THE ONLY TOURIST IN SHEIL RD. WRITES HOME

[Mark Diston]

For chronic financial naivete and crimes against the work ethic, I was banished to the House Of Incompetent Men to dwell upon my situation. The house was situated in an unfashionable part of town where the fake sportswear rarely covers the bruises. The floors were covered in that abrasive carpet, part fuzzy felt, part concrete that only ever seems to come in one colour: dry dog shit. The walls consisted of that bizarre topography of a century or two of embossed wallpaper hung layer upon layer by a series of drunks and washed with a shade which may have resulted from mixing rancid milk with the dried dogshit. I entered clutching my state duvet and pillow, making for the skylight which I managed to prop open with an empty can of Strongbow kindly donated by the previous occupant...the overall scenario was dirty rather than filthy my predecessor having had a wide interpretation of the word ashtray...I threw out the bits of t.v...jammed the door shut with the aerial cord and settled in...The shared areas had a similar decor and an odour of stale bloke and unmentionable fried foods that would have me eating out for weeks to come. My room was at the top rear, I could sleep forever here, it was’t a bad place, as long as you kept your eyes closed. My neighbours were usually quiet and minded their own business, just leaving me tokens of their incompetence in the bathroom; a teabag or fagend in the washbasin, a turdette on the bog seat. It would take a lot more to faze me, in a previous life I had squatted with the most terminal of hippies. The skylight leaked.....it would be miserable after the end of the summer but that was still a couple of months away and anyway Grinning Tony is paying I reminded myself upon exiting this low level prison into the random asylum that is Kenny and headed for the dizzy decaying heights of L7...
Edge Hill was the home of Stephenson’s Rocket or so it is claimed on a peeling mural opposite the Kwikky...as I stagger to sign on, lost in skunk and middle age about the time of the peasant’s revolt, when we lived like animals on the crumbs of kings...as the ringleaders are being cruelly eviscerated in my mind, then put on invalidity benefit for life sentences of vacant bliss...this truly is a waste of all mankind and any pretence of aesthetic taste...lost souls in limbo floating like the Rocket in a museum. Ahead lies the city of dreams, to your left the arse ends of Tocky and Wavertree, behind escape all ye who enter here {a.k.a the M62}...to your right Kenny, which I am learning to love like an abusive relationship. I’ve signed on now and heading home a little lighter of heart, pop into the Holt sandwich bar for bacon & egg barm and tea served by two lovely ladies barely older than myself who call me love, let me read their daily mirror and make me feel like a child.
“If they were all as nice as you we’d have tables and chairs, trouble is we’d attract all the shit off the streets”
I rejoined the main sewer well sated.
Edge Hill is also the home of the Williamson tunnels, gift to the city from an early nineteenth century philanthropist who employed idle veterans of the napoleonic wars to digs holes to nowhere with no purpose, the treatment of the unemployed has, over time become more liberal...but you get the picture, the overall decline predates Queen Victoria...many of the locals strangely resemble zombies buried long ago, now risen from the tunnels...it seems the normal rules of society have ceased to apply here....
So I was musing as I hung on Sheil Rd, waiting at the bus stop for a no. 26...when death came skipping towards me. At first I thought his throat had been slashed in some vicious alcoholical duel, but as he careered closer I realised that he had merely cut himself shaving, a congealed estuary of blood meandering down his substantial bull necker...he’s giggling like a loon and brandishing his senior citizen bus pass like a piece of the true cross:
“You’ll be having one of these soon my boy” both menacing and paternal in one breath
“You’re getting on a bit you know”
“It won’t be long now, sonny”
I grinned good naturedly as a man who has seen it all
“You can laugh, but it’ll come soon enough”
“You’ll have one of these, O yes mark my words”
He tiptoed over the cracked sidewalk as if through a minefield
“Oh yes, it’s coming for you now”
He whispered over my shoulder as the No 26 ground to a halt inches in front of me. I leapt aboard absent mindedly checking for coins beneath my tongue.
We passed a few more blocks of post industrial fallout, stopping to pick up a few more pillars of care in the community:
“Is there room for a small one, I’m fooked up, I’m really fooked up”
I took one look and could only describe him as a master of understatement, he wore his anorak like a swamp but I don’t remember it raining...the driver waved him on...the small one was going nowhere faster than the rest of us....it wouldn’t hurt to take our fellow traveller for a ride....past the grandmas dressed like schoolgirls and the schoolies wizened as grandmas, basted with fast food then grilled orange like a doner on the electric beaches as Loose 106.7 FM play “true love never dies”....it just turns rotten or is quickly forgotten. Past the illegal guest workers, yet to invest in sportswear, soon to be deported....a few more blocks of urban regeneration, sometimes you think they’d have more luck with the dinosaurs but you say to yourself at least i’m not dying the slow death of the countryside...as the traffic breaks over the distant rooftops, the grim reaper staggers cackling above the Sheil Rd. skyline.

[Chris Bradley]

The best piece I've read about the Capital of Culture. Unmerciful, true and devoid of PR. Thanks