A Nouveau Scouser's View

June is busting out all over, wrote Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein. This year in Liverpool, that means lots of sunshine and warm temperatures, very little rain, and the pandemic lockdown. So no one is humming this happy tune. 

I've been in this Merseyside city for close to a year now, arriving on a Ryanair flight from Dublin in July 2019. In many ways, it seems like something that happened either last week or a century ago. 

Since I can’t visit museums, cathedrals, or bistros to blog about them (my original intent), I’ll do a basic comparison of all the places I've been since the Mulberry Street fire two years ago, and why I failed to settle in them. The comparison is built on the criteria I was considering: cost, climate, culture, cuisine, walkability, stock photo subjects, healthcare, and legal residency. On most of these points, I’ve had to be flexible, but with costs, healthcare, and a residency visa, there’s not much wiggle room.


San Miguel de Allende is a charming, small city in the Bajio mountain area of Mexico that was least expensive. It rated high on climate, culture, cuisine, walkability, stock subjects, and healthcare too. Unfortunately, I could not smooth out all the bumps that keep me from becoming a legal resident in Mexico.  On the Internet, they make it look easy. It's not. At least for me, it's not.

San Miguel is a small place with less than 140,000 inhabitants. I wouldn't need to live there very long before I captured most of the important stock subjects. 

If you're wondering about those crazy, murderous drug cartels, so far they do not operate in that part of Mexico. So far.

For a locale that has lower costs than Mexico, I would have to move to Southeast Asia or to one of the politically and financially shaky places in South America. No thanks.

Except for the brutal winters, I love Montreal. My exstepson and his charming Québécoise wife live there. The healthcare system in Canada is the best in the world, and Canadians, in general, are nicer people than their neighbors to the south. Sorry, fellow Yanks, but that what's I’ve observed. Again, getting legal residency would be hard if not impossible. 

Being well into my senior years is a major disadvantage when trying to get a residency visa or healthcare in most countries. Only the UK has welcomed me on both counts. Because I'm a dual citizen, and one of my passports is Irish, I'm treated better than fairly here. And unlike my British hosts, I'm also still part of the European Union, so not hampered by Brexit. 

Next week, I’ll talk about Spain, the EU, and why I can't live in the Republic of Ireland, even though I'm an Irish citizen.

At Harry's Bar

“May I have a glass of Sancerre, please?” I asked the bartender at Harry’s New York Bar in Paris. That’s the full, correct name of the place, but, like Harry’s Bar in Venice, it’s usually referred to simply as Harry’s Bar. Harry’s Bar in Venice belongs to the Cipriani international conglomerate now. It looks out on the Grand Canal. It is easy to tell these two places apart. One is in Venice and the other one is in Paris.

Immediately I thought I should have said, “May I have a glass of Sancerre,” in French. Could I have said it in French? Probably not.  Je ne parle pas français is most of my French. Okay, I admit it. Paris makes me nervous. It always has. The French make me nervous. 

The bartender turned out to be a very nice, soft-spoken young man with perfect English. And since I seemed to be the only customer in the bar that afternoon, he was able to give me his complete attention. And what he told me was, “We are an American bar, sir. We do not serve wine.” There was no attempt at one-upmanship, no Gallic putdown of any kind—just information.

“No wine?”

“Only spirits, sir.”

I was trying to think of a bar in America that served no wine. I could not. Maybe the one in Deadwood, South Dakota, where Wild Bill Hickok was shot in the back by Jack McCall?

“I'll have a double Jim Beam with one lump of ice, please,” I told the bartender. The first sip tasted . . . very American. I should have had a Bloody Mary. Harry's Bar was, after all, where that concoction was invented.

The walls of the back room of Harry’s Bar were a poisonous yellow-brown, possibly from decades of heavy cigarette smoking or a clever mix of paints by some romantically minded decorator. Framed and faded photographs covered the walls. Somewhere on the premises was supposed to be the piano George Gershwin used to compose "An American in Paris." I understand that Harry's has had a recent makeover and is elegant and ultra-posh now. They even do American fast food and have live jazz. 

