Did that just happen?

London has given me some remarkable experiences. The Olympic Opening Ceremony springs to mind. As does one memorable morning on the Thames. And recently, London served up an episode so astonishing that it left Piran and I sitting in a pub three hours later, staring into our pints, shaking our heads, and occasionally giggling in disbelief.

As one does, Piran had put some old stone carving tools up for sale on eBay and ended up meeting a lovely guy named Tim, who turned out to know a great deal about chisels. This was because Tim is not merely a trained mason (already off-the-scale cool) but also employed as a stone mason at St. Paul's Cathedral.

I am completely delighted at the thought that: 1. There are still people who train to become stone masons and 2. Places like St. Paul's and other cathedrals have such people on staff. So when Piran revealed Tim had offered a "behind-the-scenes tour of stone masoning and bits and bobs" at St. Paul's and asked if I was interested, I think any Astute Go Stay Work Play Live Reader can guess that my answer was "Yes, yes, a thousand times yes!"

I've already blogged about St. Paul's Cathedral. But this visit to St. Paul's was... well, you'll see. Tim met us outside the main steps but quickly ushered us to an underground back entrance where we signed in and got special visitor's passes. Tim then employed his impressive set of skeleton keys to whisk us through a "Staff Only" door into the crypt and straight to a previously unknown-to-me lift up to the triforium level without climbing the 141 steps involved in the public tour.

The triforium is the area above the side aisles of a church, and though I've toured St. Paul's triforium before, this was much better. For one thing, it was just me and Piran and Tim. There was no timeline, no badge-wielding tour guide on a schedule, and, best of all, no irritating other people. And Tim seemed to be in no hurry (it was his afternoon off) all the while providing an unscripted, sometimes slightly acerbic, and completely absorbing commentary on the cathedral, the stonework that's everywhere, and stone masonry in general.

We saw the shelves stacked with seemingly random bits of Old St. Paul's (before the Great Fire), which were charmingly labelled by period/architectural style - Gothic, Norman, etc. the same way Tesco might label shelves "Eggs, Flour, Sugar, etc."

And we got to see inside the library, currently closed because they're just finishing renovations. It's "a complete and untouched Wren designed interior" and houses manuscripts dating back to the 13th century.

We also got into the Trophy Room, which houses Wren's famous Great Model. Oddly, this is not actually the design that was used in the end, and there are no good records that indicate exactly why it was rejected, despite having taken ten months to design and a year of master carpentering to build. 

It's really big. Big enough that there's actually a tiny door in the side of the plinth it sits on that allows you to crawl in and poke your head up - Gulliver-like - into the inside of the model, where you can see that the interior is also finished. Tragically, Tim did not have the key to the tiny door, but we forgave him, and I suspect he has since rectified that lack in his key ring.

After the library and the Great Model, we paused briefly at the top of the Geometric staircase, and then proceeded to the north side of the triforium, past the large west gallery window. This is the spot where they stuff a gigantic Christmas Tree though a small bit of the window and set it up on the outer balcony-ish level every year. The tree itself is hoisted up from a point in the ceiling of the cathedral where we could just see a heavy hook dangling from what must have been a chain motor in the roof.

Around the corner, "this is where they keep the spare pulpits". Of course. Because you're St. Paul's Cathedral. You're not just going to have one lousy pulpit are you?

A little further along the magic keys were produced again and we popped out onto the trumpeter's gallery. Which is exactly what it says on the tin - the place where trumpeters stand to blow fanfares when the monarch arrives, or for whatever other thing might require a fanfare. (The Changing of the Pulpits, perhaps?) There we could look down at the public in the nave of the church.

Then it was on to the collections room, a dusty assemblage of old models, plaster bits, signage, and of course more random bits of stone. As Tim rightly said, "This is just genuinely full of interesting things."

I particularly like this photo, so even though I have no idea what these stones were, I'm including it.

