someone's selling my old sofa in bootle

 It looks like John in Bootle is selling my old sofa.  What a bargain.

Toodle pip

history is made - dennis the menace meets gnasher

I haven't posted any comic related nonsense for a while, so here's a beauty, which I'm old enough to remember reading at the time, whilst lying in my bedroom in Bootle, listening to the trains go by.  Dennis the Menace meets Gnasher for the first time.  From The Beano, issue number 1363, August 31st 1968.  Drawn by David Law.

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liverpool / bootle docks photograph from 1946 and a bootle map from 1935

An excellent photograph of Liverpool docks / Bootle, taken in 1946 (Before even l was born).
It's changed a bit from then, although gentrification and Liverpool's upscaling still has to reach or impact much of this area. It's still pretty poor, but it was what l called (and still consider to be) home, despite now having another home in Sunny Catterick.

Here's a map of Bootle in 1935 to augment it. My childhood home is there for all to see (If you know where to look)

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everyone was young once - part 34 - my parents

When l was around at my sisters yesterday, she showed me a wedding album from our parents marriage day in sunny Bootle that she had dug out. Someone is doing our family tree, so l wanted some pictures of our grandparents mainly, but while l was scanning them, l thought l might as well do copies of the ones from the wedding as well.
It's hard to believe our parents were ever that young, and l don't recall seeing my father that skinny ever.
Both are dead now, so l am officially an orphan, and therefore demand sympathy!!

toodle pip

the new strand shopping centre in bootle

Here's an old postcard of what was dubbed The New Strand in Bootle. I remember it opening in 1968, seeing Ken Dodd there,  being tickled with his tickling stick (Oeerr!), and lurking around the area when l was a little nipper, when l wasn't playing football in North Park.

Sadly it's now known as the place from where Jamie Bulger was taken from in 1993. 

Although l support Manchester United (it's a long story), l'm proud to be from Liverpool, and love going back there. There's been an awful lot of bad stuff that's happened to the place over the years, and the regeneration of the city centre and riverside has been staggering, but it's about time some more of the regeneration money spread to the outer parts of town, where there is still a lot of poverty and the associated problems that go with that. I know money has been spent in Bootle, but there's no pride in being known as 'Only the tenth worst area for unemployment in Britain'. 

Still, lots of happy memories from my time there, and the roads are now a lot busier.

toodle pip

my memory of ken dodd opening the new strand may be wrong

I've always thought that l was at The New Strand in Bootle when it opened in 1968. I remember Ken Dodd being there and getting tickled with his tickling stick (simmer down at the back), but it turns out l could be mistaken.
After much searching on the internet, l think it was the Mayor of Bootle who opened The Strand, while Ken Dodd opened Tesco's (in The Strand), if the information below is to believed.
I hate being wrong about anything, but either way, Manchester United had just won The European Cup, and l still got tickled (and have never been the same since).

toodle pip

bootle bomb damage 1941

Bootle bomb damage after an air raid in 1941. This is only one small example, but Bootle was one of the most bombed places in the UK during the war, with up to 90% of the houses damaged (including the one l lived in).
No wonder there was so much rubble about when l was growing up there.

toodle pip

the james bulger walk

I know it's a years old news story, but l only realised the other day how far Jon Venables and  Robert Thompson walked with James Bulger from The New Strand shopping centre in Bootle.  For some reason, l had always assumed that when the press were talking about the body being found on railway lines, l thought they meant the ones behind The Strand.  As it turned out, they walked James quite a distance, nearly all the way to Everton's ground at the top of Stanley Park.  That really brings it home how on another day, with slightly different circumstances, somebody might have intervened, or they may have got bored, and James would still be alive.
On a related note, Venables has just been released from prison (again).

toodle pip

albums as books

I'm sure l have posted this sort of thing before (maybe even the same books) but l can't be bothered looking, and they are worth a re-run anyway.  Classic albums redesigned as books. Good stuff. Loads more are available for viewing on Google images (other search engines are available).

The Bob Dylan / Zimmerman one is my favourite.

