Yuletide tradition

Oct 28 2008 Liverpool Daily Post

IT HAS that cloying sense of breaking into a box of Baileys and mince pies and greedily scoffing the contents.

What brings on this autumnal nausea? Could it be observing Liverpool’s Christmas decorations already up in mid-October before the leaves have taken their leave.

To be fair, though, that former mill town at the cobbled end of the M62 shortly followed suit, so we must be grateful we still lead in some matters.

By tradition, St Helens is usually an award-winner in the inappropriately early erection of Yuletide decoration stakes, but Mr Brocklebank has not had an opportunity yet to assess its over zealous Chrimbo-isation of this otherwise fair glass-making town.

LONG ago and far away, former Culture Company top banana Sir Bob Scott pronounced Liverpool needed a new theatre, in spite of funding crises stressing our existing ones and keeping the Neptune dark. But clearly it is Liverpudlians who are “in the dark”, as, according to the Independent on Sunday newspaper, Sir Bob’s vision is a reality. Apparently on Thursday, folk-rock singer Martha Wainwright will appear at “Liverpool Symphony Hall”. Just one question: where is it?

IN THE latest edition of the Consumers’ Association Which? magazine, researchers deliberately handed in wallets, including owners’ names and addresses, at 16 railway stations nationwide, including Liverpool Lime Street.

At two-thirds of stations, the wallets disappeared, but Lime Street station staff returned the ones left there. While infamously loudmouthed and opinionated, we can now add honest.

ARE we over-egging our visitor success in ‘08? Liverpool Culture Company’s report listed Cultural visits, but some are confusing visits with visitors.

Do delegates to the Echo Arena, Liverpool and the BT Convention Centre and callers at the ‘08 Place information centre really count as cultural visitors? Are we giving false hope to the regional economy?

Currently, we are claiming more visitors this year than the Vatican.

IT MIGHT be homemade, but Liverpool Lord Mayor’s Halewood-built Jaguar X-Type has been dumped as not “green” enough and usurped by a Lexus diesel-electric hybrid car.

One influential council wit quipped that shipping the Lexus from Japan has probably consumed the equivalent carbon footprint of a fleet of Jags.

THE Blackburne House Centre for Women celebrated its 25th anniversary last week. When current chief executive Claire Dove and her team first submitted their business plan in 1983 to use the derelict former girls’ grammar school, councillors gave it the go-ahead (backed by the Holt Foundation freehold-owners) against the advice of council officers. Those were the days, eh?