And this may be a carving by Grinling Gibbons, the most famous English wood carver ever.  Best known for his intricate swags of greenery, "it was said a pot of carved flowers above his house in London would tremble from the motion of passing coaches". (Thanks as always, Wikipedia.)

And this has a lovely tone, don't you think? I wonder what sort of extreme measures the Dean and Chapter were considering as a punishment for foolish scribbling? Hopefully it involved dangling from the Christmas Tree hook.

This is the point when things got even cooler. (Hard to believe, I know, but brace yourself, it gets so so so much better.) Once again the keys came out and we started to make our way through a long series of narrow corridors and stairways sandwiched between the inside and outside walls of the cathedral.

There was a lot of this.

After many winding corridors and tiny doors and low hanging beams, we finally popped out on the roof. Of St. Paul's Cathedral. The freaking roof.

Thankfully, well-equipped with handrails.

Here we got to see the sort of work Tim does, because besides helping put up the Christmas Tree, one of his main things is making new stone balusters to fit into the balustrade that runs around the roof.

This photo shows how eroded the old stonework is compared to new.

The balusters are made from Portland Stone, and each one is carved by hand from a template taken from the original work. Then they're craned up to the roof and carried by hand (which takes two guys) to be fitted into place. Other than the electrically winched crane it's all impressively analog. 

And the views are not bad either, with the Walkie Talkie on the left and The Shard centre-right.

More interesting than the view in this photograph is the evidence of major erosion shown. Those wide horizontal stones sitting on top of the balusters were laid about 300 years ago, and the seams between filled with molten lead. 

Look how much stone has worn away compared to the height of the original lead seams. No wonder they need stone masons on staff.

After hanging out on the roof for a bit, we went back inside to more backstage-iness, this time directly above the nave of the Cathedral, where we could see the tops of the domes that make up the ceiling.

This is the upper side of the stone vaulting that forms the ceiling. Which we walked all over. I hasten to add that it is much more than just ONE layer thick. And those wooden pegs sticking out of the floor? Those are plugging holes in the ceiling used for dropping lifting points when needed. Tim blithely pulled one out so we could look down to the floor, one million feet below. Oh, and those wooden beams! This photo doesn't really show it, but viewed along their length you can see they're hand-hewn and twisted and look very much like the trees they were 300 years ago. So cool.

Other than the overall amazingness of the tour in general, one of the best things was being in that big stone building and learning about the stone itself. So many of London's great buildings are made of stone, but the stone itself never gets much attention. For instance, up above the nave, we looked at an unassuming corner of stonework along the wall.

Each of these stone blocks was probably cut by someone different. Tim pointed at a rough one that was likely done by an apprentice (second full course from the bottom), another that was sawn (fourth from the bottom), and another that was shaped with a stone axe (fifth). So much history and information hiding in plain site.

We also got to pop out into the famous Whispering gallery, closed to the public since 2019. They're currently getting ready to install safety fencing, and doing other renovation work on the gallery before it reopens. And of course one of the things being renovated is the stone floor.

Here you can see two new pristine white stone flags cut and shaped by Tim and showing their new, very intentional tooling marks, next to ones worn smooth, with their remaining blackened tooling marks just visible at the edge.

Our last stop might have been my favourite of the day - the mason's workshop back in the modern car-park-ish area where we entered. (I take that back. Of course my favourite was the roof, but I love a functioning workshop. Love, love, love.) 

The Mason's Workshop at St. Paul's was not big or grand. But it was well-kept and well-lit and appropriately dusty and just excellent. I mean look at this tool cabinet!

So many hammers and chisels.

These are the zinc templates they use for making bits of cathedral. Top of the pile is the baluster.

And here's a baluster under construction. 

