THE LEAVING OF LIVERPOOL

Contrary to the old song, it is the leaving of Liverpool that grieves me.  Five years is not long enough to get to the end of what this city has to offer.  But hold onto your mitres, everyone: we’re off to across the Peaks, when the dean of Liverpool becomes the next bishop of Sheffield.  I'll let other commentators navigate a path through this complex terrain.  I need a whole novel for that kind of thing. Instead, I will sing a little love song to this mad city I currently live in.  Five years is not long, but it's long enough to start feeling at home.  Long enough to put down roots, and feel the twang as they are pulled up. 

Before we moved here, I’d never lived in the North West.  I’ve spent a lot of my adult life in the North East and then the West Midlands, and it took a while to get used to the constant sense that the coast was on the wrong side of me.  I arrived here completely ignorant, to be honest.  I’d only ever visited Liverpool once, on one of those I-am-an-idiot trips to renew a passport at short notice.  But I hadn’t lived here long before I realised this was my kind of city.  I’ve probably gone native by now.  If you’re interested in seeing my avada kedavra stare, simply make a fatuous crack about Scousers, shell suits and car theft.

In some ways, I discovered that I fitted in from the start.  While my sons were growing up I committed many maternal crimes, but chief among them were ‘talking to strangers in shops’ and ‘trying to be funny’.  Liverpool was an emotional homecoming.  Talking in shops is normal, and everyone’s a comedian.

Liverpool is also a wildly glamorous city.  And here, again, (as someone who secretly thinks you can’t have too many feather boas) I felt instantly I was in the right place.  In a humble way, of course.  I have much to learn.  Fortunately, there are always people on hand to offer style advice in Liverpool.  Recently I ordered a pair of shoes online, and went to collect them from Liverpool One.  I believe every single person in the store, staff and customers alike, told me they were fabulous and a bargain and I should definitely buy them.  I sometimes wonder, though, if my fashion sense is now permanently skewed.  I can get on a train in Liverpool Lime St feeling woefully underdressed, and arrive in London (where a black North Face anorak is a flashy statement) looking like I’ve tried too hard. 

Liverpool’s friendliness is legendary, but the city also topped the Travelodge survey on random acts of kindness in the UK.  Kindness.  I prefer kindness to almost anything.  Holding doors open, smiling at strangers, letting people go ahead in supermarket queues.  These are all common pracitices round here.  As a runner and a pedestrian, I’ve often noticed the kindness of drivers waving me across side roads, and anticipating my zebra crossing use.  There is one quirk of Liverpool driving that sometimes catches non-locals out at traffic lights.  It’s not quite as simple as blatantly driving through a red light, but there’s a consensus that if you actually see it turn red as you approach, it doesn’t count.

So that’s been my Liverpool home for nearly five years.  I've lost count of the number of times I've thought 'What on EARTH is going on here?' and been forced to shrug and conclude 'It's Liverpool.'  Honestly, you’re a bit mad, you lot.  But I love you.  With your cathedral to spare, and your incredibly bare statue on the old Lewis’s building.  The docks, China Town, the museums, libraries, galleries, theatres, shops, the Phil, the football stadia.  I'll miss your quirky coffee shops and fabulous restaurants, your banter, your high heels and Velcro rollers, your purple wheelie bins, not forgetting the late lamented yellow duckmobile.  I love your churches and community projects and foodbanks, your tireless fight for justice, and the way you look out for people.  

I know I have it in me to love other places.  I’m looking forward to adding Sheffield to the list of great cities I can call home. I've already caught myself wondering whether I should commission Pete a pectoral cross made from upcycled vintage cutlery. (Maybe not.  He'd be forever getting it taken off him at airport security.)  

All shall be well.  Right now, there’s no denying: the leaving of Liverpool is going to grieve me. But at the end of the long pilgrimage, I may find those things I've loved and lost have all been treasured up.  I may reach the eternal city and find it has a Scouse Quarter.

Wardrobe Malfunctions

Just to reassure you all, I have been wearing clothes in all the time I have been absent from this blog.  (Love the way that the Blogger dictionary doesn't recognise the words 'blogger' or 'blog'.  It suggests 'logger' and 'glob'.)  The reason for the lack of sartorial updates is that we are moving house in less than a month.  I've been de-cluttering.