After Harry’s Bar, I had just one more spot, one more drink, in order to complete the circle of Ernest Hemingway’s main international watering holes. I’d already visited his other spots in Paris—Le Select, Le Dome, Deux Magots. They wouldn’t let me into the Bar Hemingway at the Ritz. I'm not sure why, but I think it was because I had too many cameras hanging on me.

I’ve downed a few glasses of Valpolicella at the Gritti Palace in Venice and a martini at the Venice Harry's Bar, several glasses of Rioja at Botin in Madrid. I had something at both tourist traps in Key West, Sloppy Joe's and Captain Tony's. The only obligatory spot left for me to tip a glass is La Floridita in Havana, Cuba for a daiquiri. I suppose I’ll have to have a mojito at the Bodeguita del Medio as well. But I don't like cocktails. I'd rather have a beer.

Does the present generation of young writers and readers still retrace the steps of Joyce, Hemingway, and Fitzgerald in Paris? Or is that all forgotten now, passé? For me the echo of that time is still there, still lurking in the streets and cafes of Montparnasse. You turn a corner and the decades drop away. Paris in the 1920s was a rare coming together of ideas, energy, creativity, literature, and a new ex-pat culture, all in a perfect setting. 

Eating Like an Italian

Basically, there are two different Italian cuisines. The authentic, traditional cooking one finds in Italy is one, and what is called Italian food in the rest of the world is the other. Each can be tasty and worthwhile but they are different. There are, of course, many regional variations on cooking within Italy. But here I'm comparing basic cooking on and beyond the Italian peninsula. 

As I write this, I'm not sure what I'm about to say regarding traditional Italian cooking is still as true as it was in the past. This blog is my own observations. I do not troll the Web for information and then regurgitate it for my readers. So I'm not sure how much things have changed since I was last in Italy, the fall of 2008. 

Traditional meals in Italy involve a number of courses, four or sometimes five. To begin there's antipasto. Pasta, soup, or maybe risotto or polenta follows. The main dish is meat or fish with one vegetable, and then maybe a salad. To finish, there's cheese and/or a dessert. If that sounds like too much food, it's really not. It's not because each course is smaller and simpler than what you'll find at Italian restaurants in New York, London, Berlin, or Beijing, or anywhere outside of Italy. I've given up on looking for traditional Italian cooking outside of Italy. It's a thankless task. 

A Caprese Salad is usually served as an antipasto. Here, a New York restaurant 

added sundried tomatoes and olives which totally ruined the subtlety of the dish.

Outside of Italy, fast food and one-dish meals have become the norm, so portions are larger and extra items are added to the mix. 

Around the globe, pizza and pasta are the most popular Italian dishes. Internationally, Spaghetti Bolognese is number one in pasta popularity. This puts a small, snobbish smile on my face because to order Spaghetti Bolognese in Bologna, the city of origin, is a no-no; they insist that the proper pasta to go with their famous ragù is tagliatelli. 

Bolognese is yummy regardless of the pasta type. 

Pizza? When I lived in Rome in the '60s, the city had just three pizzerias. Now, every Roman restaurant serves pizza. Tourists 
demand it. 

The modern pizza was created in Naples. At the end of the 19th century, Neapolitan immigrants brought pizza to New York, and then in the '50s, it spread like a doughy fungus across America. It would be hard today to find any place in the world that does not do pizza.  

Tiramisu (lift me up) is a newish dessert in Italy. Most Italians
finish their meal with an espresso. Cappuccino is for mornings.

Buon appetito!

Equestrians

“Say hello to George,” Mr. Rafferty, the chief trainer at Paddington Stables told me. George was enormous, a tall brown gelding with one ear that flopped over like a cocker spaniel. He was fitted with the classic English saddle. I had specifically told my mother I wanted a western saddle, either in gold or silver, like the ones Roy Rogers and Gene Autry used on their horses.

