Uniquely this post has nothing to do with South London though I did pass near one of Britain’s finest Victorian Parks (Stanley in L4) to get there. The park in question ( Goodison ) also has Victorian origins and has over decades impacted my life, informed my culture and shaped my personality. The rituals and songs have changed, I don’t know all the words to spirit of the blues though the story of the blues and the attendant history, afflictions and prejudices live within me. Another song popular today (Goodison Gang) I only knew through the Golden Vision documentary about Alex Young. It was certainly no longer being sung in the 1970s when we had a season ticket for the lower Bullens.
That is within the broader context of Everton’s, soon to be ex, home my specific pew if you like. I’m not a street ender and much though I enjoy the views over Lancashire from the top of the main stand and the cool cynicism of the Park End there is something about the woodenness of Archie Leitch’s early 20th century construction that is ingrained in me. I prefer the section nearest the Street End so I can hear the chants and see the goals, or lack of.
Waiting outside Lime Street for my brother Micheal I was reminded how magnificent Liverpool is architecturally speaking. There probably isn’t a grander station exit in the country, certainly the majesty of St George’s Square shames any London station approach. Yet by the time we got off the Metro at Kirkdale, a few stops from Moorfields on the Northern Line it’s like everything has shrunk. If the terraced housing on the approach to the County Road were transposed to, say, Fulham they’d be worth a million pounds each yet here at the Anfield / Walton borders there is an unloved feel to many and the dog bemearded streets tell their own tale.
As others have written Goodison (from this approach) sort of sneaks up on you. One minute you’re stepping through low level streets past the Spellow Library and local shops, the next one of Britain’s greatest (for me obviously the greatest) stadiums rears up in front you. Mike and I had decided to start our final tour at the Park End then slowly ambled down the Bullens, uncrowded at this point though the programme sellers and police were in place. On the Glawdys people sat on walls counting down not only the hours to kick off but weeks left before this focus of beauty, tragedy, joy and despair is no more.
We dropped into St Lukes Hall rammed with Toffee memorabilia including a stall with shirts from the various Latin American “Evertons”. I told Mike how our late mother had once taken me to the Glawdys and was shocked by the swearing. He reminded me of how our brother Andy had somehow got himself and our other brother David as kids under and over the turnstiles for that Wimbledon game. As we passed along the main stand the streets were becoming fuller, I pointed out the Blue Bistro and told him about the time a group of us went to Lyon ticketless. On arrival we decided not to buy a ticket off a tout but instead watch the game from a bar and spend the ticket money on a properly expensive meal.
It was the right decision then and, as we had no tickets for Saturday’s clash with the happy Hammers, we made the same one then. The area around the new stadium at Bramley Moore Dock is however distinctly lacking in high end eateries or much else but we took the metro one stop back to Sandhills which, though closest, is not exactly proximate. The Dock Road has that post industrial feel of underused warehouses and broken street signs enlivened on Saturday by a teenage afternoon rave in an old factory. The new stadium itself does impress though it’ll never, for me anyway, replace the complex, personal relationship I have with Goodison.
Outside it we got talking to a few people who said they’d come from a sausage and cider festival with tribute bands and did we want their wristbands for free entry? The venue was just passed the Titanic Hotel and at that point where gentrification brushes its tongue north from ‘town’. Stanley Dock and its environs felt like Bermondsey in the 90s, but the club itself was rather more scouse. Packed with slightly lit (mostly) middle aged people swaying along to or singing pop classics. Tucking into beer and currywurst as a Queen tribute band came onstage I reflected that this might be a better use of my time than sitting in the lower Bullens sharing opinions about Branthwaite’s lack of final touch or Beto’s accuracy.
Joyous though it was; cider, sausages and a bad Freddie Mercury impersonator are unlikely to fill the cultural void left by the end of Goodison. As he ineptly blasted his way through One Vision I had a golden one in my head as I (along with an imaginary Goodison gang) sang “so come on, come on, come down to Goodison Park…wooooah!”
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