But here I am.  And today we are looking at wardrobe malfunctions.  Let us focus on Trinity Sunday, or for most normal people, Jubilee Sunday.  You know, when the flotilla went down the Thames?  Yes, that Sunday.  The weather gods, noting the miles of bunting nationwide, were alerted to the fact we were planning some kind of large scale open air festivity, and duly obliged with wind and rain.  It wouldn't be England otherwise, would it?

Well, this meant that my planned outfit (the 50s style dress) needed to be supplemented with tights.  I am not good with tights.  Or with any kind of sheer hosiery, to be honest.  I was once given a genuine pair of silk stockings.  I did not make it to the front door without laddering them.  So the morning was fraught with tension.

As you may remember, I was proposing to wear a pair of open-toe tights with my sandals.  I have two pairs of these.  There may be more functions this year requiring such tights, so I knew I needed to be careful.  It is possible to buy 'hosiery gloves', which I imagine are for klutzes like me who can't put tights on without laddering them.  I don't own hosiery gloves, so I improvised with a pair of pop socks.  Actually, we don't call them pop socks any more, do we?  We call them 'knee-highs'.  But you know what I mean.  Carefully, carefully I eased on my pair of open-toe tights, wincing with every tug.  Mission accomplished!  

Every woman reading this knows already what happened next.  That's right.  A quick trip to the loo before leaving for the service, and BANG! Tights exploded as I pulled them back up.  Waistband sheered off.  Beyond remedy.  Buggeration!  Late bell already chiming.  Raced back upstairs, tossed tights drawer contents on bed, forked about, found a pair of 'sandal toe' hold-ups.  Hold-ups are quicker to put on in a hurry, I find.  First one on, no problem.  Second leg...  Buggeration!  Historic ladder up the back which I hadn't spotted.  Bells now fallen silent.  Raced out of house, with my big pink umbrella, reasoning that if anyone spends the Eucharist scrutinising the back of Mrs Chancellor's right leg, they have bigger problems than I do.

The first hymn had started, so I had to wait at the West End while the procession went past.  I pretended not to notice the lay vicars smirking.  It's all very well for them: their cassocks cover any ladders in their stockings.

Pastel Jeans

I must post more clothing hints on this blog.  My good friend Pat the Midwife (can she sew it? yes she can!) came to Lichfield on Sunday and went with me to the cathedral and then stayed for lunch afterwards.  And she totally brilliantly and fabulously gave me a pair of pale pink jeans as a leaving present.  This is all within The Rules.  I say that confidently, because I made The Rules up myself.  The Rules simply state that I may not buy myself any new clothes or accessories during 2012.  

As it happens, I already have a pair of wide-legged pale pink jeans.  In fact, Pat altered them for me because they were too baggy round the waist. This is the jeans curse for hour-glassy gals.  They never fit round the waist if they are snug round the hips.  So she altered them for me and now they are perfect.  Clearly she retained some dim memory of this, and perhaps recalled in the M & S pastel jeans section--panicky and overwhelmed by choice--that I like pale pink.  I do.  But I rather wanted another colour this time.    So I went to M & S in Sutton Coldfield and exchanged them for a lilac pair.

Pat will not be offended, I know, because she left the receipt in the bag on purpose.  In any case, she bought me size 12 long, thinking I'm tall and therefore need long jeans.  Not so.  I have a long back and long neck.  That's why I'm tall.  I don't have long legs.  I would prefer to have long legs, obviously, but I was not consulted, and the long legs went to my sister Ruth instead.  She, however, does not have a neck.  (A comment made light-heartedly some 30 years ago by my father, and which my sister has never forgotten.)

I should probably mention that these are not jeans proper.  They are 'jeggings' ( a hybrid jeans-leggings thing).  They are very tight indeed.  If you have ever worn neoprene knee supports for running, you will be able to imagine what jeggings are like.  To put them on, simply feed your thighs in a wodge at a time with a spatula.  You could probably adapt jeggings for use as a trebuchet.  If you wanted to fire a watermelon from the top of a cathedral, say.  I hope to wear them on Friday with out any high elasticity mishaps if I sit down too abruptly.  I'll let you know how I get on.

