from outside.

This is our room. Do you recognize the quilt? It keeps us cosy. Nightime temperatures are around 50 and it usually rains. A lot like the daytime, actually. It's nice to sleep with the windows open. Sometimes the neighbor's cat, Evie, leaps up on the garden wall, but then gets confused and comes in our bathroom window rather than her own, which is a surprise for everyone. Last night we heard the fox who lives nearby.

The other night, he and our neighbor's other cat, Silver, who is a big, beat-up tomcat with a limp, were on our front step yowling and barking at each other. We didn't know what it was. Foxes make such weird noises. Very wild animal-y. It's quite nice. If we hear them at night, we jump up and go look down at them running across the back garden in the dark.


Did you see a chair at the foot of the bed in the last picture? On the chair, there is a bowl covered with a yellow checked dish towel (A gift from my mother-in-law). I was making bread (Gas Mark 7) and needed a warm place for the dough to proof. The only other warm place in the house is the dining room where the refrigerator is, but I was drying laundry in front of that heater. In many ways, this house, with its coffin-sized shower and chilly rooms, its spiders and foxes, is like camping - which is quite nice, really.

'Ello! Luv

When I was setting up this blog, it turned out that someone else has the blog address "www.jackandjosephine" (www.jackandjosephine.blogspot.com).

That was interesting, so I went to take a look and indeed! There are Jack and Josephine who are, it appears, about 1 and 3 and like to slide on the slide at the park. JackandJosephine is a very informative blog from their proud mum, Gretchen Lewis, who calls Jack "The Cutest Boy in the Whole World". Mildly odd: they have a new brother named Eddie. Weren't you going to call Brian 'Eddie' for one brief moment? Ah Parallel Universes.

Well. This blog, our blog, "www.josephineandjack", will not be about the thrills of walking, toddling, sliding, duckies, or fire trucks, but will, instead, be notes to you, our very own J and J, in order to post photos more easily and up-date you on your what we're up to, which...hmm...that's odd... actually does include a lot of walking and features The Cutest Boy in the Whole World , now that you mention it. Also, there may be duckies. Stay tuned.