“Hello, George,” I said to the horse. He totally ignored me.

“You and George are going to be great friends,” Mr. Rafferty told me confidently. “He’s one of our friendliest mounts.” I reached out to pet the animal.

“Don’t touch him!” Mr. Rafferty hissed. “He doesn’t like that.”

He doesn’t like to be touched? How was I going to get up in the saddle without touching him? I voiced my concern to Mr. Rafferty.

“Oh, we’ll get you up on him, Laddie. Don’t you be worrying about that.”

My sister Mary Ann was standing with Buck, Mr. Rafferty’s assistant, on the other side of the ring next to her horse, Miss Grumble. Miss Grumble looked even bigger than George. I hoped the mare was more tolerant about being touched. Mary Ann was a toucher. She petted everything and everybody. She even petted dogs while they were growling at her.

This is not my sister Mary Ann or Miss Grumble.

Without warning, Mr. Rafferty reached down and lifted me up in one smooth move and placed me in the saddle. George moved nervously from side to side, blowing air out of his nostrils like a fire-breathing dragon. Mr. Rafferty inserted my boots in the stirrups, one by one, carefully moving around the front of the horse to get to my other leg. He told me to take hold of the reins.

“Don’t pull on the reins or slap George on the neck with them!” he said. Yeah, right. Friendly George doesn’t like being touched, I thought.

Mr. Rafferty was speaking softly into George’s ear, feeding him a lump of sugar, calling him “Old Fella.” When he thought he’d won the horse’s confidence, he took hold of a short piece of rope attached to the bit and began to lead George and me around the ring.

“Here we go,” he said as if we were about to embark on some great odyssey. The whole thing seemed ridiculous—me sitting on George’s back, passive, helpless, walking around this dark, dreary ring of dirt. Was this horseback riding? Was this supposed to be fun? 

I've never seen a white horse in this bar, but Dylan Thomas and Jack Kerouac used to drink there.

As near as I can remember, the whole horseback-riding adventure was my mother’s idea, a misdirected attempt by her to prepare her children for a rapid ascent up the social ladder. She never said anything to me personally about it, but it was rumored that Mom had been a devoted equestrian herself in earlier days. Looking back now, I doubt that there’s any truth in that. The one time I recall her coming with us to the stables, she seemed anything but comfortable around the horses. Mary Ann and Miss Grumble and George and I were walking around the ring, side by side, when Miss Grumble turned her head and leaned over and nipped me on my leg. My mother was furious. In the scene that followed, she cross-examined Mr. Rafferty about the culinary habits of his four-legged friends.

“Why did that animal bite young Edward’s leg?” she demanded. “I thought horses were vegetarians.”

Eventually, Mary Ann and I and the four other children in our class were taken out of the stables and across Parkside Avenue into Brooklyn's Prospect Park.

Crossing the avenue was a harrowing experience for both horse and rider. We would bunch up at the light, waiting for it to turn green, then dash across before the traffic started up again. When I say “dash,” I don’t mean we galloped or cantered or even broke into a trot. Dashing for George meant walking just a little bit faster. (Did I mention that George was a somewhat elderly horse?) Nevertheless, for me, crossing Parkside Avenue was always a heart-rending dash, with the sound of horse-shoed hoofs clattering on asphalt mixed with the growl of idling engines and blaring horns. I didn’t like any of it and neither did George.

Finally, somehow, we would make it into the park. Buck would be in the lead atop Lightning, a spirited pinto no one else could ride. Once or twice, Mr. Rafferty himself came along as our chaperone. On those rare occasions, he would ride the stable’s only Arabian, Ali Baba, a glossy-black stallion who liked to shake his head from side to side as if he was saying no to all of Mr. Rafferty commands.