What to Wear at Pentecost

Pentecost, or Whit Sunday as we used to call it in the golden days of my childhood, is a fine day to wear red.  Vestments are red on Pentecost Sunday, which I like to think is symbolises the pentecostal fire falling from heaven with the sound of a rushing mighty wind in the second chapter of Acts.  No doubt some liturgical pedant will point out that we wear red on all manner of other high days and holidays as well.  We will leave such people to their amusements.

There's no obligation for the ordinary pew-fillers to wear red, orange or pink, but some of us like to get into the spirit of the thing.  It's a kind of sartorial priesthood of all believers.  While I draw the line at turning up in a chasuble, I took the opportunity to wear my most fiery-coloured shirt.  Here it is: 

You can't really see its full glory, but it's shot silk, and changes colour as it moves.  I wore it with white linen trousers (white for 'Whit').  This shirt is actually the only designer garment I own that was not from a charity shop.  It's by Paul Smith, and I suspect it would now count as vintage.  I was given it in 1997 on the publication of my second novel, by my then editor, Kate Jones.  Those of you who knew Kate, who died in 2008, will know how tickled she'd be to think that I'm still wearing this shirt.  I haven't quite got out of the habit of thinking I must tell Kate that.  I would tell her, for example, that the shirt is now beginning to fall apart, but that I've cunningly mended it with iron-on Vilene penned in with an orange felt-tip.  Except that to tell Kate this kind of thing was to prompt yet another sly burst of generosity.  

Damn, I still miss her.  She was an atheist, but she listened with great good humour to my accounts of the life of faith.  It was Kate who spotted and bought my first novel, a sprawling 600 page MS which wrestled with the mess of belief and doubt.  Sometimes my faith is pretty minimalist thing, resting on not much more that a persistent sense of presence, patchy, but not often completely absent, and never for long.  I sometimes think Kate was right.  But I hope she wasn't.  I hope death was not the end of that long witty, compassionate,  just and creative conversation I hadn't finished with back in 2008.

Make Do and Mend

Last night I altered a dress.  That is how on trend I am.  I am channelling the whole Make Do & Mend vibe.  I am Keeping Calm and Carrying On.  And just to round off this charming retro picture, the dress I altered is the one I'm intending to wear to the Big Lunch in Lichfield to celebrate the Queen's diamond jubilee.  Here it is:

A bit blurred I'm afraid, because I was obliged to take it through the home gym in order to get the whole dress in the shot.  But you get the general idea.  As you can perhaps see, it is a 50s style dress.  My friend Pat the Midwife (can she make it? yes she can!) sewed it for me, using an authentic 50s pattern and fabric we bought for a pound a metre on the Birmingham Rag Market.  The wonderful thing about having a garment made for you is that it actually fits.  Being a bit of an hourglass gal, I can seldom get things that are snug on the waist if they also accommodate the busk (as the lady in the local woolshop always said when we were little).  This has made me resolve--when my year of self-denial is over--to get more clothes tailored especially for me.  Anyone know a friendly seamstress in Liverpool?

Please to notice the exquisite detail of the self fabric belt:

That Pat.  Isn't she clever?  All I have done by way of altering is to shorten it to knee length.  It was originally mid-calf length, and we all know just how frumpy that feels even when it's in fashion.  I will wear it with white shoes.  This ought to demonstrate to the world that my legs are not actually white at all, they are merely deathly pale.  And if I chicken out, I believe there are a couple of pairs of open-toe 'barely there' tights lurking somewhere in the hosiery drawer. I do commend open-toe tights, by the way, for those times when you're wearing open-toe sandals.  Brilliant invention.  

What to Wear When It Turns Warm

After the relentless grey of the last couple of months a strange bright object has been sighted in the sky.  After a flurry of googling, we have identified it as the sun.  Suddenly it's spring.  And it was sudden.  People went out in the morning in winter coats only to look completely foolish by the end of the day.

So.  What should we be wearing in this glorious weather?  That is quite simple for young women to answer.  They will continue to wear their shorts, only now they can leave off the black tights they've been wearing underneath.  Or, if they are idle young women, they can scissor the tights off at upper thigh level without troubling to get undressed.