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women wearing football shirts

This is what women wearing football shirts should look like

This is not what women wearing football shirts should look like, but more often than not, it is the reality.  

Good to see she is a Liverpool fan though, and it could even be my old stamping ground of Bootle behind her.

toodle pip

old bootle postcards

Sorting through some crap in the house, l found an old book of Bootle (Liverpool) postcards (by Peter W Woolley) that belonged to my mother. It's pretty interesting to me (and my family) as l was born in Bootle and spent many formative years there. The book is going to be gifted to my sister (I'm a generous lad), so l thought l would take some scans from near to where we lived (in Markfield road, just down from Johnson's Dyers and Cleaners factory). The Google scans show my entire universe when l was a nipper. Happy days indeed.

toodle pip

murphy's war (1971) - peter yates

Peter O'Toole is his usual charismatic self as Murphy, the only survivor after his ship (Mount Kylie) had been sunk by a German U Boat in the Orinoco. He wants revenge, as survivors were gunned down in the water, and while recovering at a missionary settlement, he finds an old plane that he can attack the ship in, which is taking cover in the river. Even when the war is declared to be at an end, he is still relentless in the pursuit of the submarine, and refuses to call an end to the hostilities. The trouble is,  Murphy's War is not that great a film, neither an out and out revenge/war movie, nor a comedy showcase for O'Toole, it can't decide which option to take, and falls somewhat short inbetween the two.
It is also a film that was showing at our local cinema in1971 (the Bootle Odeon, Liverpool), which my parents probably went in to watch, as it was on the corner of our street (turn left straight after the Odeon sign), less than 100 feet away.
Sadly, the cinema is no more, and is now a snooker club, but l had some great Saturday mornings in there, watching the matinees.
Progress - pah!

toodle pip

bomb damage in liverpool city centre

I was thinking again about the tornado in Alabama that l had blogged about earlier, and knew l had a similar photograph stashed away that it was reminding me of.  Now l remember what it was (at long last - my brain cells have been destroyed).  It's the above one of Liverpool city centre after a bombing raid during the Second World War, when the Germans tried to get my grannies chip shop (copyright - Stan Boardman).
And l thought Bootle looked bad.

Actually, it did.

toodle pip

bloody riots - they've got it easy - try bootle years ago

This is the sort of deprivation l was used to in Bootle when l was a nipper. Tin baths, outside toilets, prating about in the cinema car park and catching pigeons in the back yard, it never did me any harm.

There is a ridiculous article about the riots and the supposed causes here (from the Daily Telegraph), but to show not all Tories have outrageous views, there is a more reasoned one by a Tory here.

My own view is no matter what original grievance the rioters had, they are now just having a laugh, causing destruction, being excited about being on the TV and part of what is going on, and looking upon it as a way to act tough and nick some goodies. Rather sadly, they also wreck their own communities and local stores, rather than heading somewhere like Harrods or Harvey Nichols. Although the news will throw up instances of Teachers assistants or students being arrested, the majority will be poor and working class. I bet there will be no one from Eton/Cambridge/Oxford University caught looting JJB sports or the local mobile phone shop (especially now that the likes of Charlie Gilmore has been dealt with). This is not students and toffs/anarchists protesting about student fees, it's (mostly) young males with hardly any aspirations and very poor role models, such as drug dealers. It does not help that most magazines aimed at youth highlight the 'bling' culture and aspirational consumptionism (watches, mobiles, TV's, trainers, designer clothes etc).

I am reading The Golden Ass by Apuleius at the moment (Ooh - get him!), and during it, he talks about a bandit wanting to recruit lads to join a gang for looting and pillaging. His reasons for them joining are :

"Some might have to be impressed and kept loyal by a sense of fear, some would be attracted by the prospect of loot, and come forward as volunteers, others would be only too pleased to escape a life of drudgery for membership of a company which exerted an almost sovereign power"

I would say nothing much has changed since the Second Century AD when the book was written. That would still be the reasoning behind most lads joining a gang of drug dealers or looters. Power and a sense of worth.

toodle pip