A MEAN, bone-aching wind shrilled across the grey roll of the old river to sting the eyes of the long-salted gulls hunched behind the empty sheds. Once, officious spectacles shone from the little windows of those brick sheds, which, then, had looked to the cranes stooping and creaking over the quayside.

But all was still now and several streets back, in this bitter cold, townie pigeons perched gloomily under the slate roof laid in faith on a church of almost Byzantine splendour, where days before poor people had sung their praises to the new Messiah.

Years before that, on such nights, limping watchmen in mufflers and greatcoats had warmed their hands over the spit and crackle of slow-burning braziers. But on this night the docks were held in quiet. Suddenly, the door opened on a small house and a slim young woman emerged and began a supple lope down the pavement to the beckoning lights of a corner pub. There, happy men and women gathered around wrought-iron tables in the old style.

“Gosh!” exclaimed my wife, who was driving me to the railway station, so that I could keep a late-night appointment. I broke with a start from a reverie, in which I had been trying to piece together a telephone conversation from the tantalising snatches of questions and answers overheard earlier that day. “Good Heavens!” she added, the lovely turquoise of her gaze briefly clouded by doubt. “Do my eyes deceive me, or is that girl wearing pyjamas on a night like this?”

I stared into the street lamps’ orange glow and just saw the pub door open to the eager push of a young woman in suede booties and pale pyjamas of a fluffy texture. “Yes, you’re right,” I replied. “She appears to be wearing what my dear old mum would have called ‘jimjams’ – on the cocoa and story nights of childhood. But is that not a gratifying sight? Until recently, even the most ardent admirers of Birkenhead’s charms would have reluctantly admitted that we lagged some way behind Paris, Fazakerley and Rome on the fashion front. Now we lead the world. ‘It is vital to keep abreast of the times,’ as our fashion editor once told me, while appraising my bottle-green corduroy jacket. ‘Wear tomorrow’s styles today,’ she added, mysteriously.

“Anyway,” I continued to my wife, “it appears that the advent of round-the-clock pyjamas has done for Birkenhead what cakes did for Eccles, a leaning tower did for Pisa, cheese did for Cheshire, boots did for Chelsea and jackets did for Norfolk. Birkenhead Pyjamas, or BPs, as they are known in the trade, open up the future.”

“Hhhmm,” she replied, but I felt the smile of a humorous imp in her tone. Our black car continued to advance through the frozen night and then, slowly, the fragments from that earlier telephone conversation fell into place inside my mind’s ears. There was the usual preamble about the state of the world – rising water levels, the correct depth of froth on cappuccino coffee, wars, the failures of our education system, cheating bankers, juvenile delinquency, terrorism, corrupt politicians and so on. But then they reached the really important matters. “What did you get for Christmas?” asked the friend on the other end.

“Oooh, lots and lots and lots of things, including a new house and a diamond ring,” said my wife. At this point, the friend must have asked my wife what I had been given. “Oooh, he did very well, too,” said my wife. “Our room was fair bulging with his pressies. Among them were a volume of George Orwell’s essays from our son, a wheelbarrow from me, as well as a new pair of slippers and a new pair of lovely Winceyette pyjamas, both from me. He did very well this year, the old sausage.”

I was very heartened, indeed relieved, by her use of the word “new” in this context, as I would not have wanted to be the recipient of recycled slippers and pyjamas, even if they had helped to save the world from global warming. By the time I had finally completed their conversation in my mind, my wife steered the car into a parking place outside the station. “You know, sweetheart,” I said. “I really love my pyjamas. Do you think I should wear them on assignments?”

“The world isn’t quite ready for that yet,” said my wife, affection filling her eyes.

LISTEN to David Charters on his picture podcast at www.liverpooldailypost.co.uk