When you reach an interesting age--and I think 50 must qualify--the wearing of short shorts probably needs to be confined to sporting activities.  But having noted the opaque tights+shorts combo, I will confess that I've contemplated an old pair of jeans and wondered about turning them into cut-offs.  But then I asked myself this one simple question: Do I want my sons to talk to me ever again? 

Which leaves me with a summer clothing dilemma.  My 'When in doubt, wear black' maxim doesn't hold up well here; especially if you're bored to death of wearing dark dismal wintery colours.  The answer, of course, is to wear white.  White trousers with some bracing colour blocking: that is my solution.  A rummage in my trouser drawer revealed a pair of white capri pants I'd completely forgotten about.  I also found a vacuum packed bag of light-coloured clothing lurking under a clothes rail, full of things not seen since the autumn.  It was all rather exciting, like the childhood ritual of opening the trunk full of summer clothes used to be.

One small caveat, however.  Don't wear white trousers when you are chipping 6 years of filth off your cooker prior to moving house.  Or if you do, make sure you team it with a nice long apron.  

While Shepherds Watched on Ilkley Moor

And now, in a welcome break from my narcissistic fashion ramblings, I am turning my attention to hymns.  Hymns and their tunes.  Or rather, hymns which fit to tunes other than their own traditional one.

Ask most churchgoers about hymn-tune replacement and they will be able to tell you that you can sing 'There is a green hill far away' to the tune of 'The House of the Rising Sun.'  They will probably also know that 'While shepherd's watched their flocks by night' goes to 'On Ilkley Moor baht 'at'.  'The angel of the Lord came down (Lord came down)!'  By the same token, you can sing a highly florid version of Ilkley Moor to the tune of 'O for a thousand tongues'. 'Where hast tha be-e-e-een since I-I sa-aw thee? On Ilkley Moor baht 'at, on I-I-I-I-Ilkey Moor baht 'at!'  That was the tune 'Lyngham' rendered into prose, by the way.

But this is only the tip of the iceberg.  Last night, in an idle moment I asked Twitter for more examples.  The result is that I have spent the day wandering around the house singing 'Immortal, invisible God only wise' to The Wombles theme tune.  I was also alerted to the possibility of singing that wedding favourite 'Love divine all love's excelling' to 'O my darling Clementine'.  Ooh! as I typed that, I realised it also goes to 'Now the carnival is over' as well.  

Both those tunes, however, have a slightly solemn church-appropriate ring to them.  They could work in the context of worship.  The same cannot be said of The Wombles.  Therefore for maximum subversive pleasure, the tune's style and associations need to be at odds with the hymn.  My suggestion for 'Love divine' would be 'All the nice girls love a sailor'.  Another high scorer here is the Medieval Latin hymn 'Tantum ergo' to the tune of 'I'm forever blowing bubbles'; along with 'O Jesus I have promised' to The Muppets theme tune.

Traditional hymn tunes are readily interchangeable because they are (usually) in recognisable metres.  The metrical index of a hymn book is a handy resource for the subversively minded.  Anything in common metre  (CM) fits to Ilkley Moor, for example.  This means that if you can identify the metre of a tune, let's say The Archers, you can then look up hymns that share the same metrical structure.  With a spot of shoe-horning--or as musicians like to say 'anacrucis'--'We plough the fields and scatter' (76 76 D and Refrain) fits.  Provided you sing the word 'plough' on the first 'TUM' you'll be fine.  Well, I think so.  I'm currently arguing with one of the lay vicars about this. 'we PLOUGH the FIELDS and SCA-a-tter the GOOD seed O-on the LAND!'  Where's the problem?

The church has been ransacking popular culture for its hymns for centuries.  Did not Bach himself pinch tunes from tavern songs?  (Needs citation, as Wiki says, but I think I heard that somewhere).  Twitter tells me of an Agnus Dei to Billy Joel's 'Just the way you are', indeed, of an entire Billy Joel Mass setting.  Also an Ave Maria to the Eastenders tune.  As a child in Sunday School we sang a chorus to the Match of the Day theme.  It goes on and on.  

Thank you to all the tweeps who provided these ghastly examples.  I would love to tell you all that 'Shine Jesus shine' goes to 'Who let the dogs out'.  But sadly, I don't think it's true.  Even with anacrucis.