Odds and Sods

I'm trapped under a cold. It's damned annoying. It's one of those persistent, makes you feel like crap but doesn't actually debilitate you colds, which mean all you want to do is wrap yourself up in a duvet with a cup of tea and a Futurama DVD. As a result I'm pinned inside the house with no chance of getting out there and tarting.

In the meantime, I've cobbled together a post from some of my leftovers. While I'm out and about, I sometimes see something which amuses me, or interests me, so I snap a pic in case there's room for it in the usual posts. When it comes to posting the thing, though, I find that the pics sometimes interrupt the flow of the writing; that I had an interesting picture, but it didn't fit in with my general thrust at that point, and so it got left out. So this post rectifies that with a few oddments that are hanging around the Merseytart folder on my PC.







This was at St Michaels, on the Northern Line. The local children had obviously been given the task of designing a logo to represent Liverpool for the Capital of Culture, and their efforts were turned into a frieze on the southbound platform. Something about the colours here just appealed to me. Shame about the blob of frigging chewing gum, though. Since terrorists intent on paralysing our nation's transportation system have taken to putting the bombs on themselves rather than litter bins, can we have our bins back? Not that the ignorant sods would probably use it. Really, random executions would stop these chewing gum abusers. That was all a bit Daily Mail, wasn't it? Let's move on. Well done children of St Michaels for your efforts, and well done people of Merseyrail for putting it on the platform. There should be more of this sort of thing, I think, little features on platforms to catch your eye.



Watch out for flying sausages. (Readers under the age of thirty: you don't know what you missed). This is in West Kirby, and it made me smile for a moment.





Sometimes a photo doesn't make it because my photography skills are somewhat, erm, lacking. The above picture does the dank, evocative, moody subway at Port Sunlight no favours whatsoever, which is a shame, because it's great. I'm probably alone in this opinion, but I like dark oppressive railway subways, and this is a great example of the type. (I should imagine my opinion would be radically different if I were, say, a thirteen year old girl using this subway at ten o'clock at night). It's strangely wide, and divided down the middle with this fence, for no apparent reason. It looks like something out of Children of Men; I'm expecting Pam Ferris to be herded down it with a load of screaming immigrants. Can I just add parenthetically that I loved Children of Men, and that it makes me cry like a baby every time? When they carry the baby out of the building and all the soldiers stop to look, I turn it a blubbing wreck of snot and tears, and I do not cry at any films, because, essentially, I'm dead inside.

The lovely 1930s concrete platform roof at West Kirby, two proud wings thrusting into space.




A rarity on this site: a picture of a train! This is taken at Walton station, and it shows a train headed towards Ormskirk. I am afraid I have little or no interest in the trains themselves. They look very nice, in their new grey and yellow livery, and they are usually comfortable and clean, but that's where my fascination ends. I'm all about the railway architecture, and frankly, I couldn't give a monkeys if this is train number 49728. I'm not sure if that makes me more tragic or less. (I will say that I prefer electric trains to diesels, but that's mainly to annoy someone I know who loves diesel trains - what fascinating circles I move in!) Gaol spotters will be pleased to note that you can also just about see the prison wall in the distance.



This is on the Birkenhead swimming pool, just round the corner from Conway Park. For years I had wandered past here and assumed the streak of silver was just an abstract piece of metal art, but no; in close up, it's actually a swimmer! He looks a bit Stanley Matthews in those shorts, but still; it's very nice. I actually now feel sorry for metal man, as he's sort of marooned on the side of a not very impressive brick building. He'd be much better out over the entrance.


That'll do. Normal service will be resumed soon, I promise - I'm hoping to get out next week...

"I love humans. They always see patterns in things that aren't there."

So sayeth the Doctor, and who are we to argue? This is more an accidental tart. I was on my way to work and I managed to miss my train by about 30 seconds, which is rather frustrating. However, making lemonade out of the situation, I turned it into a Tart - and actually, it allowed me to collect a pair.

Full disclosure: I have a teeny, tiny bit of an Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. I value symmetry above almost anything. I like to see order and structure in things. And I like to find patterns in random things - it makes me feel a whole lot better.

The line from Birkenhead Central to Chester is most familiar to me, because I use it for work every day, and in my head I've sort of divided it up into little slices. Rock Ferry, Green Lane and Birkenhead Central - they are all grouped together as the "urban" stations, all grit and grime. At the other end, there's the pleasing symmetry and sort of inter-related names of Bromborough Rake, Bromborough, and Eastham Rake - something about those three names is just so satisfying to me.

And in the middle, there are the "twin" stations: Bebington and Port Sunlight. Both stations are up on viaducts, they're pretty simple at platform level, and they both serve the Port Sunlight village - viz:

In full OCD mode, can I say how much I love that they swapped "Port Sunlight Village" and "Lady Lever Art Gallery" over between signs? It was probably done for some tedious geographical reason, but I like to think that the man in charge of ALFs just wanted to make it interesting. (However, he'd lost his inspiration by the time he got to the Evil Repeating Birds of Leasowe & Moreton).

So I started at Bebington, my usual departure station. The light was bad, and it was extremely difficult to get in a position, which is how I ended up under the bridge, and... well basically, this is one big apology for the shittiness of this shot. I'm sorry Bebington. I let you down.

Anyway, onwards and upwards. It's a straight line from Bebington to Port Sunlight - the road follows the railway embankment - but I took a diversion and wandered through the village itself. (As you may have deduced, I was in no hurry to get to work). If you're not familiar with Port Sunlight, it was built to house the workers for the Lever factory in the village - yes, that's Sunlight as in Sunlight soap. The Lever family constructed a whole town for the employees, with a pub, village hall, church - even an art gallery. This was just for the rank and file; the managers were housed in Thornton Hough, which is further down the Wirral and is like a Disney English village - everything is designed to look like it's been there since Ye Olde Days, even though it's only about a hundred years old.

The whole village is now a conservation area, and they are incredibly strict about preserving it, as they should. Normally I hate new buildings that pretend they're old. Chester is full of them and they make me want to scream. If it's the twenty-first century, build a twenty-first century building, and don't shove a load of mock-Tudor bobbins all over it. Somehow, though, Port Sunlight gets away with trying to look older than it is. Perhaps it's their social significance. The houses must have been astonishing for the factory workers at the turn of the century, people who were used to slum conditions. In fact they're better than some houses being built today. At least these ones have space and light and room to breathe. You don't get that on a Brookside estate. And can you imagine employers building a village for their employees now, or if they did, actually making it somewhere you'd want to live?

If you get the opportunity, do go and take Port Sunlight in. The Lady Lever Art Gallery does some very nice cakes. There; now you have no reason not to go.

Anyway, I eventually had to drag myself away and go to the station. It was built in keeping with the village, though it was actually constructed some time later, and it's lovely; like a little country cottage. It's also amazing what a difference a few hanging baskets make.

In fact it's so nice I now feel doubly guilty about how crappy Bebington looks next to it. I might have to revisit I think.