A Few More Questions

I hope you don't mind if I ask you a few more questions, Edo?

   Go ahead, Edo. 

Are you happy living in Liverpool?

   Happy? Happy as opposed to what? Unhappy? Maybe.

Can you give me a yes or no? You seem to say "maybe" a lot.

   I say maybe when maybe is the answer. Are you happy? 

Well, since I'm you, I would have to answer . . . maybe.

   Okay, maybe I'm a little unhappy right now. It's not a happy time, is it? Not in Liverpool, not anywhere. This morning an egg slipped out of my hand and broke on the kitchen floor. It got on my shoe and I had to use four or five sheets of paper towels to clean things up. Yesterday, I stepped back to make room for a passing bus. I tripped on a rock and fell backward and broke the bottle of Rioja wine I had just bought. And some of the wine got on my shoe. Yes, the same shoe. And then there's this damn virus that has all the restaurants, pubs, and shops here in lockdown. 

Hmm. You sound clumsy as well as unhappy. Do you think you would be happier (and maybe less clumsy) if you were somewhere else, somewhere other than Liverpool?

   Maybe. If it were somewhere without the pandemic and the lockdown. But I don't know where that is.

There you go again with the maybes. 

We're living in a maybe kind of world, Mister.

*  *  *

Deliveroo and Uber Eats bike riders are bringing restaurant food to the self-isolating.

We are now in the third month of the pandemic lockdown in the UK? I think that's so, or have I lost track of time? Tomorrow is June 15th, and there will be a partial lifting of the lockdown. We'll have to see how that goes. I'm not enthusiastic. 

Every day I go out for a walk around the City Centre. This is some of what I see:

I see lots of buses, but very few people riding in them.

I see that most people are wearing face masks now. Not all, but most.

I see groups of teens racing around the empty streets on their bikes, speeding, doing wheelies. It looks like fun.

I see some restaurants doing a controlled takeaway business. Pret A Manger had a sign in the window saying that they would allow only 6 customers in at a time. Starbucks is allowing only 4. 

I see that the City Council has been taking advantage of the lack of traffic and fixing the streets and the infrastructure.

And I see far too many homeless people. There were homeless people everywhere I've been, but there seems to be more of them in this Merseyside port city. 

There are different types of homeless people now: cripples, mentally challenged, drunks, druggies, the young, the old, people using dogs as props, and hustlers—those who seem to have a spot reserved and keep regular hours.  I don't know how many are actually people without a place to live. I've heard stories that some work for a Fagin-like crime boss. I figure there are true examples out there of all types of modern beggars, but no one can convince me that sitting out in the cold, in the rain, is a pleasant or sensible way to spend the day to make a small living.

In NYC there are homeless people too.

Mostly, the homeless in Liverpool are not aggressive when asking for money. That's good because I pass a dozen or more of them here on every short walk. With the lockdown, sometimes they are the only people on the street.