In looking at this shape it seemed obvious to me that you'd start with a rectangular block and rough-saw the basic shape, then chisel out the detail. But of course that's not how they do it. Yes, they start with a big rectangular blank, but from there the whole thing is chiselled by hand. Every chip. By hand. Chip. Chip. Chip. Chip. Chip. The first one took Tim three weeks, though he's faster now. And he calculated that if you chisel for a whole eight hour work day with an average hammer, that's eight tons of weight wielded by your hammering arm. Apparently that can net you an impressive six pack on one side. A three-pack, shall we say?

We hung around in Tim's workshop for quite a while, and he showed us a bit of mason-ing, which looks just like you'd expect. Guy with a hammer and chisel chipping off tiny bits of stone over and over and over again. Impressive, repetitive, and really, really... old. You get the impression you could transport Tim back to the 17th century stone yard where they cut the original blocks for St. Paul's and he could pick up a hammer and chisel and fit right in with the rest of the gang, except for his modern steel-toed boots.

We tried to persuade Tim to let us buy him 100 pints at the nearest pub as thanks for the most amazing afternoon, but he had other plans. So Piran and I wandered off to slake our own parched throats and sit in disbelief. 

In the immortal words of John Denver: "Some days are diamonds, some days are stone". 

But the best days are both.

Scouse and scouse and scousers

Merry Christmas! I got you a blog.

When last we left our doughty blogger, she was enjoying the delights of Liverpool. And while the Beatles may be inescapable in that northern city, they aren't the only game in town. So let's rewind to the start of the visit, but skip all that Beatles stuff you've already heard about.

One of my first stops in town was trip around the grounds of St. Luke's Bombed Out Church. (I promise that's really what they call it.) Set at a prominent intersection, the church was completed in 1832 and then struck by a German bomb in May of 1941. The interior of the church was completely destroyed by the ensuing fire, but the outer walls remained standing. Derelict for many years, the now-outdoor site has been redeveloped into a community space for live performance, markets and other community events, one of which was a vinyl record sale that afforded me a chance to wander the site on Saturday morning.

I particularly liked this statue commemorating the famous Christmas Truce of WW1. The poppies around the base were a temporary addition for Remembrance Day

Very clever re-purposing of  plastic water bottles!

The inside of the church

Much of Saturday and Sunday was taking up Beatling, but I did have a nice wander around the nearby Georgian Quarter of the city after my disappointing breakfast (about which you have already heard me rant, so I will spare you). The morning was clear and chilly and I had some time to kill and a lot of sub-standard french toast to burn off, so it seemed a perfect time to check out the neighbourhood.

The Georgian Quarter is a small residential area of central Liverpool that boasts a lovely collection of Georgian streets so impressive that it's frequently used as a filming location. (You may have seen the Georgian Quarter in "Peaky Blinders".) It was very pleasant for a stroll and found myself humming and tripping along the streets in a very contented mood.

A typical street in the Georgian Quarter. You can just picture an episode of "Bridgerton" or "Downton Abbey", can't you?

After a short wander, I eventually found my way to Liverpool Cathedral. The Georgian Quarter is actually the site of two cathedrals, which could hardly be more different. The more modern of the two - the Roman Catholic Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral - is popularly known as Paddy's Wigwam, for reasons that will be obvious to those who follow this link. I did not elect to visit that spot. However, the Anglican cathedral was definitely worth a visit, being the largest cathedral in Britain, and the 8th largest church in the world. (Other size-related facts of note: Liverpool Cathedral is the longest in the world, and the 5th largest by volume. So by whatever metric you use, the place is a behemoth.)

Liverpool Cathedral, moodily backlit.

The cathedral is also surrounded by a very nice cemetery garden which I walked through. The cemetery and gardens lie in a sunken area around the cathedral site that makes the building itself even more imposing. Their sunken-ness is because the site is a former 18th century stone quarry from which the stone for many of Liverpools public buildings was cut. It became Liverpool's main cemetery between 1825 and 1936.

It's a bit overgrown and Highgate-y now.