Once we were in the park, the situation improved, at least temporarily. Our family’s equestrian activities were reserved for spring and summer, and the fresh, green foliage of the park helped to lift our spirits. It wasn’t exactly Big Sky Country or the Red River Valley, but Prospect Park was the closest thing to them that Brooklyn kids knew. So we walked our horses along the path, beginning to relax, becoming one with our mounts and the great outdoors, almost enjoying ourselves. Almost.

We couldn’t actually see the Prospect Park Zoo from the riding path, but when we were downwind, the horses could smell the animals. And they didn’t like what they smelled. As far as their olfactory glands could tell, George and the other horses knew that there were predators—wolves, lions, tigers, and bears—over there just behind the trees, ready to pounce. So every time the horses would reach a certain point in the ride when the wind was right (or wrong), they spooked.

Most of them just turned around and headed back to the stables, and there was little we junior riders could do about it. This was when Buck would earn his pay, riding ahead of the herd, or pack, or whatever you call a bunch of scared horses, and corralling the escaping mounts, turning them back around on the path. George had a somewhat different reaction to the wild animal threat he perceived. He would roll.

Looking back, I see the logic in George’s behavior. As slow as he was, he must have figured he didn’t need any extra weight on his back while he was fleeing from a wild horse-meat eating predator. Fortunately for me, it took George a good long time to get down on his knees and roll over, so I was always able to get out of the saddle and clear of him without being hurt.

The first time George rolled on me, we were walking along the path alongside Miss Grumble and Mary Ann. I turned to see how my sister was doing, and instead of her face, I found myself staring at one of her boots. It took me a second to figure out what was happening. Buck yelled, “Rooney, quick! Get off that horse!”

I slipped my feet out of the stirrups and swung around and jumped clear. I ran twenty feet away from George and turned to see him on his back, thrashing around in a cloud of dust. He struggled to his feet and immediately set off in the direction of the stables, with Buck in hot pursuit.

I don’t think George was trying to hurt me with his rolling routine, and after the second time he rolled, I was ready for him. In fact, I began to look forward to George’s zoo rolls. Looking back now, I see them as my favorite part of the entire equestrian experience.

This is not my sister Mary Ann either. It's Queen Victoria.

The Liverpool Lockdown So Far

Okay, I get it—there are no other subjects under discussion worldwide right now. It's the COVID-19 pandemic and nothing else. So I shall tell you what I think in an interview with myself.

Edo, are you following all the needed steps to avoid getting COVID-19? 

   I think so. I hope so.

Are you in fear of contracting this deadly virus?

   Yes, but I'm in fear of a lot of things. Right now I'm worried about an ingrown toenail on my right foot. 

Do you understand all the various symptoms and warning signs of COVID-19? 

   What?

Do you understand all the symptoms and warning signs of COVID-19—the coronavirus! 

   Maybe.

Have you tried to get a test?

   Nope.

Do you think you need a test?

   Nope.

Do you take your temperature every day to see if you are running a fever?

   Nope. I broke my thermometer. But I have no fever. And I have masks.

Are you enjoying all the relaxing leisure time at home you have now? 

   Nope.

Have you done anything useful with the extra time at home? 

   Nope. Wait! I'm saving money by not eating out for one thing. Is that what you mean by useful?

Nope.

* * *

As you see, I have nothing much to say about this life-changing situation that involves all of us. You see that I have a box of Hong Kong virus masks that a friend here gave me—thanks, Ariel—and both the M&S Foodhall and Tesco Express near me are open and the shelves are full . . . or nearly full. I walk the empty streets for an hour most days and stay well away from others. 

My pictures will show you what Liverpool City Centre has been like this last mount. Remember, in the '60s, the Beatles turned this port city into a busy UK tourist town, and the hotels fill up with visiting fans whenever there's a football match. Now the city is empty and almost all of the hotels are closed.  

Liverpool Town Hall on a deserted Castle Street

Cilla Black statue on the left facing an empty Mathew Street

The Cavern Club is shuttered like all bars and music clubs

Even the McDs are shut

An empty Liverpool ONE shopping center

A City Centre supermarket closed and boarded up

Stay safe, people.