This was dad on his 93rd birthday day out to Liverpool Docks. Travelling over the new Mersey Gateway Bridge he gave us both a full detailed description of how it was built as he’d been following it via the Institution of Civil Engineers monthly magazine. He always enjoyed talking about bridge structures; endlessly talked about the swing bridge at Acton whenever we crossed it. We picnicked last August in front of the Three Graces on Liverpool Docks, the best we could do at the time with Covid lurking around. It was a beautiful sunny day. We parked alongside the Liver building and he was insistent that we would be only staying for the shortest amount of time allowed on the parking meter as it would be so expensive; I read the meter and told him for blue badge holders it was entirely free. ‘We’ll stay all day then Raymond’. Wandered to the public realm area and found an appropriate bench and along came some new-age skateboarders accompanied by a ghetto blaster i.e. battery powered hoverboard enthusiasts going backwards and forwards around us and in true dad style he blurted out ‘They are no good for exercise them Raymond, they’ll just get fat riding around like that’!
Dad told and painted us a mental picture of how busy in shipping terms the docks area was back when he used to visit many moons ago, and he spoke about his time working in Ireland on what was to be a future ICI plant/investment and how he’d catch the overnight ferry from Liverpool on numerous occasions to work out there, and how at the time he was hopeful that he’d be spending more time over there. Unfortunately the sectarian violence put paid to ICI’s plans and dad stayed put in Cheshire from there in.
After a couple of hours he was bursting so we used our contacts to access the toilets at the British Music Experience and gave him a sneaky peek inside the exhibition too and he showed great interest as Sue went into great detail about the time the museum had a Tim Burgess hologram; Tim being Sue’s teenage music heartthrob.
Off we returned back home with greater detailed stories of how the different bridges were built.