I also took some un-blog-worthy photos of a chalybeate spring coming out of one of the high cut banks surrounding the gardens. What is a chalybeate spring, you say? It's a natural mineral spring containing iron salts of course! Rather you should ask how one PRONOUNCES chalybeate, because I can virtually guarantee it's not what you expect. Certainly not CHAL-ee-beet, as you might think. Ho ho, of course not! Not in a country where Cholmondeley is pronounced CHUM-lee. How do we pronounce chalybeate?  Kuh-LEE-bee-utt. Yup. I know. Don't bother questioning. Let's just move on, while slowly shaking our heads.

Once I finally made it inside, Liverpool Cathedral is equally massive. 

The reddish sandstone and the light coloured mortar give the whole place an unusual stripey appearance, like the columns are wearing jolly socks. And as you can see it's just HUGE. And despite it's quite traditional appearance, it's a relatively modern building. started in 1904 and not completed until 1978 (!). The arches are apparently the largest Gothic arches ever built, and the pipe organ is the largest in the UK (with a staggering 10,268 pipes. How is that even possible?). More exciting still, it also has the world’s highest and heaviest ringing peal of bells, housed in the monumental central tower. Even better, you can buy a ticket to ascend the tower and view Liverpool from above. Even EVEN better, there are lifts, for the comfort of both bell-ringers and tourists.

When you finally emerge from the last of the lifts for the climb to the roof, you get a fantastic view of the bell support structure, which features a great tenor bell weighing 4.1 tonnes! (3rd heaviest in the UK, after Great Paul and the Olympic bell, neither of which are currently rung.)

Naturally, the views from the roof of the tower are excellent, and I hit it at the perfect moment, when the day's rain had cleared off and the light was golden. Here's that same bit of the Georgian Quarter we saw moments ago, looking particularly fetching.

Other than the cathedral, I visited a lesser-known and more down-at-heel Liverpool site, the (formerly) grand Adelphi Hotel. Situated very near the main railway hub, Lime Street Station, the present Adelphi is the third hotel to occupy the site and is a Grade II listed building completed in 1914. It's very much in the grand tradition of railway hotels, which also extended to Canada, as Asute Go Stay Work Play Live readers will of course recall. (The second iteration, which opened in 1876, was for a time regarded as the most luxurious hotel in the UK outside of London, boasting, along with standard-issue sumptuous dining rooms and lavish guest suites, a set of heated tanks in the basement for keeping live turtles to be used in the making of fresh turtle soup. That's proper decadence.) (Also a bit creepy.)

A colleague recommended I check out the hotel, with the caution that I must not, under any circumstances, consider patronising the Adelphi as an actual overnight guest. The public rooms were worth a visit, but the quality of the guest rooms, and the service in general, has fallen to a precipitous degree since the days of fresh turtle soup. 

He wasn't kidding about the public spaces though! Here's the Central Court, with skylights and pink marble pilasters. 

Closer inspection showed just how poorly maintained the place is. The furniture was an odd and bedraggled collection, and the skylights appear to have last been cleaned when Margaret Thatcher was in office. Given that rooms for the night go for as little as £38, I can't imagine they're pushing the boat out there either. Indeed, that seems to be borne out by this investigative video. 

I foolishly tried to get a cup of tea, and maybe a bit of cake, based on the advertised flyer stating that afternoon tea was available, but despite wandering through several public rooms I could find no evidence of service, at which point it became clear that the correct move was a tactical retreat to the pub. Of course. Following that diversion (to the Philharmonic Dining Rooms, about which you've already read), I finally made my way back to the scene of the previous night's disappointment to try, once again, to sample the famed local delicacy, scouse.

Liverpool is famous for its scouse, so much so that the residents are affectionately and proudly known as Scousers and the Liverpool accent is also called scouse. (And happily, scouse is pronounced exactly as you'd expect: sKOWs.) And here I'm required by UK law to mention that scouse is a contraction of 'lobscouse', which, despite the fact that it's a traditional stew eaten by sailors in northern Europe, has absolutely nothing to do with lobsters.

