The Liverpool and Leicester Days 1981 to 2000
The Liverpool and Leicester Days 1981 to 2000 28/5/18
The first time Astrid and I went to England was in summer 1981 when she was pregnant with Tal who was born in March 1982. We arrived at Luton airport and waited out in the cold for he passing National Bus night bus. This took us to Sheffield which was the hub and we waited there inside a garage till all the bus arrived and they swopped passengers and we arrived in Liverpool via Wales and Brenda was waiting to collect us. At this time the famous Cavern of Beatle fame was being demolished and replaced by a new building called Beatle Walks?After a few days we took a National bus and changed busses in Manchester and went to Scotland, saw Edinburgh and then went on bus to Perth, Sterling, Aberdeen and finally Inverness. In those days we managed to get student cards to travel a reduced rates and you simple arrived at the station or bus station and there was a desk where you told the person in charge you wanted a BB for the night and she phoned usually a private home and arranged it, telling you the cost and how to get there and you paid a nominal service charge.
I remember that Aberdeen was the centre of the oil boom and we heard there were many Texans there. Also it was June 21st and it was the first time I understood what twilight was with darkness only between 23.00 and 4.00.
We travelled to Inverness which is where Macbeth's castle and is the highlands . Here we stayed with a family BB. They told us that the municipality had approached local residents to open their home to tourists as the season was so short that hotel could not open. For a few weeks they sent their children to live with family and met people from all over the world. When they got tired of having foreigners at their home they phone the office and withdrew their name. It was cold there and they had the heating on.
Astrid at the time had morning sickness and we took a train back to Edinburgh and bus to Liverpool. A few days later we took a night ferry to Dublin and got there early in the morning. This was the first time I had been on this type of big ferry and it was interesting to watch the cars drive on and the ship slowly sinks lower and then they load the higher deck.
We took a bus from Dublin which was ancient with worn suspension and it took us to Tipperary and then on along the Bay of Dingle to Cork. All I remember was the poverty of the country and you go past old abandoned homesteads overgrown with weeds and creepers. Plenty of churches and many nuns. In Cork an old man approached us and asked if we wanted accommodation and we walked with him to a BB. We went on an organized tour of the area and enjoyed the green countryside and panorama. We saw an ancient stone medieval house build like a wigwam shape and everywhere you smell peat fires. At restaurants for supper we were aware of a male society of bachelors. We returned by train to Dublin which we thought had been abandoned in Ireland when the British left. We returned on the night Ferry to Birkenhead to find out that riots had taken place in Toxteth and burned down part of the city.
The next summer 1982 we went off for a holiday in Liverpool with Tal who was 3 month old Astrid got help from Brenda and Frank while I had a few days to tour. The important thing was that Frank checked that Tal was a healthy baby and that he had to sleep from his feed at 11pm till 5 am, When he woke at 2 am were not allowed to touch him and after 3 night he slept through. So at 3 months old we both managed to get a full nights sleep. I returned to work and Astrid stayed on in Liverpool another 2 weeks and when she arrived back in Israel Tal's dark birth hair had fallen out leaving him with a bald looking layer of blond hair. For me coming home after a holiday to an empty flat was depressing so on future trips Astrid left first with the boys and we returned together.
We usually came from London by train and would meet Brenda and Frank at Runcorn station where they could park the car as opposed to Lime Street station in the centre of the city. We stayed numerous summers in Liverpool and got to know how to use the busses and trains. The bus would take us on Penny Lane past Childwell to the city. We would take a day ticket which was a Pound and travelled to the city to see the museums, the Catholic and Anglican Cathedrals. The day ticket included the ferry over the Mersey to the Wirrel so we would take the boys for a boat ride. By car you could get their through a tunnel under the Mersey. We were able to leave the boys in Brenda and Franks care and got to hear music at Irish pubs, we also went to movies there but in the last year in Liverpool many of the cinemas had closed down.
At a later stage the renewed Albert dock was opened. This was a harbour build in about 1850 so that the ships of the day could come in at high tide and the lock would keep them at a level to load and unload goods into the warehouses. These warehouses were now turned into a shopping mall as well as museums. One museum showed how people came from all over Europe to get the cheapest steerage fares to USA and what the conditions were like to emigrate. They also showed how dockworkers loaded the ship by hand before containerization and an old pensioners demonstrated how the used dollies and hooks physically. One year there was a tall ships regatta and there were training schooners and clippers from many countries including Russia. The Irish crises was on and as half the population of Liverpool were Catholics or Irish you also had the Irish marching season with bands and support of Irish unity.
We got to know both David and Evan who were still at school in those days
Walton was still a village with small shops and it had an inside swimming pool which had been originally public baths before people had running hot water at home. Often in the evening I used to take Tal and later Adam for a swim and then a shower there which was easier than bathing them at home. We would also go for walks in the area and passed a red sandstone quarry that had supplied the stone to build the older houses in the area. Before Brian Epstein chose the name Beatles they had called themselves The Quarrymen. There was a golf club a bit further away and we could return from town by train and walk past this. The Beatles talked about this area John lived near the golf course.
