“at times i’ve seen you from the flagstones”

Further to my New Year’s Resolution post, I now have 2 digital cameras. I’m still not overly impressed with the quality of the pictures they take compared to those from the automatic camera (one of them is pretty decent and it still makes the subject of the photograph look superimposed against the background), but I’m continuing with my idea of taking unusual pictures from around the local area with them… things I’ve seen that maybe don’t get spotted by very many people. I’m going to add these to a flickr account (I may even set up a new one for it) and hopefully will also add Google Earth links to where they were taken (how much of a hypocrite am I after my earlier Google slating?!?) so people can go and visit them for themselves.

My city has a fictional animal as a symbol and it’s pretty unique and impressive. It is called a Liver Bird (rhymes with driver) and there are several dotted around the city, so I may try and photograph some of these as I find them.

The city i’m from is one with a huge heritage, and there is evidence of this all over the place. Several streets in my local area are named after slave traders, and there is currently a pretty pathetic campaign to have them all renamed so as to remove any links this city once had with the trade for fear of offending people. While I agree the slave trade was a horrific practise, it is also a fact that without it this city wouldn’t have grown as much as it did in the past so I feel the street names should stay as a reminder of past times and the way things were but should never be again.

Also near here, there are a row of 5 or 6 streets names after biblical characters (locally referred to as the Holy Land), and people wil be campaining to have these removed next. I’m not a practising Christian by any means, but rather than remove and sterilise a city’s history and heritage, i’d rather they add to it. Why not create a row of streets that have spiritual figures from other religions as names to celebrate the rich diversity this city has?

For a city that is trying so hard to remove traces of its past from its future, I am completely gobsmacked at how we still refuse to let go of The Beatles. They are still permeating every bit of the regeneration this city is going through and it pisses me off so much. So much so that Paul McCartney (who pretty much never visits Liverpool anymore) is going to be opening the brand new arena being built here. No other city in the country clings so hard to something that isn’t relevant anymore. We have so much to look forward to, and yet Lennon, McCartney, Starr and Harrison still hang around this city like a dead weight seemingly holding us back. Even our airport got renamed the John Lennon Airport not so long ago. Not so much Let It Be, as Let It Go!

~ by Andrew Fallon on February 15, 2007.