I realise now that I actually had very little idea what scouse was, so I'll admit to being slightly disappointed to discover it's nothing more than a bowl of beef (or sometime lamb) stew. 

My eventual bowl of scouse, served with the traditional accompaniments of bread and butter and pickled red cabbage. I found this particular pickled cabbage quite harsh, but I can appreciate the concept. You can also get a vegetarian version that's always called Blind Scouse, which I find a charming appellation.

What was delightful was that this bowl of traditional scouse - beef, onion, carrot and potato - tasted exactly like the beef stew my mom used to make. I suppose when you combine those particular ingredients in a big pot and add stock and time the result is always going to end up tasting the same, wherever you make it and whatever you call it. So while it wasn't a new and exciting food, it was still a very pleasant and satisfyingly homey dinner for a cold night, and a fitting end to my time as a tourist in Liverpool.

And now I'm tucked up on the boat in the middle of a cold snap. There's ice on the canal basin and the coal stove is belting out heat. I've also recently invested in an electric blanket, which is a REVELATION. Don't get me wrong - I'm still a big fan of the classic hot water bottle, and use that frequently to combat icy toes. But having the ability to pre-heat the bed to toasty perfection before getting in at night is utterly delicious and still makes me squeal out loud with delight when I snuggle in. These days, when the temperature has been solidly below freezing for days on end, I even leave the blanket on all night at the lowest setting, which is very cozy indeed. It's not done wonders for my electricity consumption, the price of which has more than doubled recently (thank you, cost-of-living crisis) but it's cheaper than a space heater and much more efficient. It's also still disspiritingly cold when I get home after a long day away - usually in the 3-9 degrees range - but such is the price we boat people pay. (Along with the price of the new starter motor and the impending new alternator, new battery disconnect switches, new leisure batteries (x5!) and whatever else comes along.) Not for the faint of heart, that's all I'm saying.

Ticket to Ride

She got a ticket to ride and she went there! There being Liverpool.

I had a work meeting in Liverpool on a Monday so it just made sense - at least in the logic of blogdom - to get the train on Saturday morning and spend the weekend. Best know as the birthplace of the most influential and best selling musical act of all time (no points for guessing this one), Liverpool is a port city of about 500,000 in the northwest of England situated at the mouth of the River Mersey. (Yes, the one with the ferry 'cross it. Because it's not JUST about the Beatles. There was also Gerry & the Pacemakers of ferry fame. Also Elvis Costello, Echo & the Bunnymen, Frankie Goes to Hollywood and some others that people younger than me might care about). The Beatles may be inescapable in Liverpool, but there are actually non-Beatles things to do as well, so I booked a cheap hotel and set the alarm early Saturday morning to get to the train station.

I arrived just before lunch and dropped my bag at the cheap hotel, which can best be described as "basic" and reminiscent of my hostel-dwelling days. (Though not nearly as bad as some in my experience.) After a bit of lunch, and some local knowledge from a friendly waiter,  I headed towards the docks to start my Liverpool Beatles Magical Mystery Tour. (Note: not actually magical or mysterious, but we all know I still had to say it.)

Me and the Fab Four, at (supposedly) the UK's most-photographed statue. And given the queue of people waiting for photos, I can believe it. I was roped in to take a photo of a large group and they reciprocated by taking some of me, so here's one of those, showing off the fancy new tweed jacket that Karen made me buy. 

(Aside: What is it with people taking photos in portrait mode when the subject matter is clearly wider than it is tall? I know I've ranted about lots of other things , but this one is sooooo on The List.  When I was taking photos for that group - in landscape mode, because the statue, the group of people, and the horizon were all obviously proportioned that way - they stopped me and asked me to switch the phone around to portrait mode. What the hell? And what is it with people who have the orientation of their phone LOCKED to portrait mode? What is that? Kids these days! Pffft!)

