AS MR BROCKLEBANK’S brougham glided through sylvan suburban Childwall on a recent chilly autumn day, he was heartened to observe an enthusiastic cohort of uniformed attendants kicking away huge piles of fallen golden leaves from around the wheels of parked cars.
But pshaw! Far from this being an exercise to ease motorists' departure from leaves possibly impeding their progress, closer examination revealed that this was a battalion of Warren’s Warriors ascertaining if any hapless motorists had parked on yellow lines rendered invisible by the masses of fallen flora.
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WITH the blitzing of Liverpool’s Post Offices, the queue at the WH Smith’s new in-shop “lite-size” counter at times practically snakes out of the shop. Incidentally, are these Liverpool One premises the smallest of any WH Smith’s major locations, bar perhaps Pembrokeshire’s minuscule city of St Davids? Mr Brocklebank suspects the new store’s footprint is only fractionally larger than WH Smith’s kiosk at Lime Street Station.
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MR BROCKLEBANK was intrigued about the proposed Liverpool gay village area, aiming to cock a snook at Manchester’s Canal Street. Not only is nightclub Garlands already located here, but opposite this feisty haunt is the venerable male members only Artists’ Club. So, for once, Liverpool is not trailing change and social fashion, but is way ahead of the game.
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LAST summer, Mr Brocklebank cast a jaundiced eye over flag-waving Liverpolitans and Birkonians, lining the banks of our great river to watch the stately-process of the Italian-built megaliner Grand Princess. Few realised the irony when she sailed past the former Cammell Laird shipyard.
However, news that the company will be revived under its old name gives this old man a future vision in which a Birkenhead-built cruise liner steams up the Gulf of Trieste with sirens blasting to be greeted by a million excitably gesturing Italians in their premier shipbuilding city.
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RE-LAYING the “Olive Mount chord” was hailed as a major boost for rail-based freight traffic serving Liverpool Docks, yet installing this couple of hundred yards of track on an existing 1870s formation is still not ready after many, many months. If the track laying team involved were building the Liverpool & Manchester Railway, the late Duke of Wellington would still be awaiting his invitation to perform the 1830 opening and the world’s first mainline fatality, Liverpool MP William Huskisson, could still be with us (but probably not).
