February 2006 Archives

I HOPE Liverpool socks it to the world by making the Capital of Culture year a red hot success. I really do.

No British city deserves a rollicking good renaissance more than Liverpool, which had its heart ripped out by commercial decline and depopulation right through the 1970s and ‘80s.

But the omens for success in 2008 are not good.

FOOTBALL can so easily bring despair – as the faces of Wigan fans at the Millennium Stadium proved.
It’s not just Wiganers who were mightily cheesed off by the result. Some 95 per cent of football fans across this country hate Manchester United. In Merseyside, I reckon the proportion is more like 99 per cent. And hate is not too strong a word.

SOMETHING a bit different last night – dinner out and drinky-poos in Chester.
Yes, I went out on the lash with a very upmarket gal with whom I’ve somehow become friendly.
Why she likes me, I don’t know. I’m loud and lairy and as common as muck.

DOWN at my local, Hell’s Waiting Room, there is live music most nights, mainly of a laid-back, acoustic sort.

I quite like these nightly sessions. They provide the booze-fuelled lullabies that we dysfunctional residents of Madford-on-Sea (New Brighton) need.

Beer and wine mix very well with schmaltzy ballads such as ‘Leaving on a Jet Plane’ and ‘Miss You Nights’.

SO there I was down at my local – known affectionately as Hell’s Waiting Room – the other night when trouble kicked off.
Not for the first time, it was a woman who started all the bother.
The ladette in question is actually a friend of mine and I think the world of her.
But she really ought to keep her gob shut.

VALENTINE’S Day brought an outpouring of affection and gifts to my door.
I got the usual twenty-or-so cards, some slushy, a few witty and at
least three positively obscene.
Hey, I am used to being an object of lust because of my uncanny
resemblance to Johnny Depp.