Birkenhead Blues

I don’t remember why but I do remember being a somewhat mature paper boy in the Birkenhead/Tranmere area. The Wirral Globe it was but not just the local rag but all the bloody supplements as well. Must have been I badly needed even the meagre income offered by this arduous task. Last term of degree and having just been ejected from the nuptial home I needed all the cash I could get just to cross the academic line.

 I lived in a room above a restaurant run by a Dutch couple. This was Higher Tranmere and I had a view of the boats and ships on the Mersey. They were a friendly couple and typically Dutch and pragmatic. Now and again, they’d pass up to me a delicious lemon meringue pie that was going spare. Ironically, what with me and P splitting up, the Dutchers asked us to be witnesses at their registry office marriage.

 I was expecting a few papers to trot around with but what they delivered for me was two or three big bundles which all had to be put into order then hoiked about in a big in two or three shifts. Fourteen quid for all this they were getting their money’s worth.

 If I had encountered one or two lonely, negligee’d nubiles it wouldn’t have been so bad but all I got was Birkenhead in all weathers and, believe me, Birkenhead is not one of the world’s top tourist attractions. Once you’ve seen the auld motorbikes and pianola’s in the Williamson Gallery and commented on how the park was the model for the bigger one in Manhatten that’s it, it’s the Tam O’Shanter urban farm or fuck all!

 I used to stand weeping and skint at the Wirral entrance of the Mersey Tunnel praying that a driver would stop and give me a lift through to the light on the other side. I even visited Bootle once for a bit of light relief.

 Eventually, I achieved parole and secured a move to Southport which, after the old Head of Birken, was like fucking Las Vegas in comparison. Southport was Funland while Birkenhead was like being a gay atheist in the heart of the American Bible Belt. I mind once taking my girlfriend to the local picture house and being taken aback by the audience standing for God Save the Queen at the end and being glared it Deliverance style for failing to follow suit.

 I should have fled right there and then but she was house price conscious so that was that. From the nice wee flat I’d secured for us through the LHT on Princes Ave to the outer darkness beyond the wide river and eventually reduced to delivering the local rag. A heartbroken delivery boy. A weeping, disconsolate local news courier.