After the statue it was a short walk through the refurbished Albert Docks area to the Beatles Story. Naturally I'd done some research about what to see before I got to Liverpool, especially on the various Beatles sites, which include two different museums. (Note: for "research" here read "hasty Googling on the train journey north".) Those two museums could not be more different, and the flashier of the two is the Beatles Story, a self-described "incredible immersive journey". Astute Go Stay Work Play Live Readers can probably hear my eyes rolling from here. Regardless, it had to be done.

The Beatles Story is a series of recreated locations from the history of the band, some more approximate than others, accompanied by a bit of  explanatory text and an audioguide. It was pretty good, though somewhat style-over-substance, with a few vexing top-notes.

The best section was the recreated Cavern Club, which was quite good. (But that grafitti does say "Jerry and the Pacemakers", which is an unforgivable spelling error. Seriously Beatles Story, sort yourself out!)

Other sections seemed a bit... mixed up. The early bits were basically in order - Lennon and McCartney meeting at a Quarrymen gig at the local Church fête, the addition of George Harrison, their time in Hamburg, booting Pete Best and bringing in Ringo, signing on with Brian Epstein, Ed Sullivan, Beatlemania, and so on. But after Sgt. Pepper, things got a bit confused. It seemed to skip to the break-up of the group jarringly quickly, then into sections about each individual band member, before then back-tracking to deal with the band's time in India and then abruptly dumping out into the inevitable gift shop. I'm glad I went, but it was a confusing ending and it all felt a bit too "theme park" for my tastes.

Because I'd had a very early start, I was ready for a nap after the Beatles Story. This is the beauty of traveling on your own - you can check out of the day's activities at any time with no negotiation and no guilt. (To be fair, this is also true when traveling with Karen. Our recent trip involved many instances of the tactical late-afternoon retreat to the hotel for a little quiet time.) I followed this up with a long walk to a restaurant for the famous local delicacy - scouse, but was thwarted in that quest because the place I went to was all out of scouse by the time I arrived (more on scouse in a later blog, if you're lucky). This meant a long walk back through the centre of town. Luckily, I found a friendly neighbourhood place for a very credible plate of pasta, so the evening had a very pleasant ending (due in no small measure to the large glass of red wine that I had along with my pasta).

Central Liverpool is quite small and very walkable. Many of the streets are closed to vehicle traffic, which meant that on a Saturday night there were lots of people out enjoying the city. I passed several credible buskers, and what seemed like an over-representation of Hen Parties (this was later confirmed by my local contact: Liverpool is apparently home of the Hen Night.) Still, it was fun to be out in the buzz, and one group did do a very enthusiastic, if tuneless, rendition of "Mamma Mia" as I was going by.

Because I was in the area, I took the time to check out Matthews Street, home to the Cavern Club - the famous underground music club where the Beatles performed almost 300 times. (And, I hasten to add where "Gerry and the Pacemakers" was correctly spelled on the back wall of the stage.)

Matthews Street now.  

The original Cavern Club - the one where the Beatles played - was closed in 1973 after a compulsory purchase by British Rail to do with the construction of the underground Merseyside railway. It reopened across the street, but then closed again. And while efforts were made to revive the club at its original location, that proved to be structurally impossible. Instead, they salvaged many of the original bricks and recreated it a few doors down. (5,000 of the bricks were also sold as souvenirs for £5 each, with the proceeds going to Strawberry Field Children's Home, which is no longer a Children's Home, but another Beatles attraction, of course.) 

It was fun to see Matthews Street on a Saturday night, with the hen parties and tourists and other assorted revellers. The street also has other venues and bars with live music playing. In fact, as I wandered towards my back-up dinner venue it seemed like every pub in central Liverpool was featuring live music. I guess the city's reputation as a musical hotbed doesn't begin and end with the Beatles. And I also guess that if you want a quiet drink in a pub you don't want to be in central Liverpool on a Saturday night.