I remember pushing Adam in the stroller and Tal walking beside it as we walked a long road past Strawberry Fields which was some kind of Institution that we passed on the way to Beaconsfield park. This was a large grassed area with ponds and ducks where a few people fished for perch that they threw back. There were rowing boats for hire and we enjoyed using them. There were swings and slides for children and grass fields with nets to play tennis free: but the ground wasn't very flat and you never knew which way the ball would bounce.
The city shows a period of wealth and there are 3 story town houses that were divided up into flats. Liverpool was heavily bombed in the war and parts of Bootle, tower blocks filled the bombed sites and they became instant slum that were later demolished.
One year we were at a park where there were sponge toys for kids to jump on a an older kid fell on Tal and hurt him, he had a greenstick fracture in his leg and had to wear an aluminum splint bandaged around his leg for about 2 weeks and we had to get a pram to push him.
South Port is a short ride on a local train from Lime Street Station and we spent a day there with a picnic but even mid summer it is too cold to sit on the beach, never mind swim in the sea.
I took a day off leaving Tal and Adam with Astrid and visited Manchester where you can see the world first railway station. There is a museum about the Industrial Revolution and steam age. You see St. Peters Square where Peterloo massacre of protesters took place in 1819 near the City Hall which is a building of Gothic design like Parliament. Nearby is the first synagogue build in the centre Manchester and is now the Jewish Museum as the community is no longer in that area.
One year I went off by train to Sunlight City where Lever Brothers build a factory with homes for their workers - and there is an art gallery their with the Lever Family collection. There was a school class there visiting from Wales and this was the first time I heard the Welsh language spoken. I also visited the Canal Museum which was in the stable of the horses that pulled barges on the canal till the late 1950s as the canals had a new lease of live during WW2 but fell into disuse and were fixed for tourist in the 1970s
Another time I took a day trip to York you can see the York Munster (church) the Viking Museum and the medieval Royal Castle where Jews were slaughtered in a pogrom outside as the King would not give them protection. There is a plaque in Hebrew to remember them. The bus ride there went through the hilly region and the City of Leeds.
England during the Margret Thatcher years had a lot of unemployment of young people who put on freaky hairstyles as if to say that they were not looking for a job in any case. There were also young girls with prams and babies begging and one never knew if this was not a stunt.
We were usually in Liverpool when the blackberries were ripe and would collect lots of them and eat them fresh with cream or Astrid made pie from them. Blackberries were not a fruit we knew of in either South Africa or Israel.
A few evenings we left the boys with Brenda and went to hear music at an Irish pub of which there were many in Liverpool. One year we went to a festival in Speke, this is the worst of working class neighbourhoods I have ever seen in England and was full of litter blowing around and people smoking on busses when this was no longer allowed. Speke's claim to fame is that 2 of the Beatles were born there and the Ford Company provided work for many at the car assembly factory.
Leicester In the year--- Brenda and Frank moved to Leicester and we spent a few summers with them. They had a house in the town Oadby near a golf course and I would take a long walk with Tal and Adam along a road on the side of the golf course and collect golf ball. We must have collected more than 50 golf balls on these long walks. Beyond the town was all rural and the next big town was Market Harburough where there was an open market on Thursdays but also a place where sheep and pigs were auctioned. After a few years this was turned into a new shopping mall. We used to go to Market Harborough where they had an inside swimming pool complex and water slides
In Leicester there was a big park called Abbey Park which had the ruins of a once enormous abbey and we would take the children to play here. We organized tennis lessons for Adam in Oadby and we used to walk past the Leicester Race Course to get there and knew all the places with blackberries for picking. There was a 9 hole pitch and putt golf course there and Tal and Adam played a game there almost every day that it did not rain and became quite good at golf. Next to it was a park with a variety of swings and slides and a soccer field.
We would take a bus from Oadby into Leicester and toured all the museums there amongst other thing they had a big collection of dinosaurs which came from the nearby area. There was a museum of knitting which was one of the main industries there. This museum was run by volunteer pensioners. Knitting was a cottage industry they had hand sock machines as well as knitting frames so the work was semi automated.
Historically Leicester is a medieval city that never really developed further nearby is the field where the Battle of Bosworth took place and Richard 3rd of York(red rose) lost and was killed ending the civil War of the Roses and then Henry IV of Lancaster (white rose) took the crown. There is the museum there that explains the story.
One year we were their for the Caribbean music festival which had many of the local population not from the Caribbean making and enjoying the music. The Indian population there all originate from Uganda where the came after Idi Amin expelled them in 1972.
We took train ride for the day to Nottingham where there was the Robbin Hood experience for children and brought back a Robin Hood outfit for Purim.
Frank Harris's sister had died recently and we went with him a few times to the shull which is in the city centre near the university but the community is spread out and most people got there by car. In the shull Frank was in good company of doctors that had fled Germany in the 1930s. Many of them were highly trained specialists but had to requalify in England.
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