Liverpool.

Went last weekend, absolute brilliant place, loved every second. very expensive or if you want delve a little, very cheap, would recommend 100%. Loved it.

 

I was there aswell mate , brilliant loved every minute and will be certainly going back

 

Great place to live to be honest - has a reputation for some reason but they are a friendly bunch and it's a fantastic night out with some great bars and eating places. Where did you go out?

 

I enjoy the Baltic quarter, but City Centre is good too, as are some of the docks.

 

Nice place, lots of history only one issue. It’s full of scousers.

 

Majority are great - odd idiots like everywhere else.

 

The accent doesn't help them with regards the way they're perceived. It comes across quite angry when it isn't, a bit like the Scots.

 

We eat at Chy City, very nice. went to the Caven, then Rubber soul, spoons( Elvis juice fix ) Scuffy Murphy's to name a few.

 

I'd go more if son #1 invited me more.

 

Glad you had a great time - spent many a happy hour in the Cavern. Thursday was always student night when I was younger - staggered out of there at some ungodly hours in my younger days

 

But both incredibly friendly and welcoming - some of the least friendly people I've met have spoken the Queen's English

 

Agreed, Liverpool is a great place, so too is the Wirral coast, from New Brighton to West Kirby, all great.

 

One night I tend to avoid to be honest - not keen on queues

 

Sorry double post

 

Oh I agree entirely, I lived on the Wirral for four years so know the city fairly well. Never got used to the accent though, positively adenoidal.

 

I've never met an unfriendly Scouser. I've not met loads at all really but every one I've ever met has been really friendly

 

When I went over to Liverpool for the first time, for my interview to get on the nursing course, I stayed in the nurses home overnight. I had to go to the porters lodge to pick the keys up and had to ask the bloke to repeat himself 3 times, because I couldn’t understand a word he said. After the third “sorry?” he threw the keys at me and pointed, saying “that way”!

It’s impossible to live there and not pick some of it up though. To the point that 6 years later, when I had moved down to work in Brighton A&E, when I had a go at a drunk patient who pissed all over the floor in minors, he said “**** off you Scouse lovely person”. I replied “you may well be right about the latter part sir, but I can assure you that I am not a Scouser”

Liverpool was a shithole when I moved there in 1988, but it had started to improve by the time I left in 94. I’ve only been back to watch the footy and on a stag do and it has changed loads. Similar to Manchester. There’s a lot of money been spent on Manchester City centre too, even more so than Leeds. Of the 4 big cities either side of the Pennines, Sheffield is the one that has changed the least.

I’m back in touch with half a dozen of the girls I trained with, and one is still working at Alder Hey, the kids hospital we trained at. We keep talking about a reunion and will get round to it at some point. We should have done it before they knocked the old hospital down and moved it a few hundred yards. But like most places, all the pubs we used to go out to have disappeared. Our local to the hospital was the Knotty Ash, but that’s no more. It shut down because local youths were petrol bombing it or something!

Liverpool’s training ground was just down the road from us, but that’s the women’s one now.

I have a flying visit to the city in the summer, when me and my daughter are off to Anfield to see Ms Swift. I’ll be dragging her to the Beatles museum first though, as that wasn’t there when I was there. In fact, when I went for my nursing interview I went over early on the Sunday and went straight to the tourist information office, booked myself onto a Beatles tour, dropped my stuff off at the nurses home and went back into town to get on the little bus tour to Strawberry Fields, Penny Lane and what have you. To say I was a Beatles fan as a teenager is an understatement. I figured that if I didn’t get a place I might not get back to Liverpool again, so wanted to make the most of my couple of days there. But I ended up there and with a girlfriend who went to Lennon’s old school, Quarrybank, and who lived a couple of streets from where Lennon grew up, and close to Penny Lane and Strawberry Fields. Had you told the 13 year old me that would happen 6 years later I would probably have passed out!

Nostalgia wasn’t a thing in the late 80s though, so the city weren’t really cashing in on the Beatles link, not like they are now. It was quite exciting at first though, the first time I went to all the Beatles old haunts, like the Cavern, the Grapes or the Raz. And on my very first placement, at the old children’s hospital on Myrtle Street, I looked after the niece of Gerry Marsden. He didn’t visit when I was there though. But the next time you listen to Working Class Hero, I can assure you that Lennon’s childhood area was not working class like where we grew up. It was more Cawthorne than Dodworth!