Sunday morning I planned a big treat breakfast at another local spot which was perhaps a bit too hipster for its own good. I decided on the peanut butter and jam french toast, which promised "two pieces of sweet brioche bread griddled in a homemade egg and vanilla batter. Deep filled with peanut butter and jelly. Served with Canadian maple syrup". All those are good things, so anticipation was high (though tempered by the fact that when I ordered the waitress cheerily informed me the peanut butter and jelly french toast was Elvis's last meal. I said "I hope that's not indicative of how the rest of my day will go" but she didn't seem to find that funny, so she is dead to me.) In the end, the french toast was profoundly disappointing, consisting of two comically thick slices of brioche that were very dry and utterly lacking in the soaked cooked egg-custardy joy that is properly prepared french toast. And what purported to be genuine Canadian maple syrup lacked any maple flavour whatsoever. And the bacon was bland. Disappointing, Moose Coffee, that's all I'm saying.  

For the sake of completeness, I decided to visit the other Beatles museum on Sunday, which is a very different experience than Saturday's Beatles Story. The Beatles Story was flashy but superficial and sort of corporate. The Beatles Museum is more in the "small but plucky" category. Formed from the personal collection of Roag Best, it consists of three floors packed with posters, photographs, and artefacts. Roag Best is the brother of Pete Best (the original drummer for the band). His father was Neil Aspinall (the Beatles road manager for years and later head of Apple Corps) (not that one) and his mother was Mona Best (founder of the Casbah Coffee Club, where the Beatles practised and performed in the early days.) Hence, it's a much more personal, and almost ridiculously detailed.

 

These glass cases contain a seemingly endless amount of ephemera, some things more relevant than others.

 

For instance, one of George Harrison's guitars is right on point.

Paul's abandoned stamp collection, however, seems... largely peripheral to the overall Beatles story.

Nonetheless, I was pleased I took the time to visit and came away with a much greater depth of knowledge than I did at the Beatles Story.

At this point it was well past time for a pint, so I made my way to the famous Philharmonic Dining Rooms. Known locally as "The Phil" it's one of the most ornate and beautiful pubs in the country and is Grade 1 listed (other Grade 1 buildings include Buckingham Palace and the Tower of London). I was told to make sure to check out the toilets, but sadly the Ladies is of no interest whatsoever. Apparently the Gents is a sight to behold though, with urinals constructed of rose coloured marble. Indeed, photos online do indicate it would be a very fancy spot for a wee.

John Lennon was known to drink at the Phil, but I was drawn to a more recent Beatles connection related to an episode of James Corden's Carpool Karaoke. (For the uninitiated, this is an ongoing series on The Late Late Show in which the host James Corden drives around in a car with a celebrity, singing along to their own songs.) So as I enjoyed my pint and my cheese and onion crisps, I watched this, which I found really lovely.

It's long, but if you have the time settle in and watch it. Obviously this struck a chord with me because I was in a particularly Beatles-y head space at the time, but the ending especially is very fun, and it's gratifying to think that Paul McCartney might be as genuinely nice a guy as you hope he is.

It's hard to escape the Beatles in Liverpool, and there are lots of Beatles things I didn't see. Strawberry Fields is now an interpretive centre about John Lennon's Childhood, Penny Lane is a real street, you can visit the boyhood homes of both John Lennon and Paul McCartney, and Mona Best's Casbah Coffee Club is open to visitors as well. But there are also non-Beatles things to see and do and I've cleverly saved those up for a whole other blog. So... watch this space for cathedrals, Georgian splendour and, of course, scouse!

Forge Mill Needle Museum

Welcome to the triumphant return of OG Go Stay Work Play Live! And by that I mean you’re about to read a normal post about a bloggy location here in the UK. There are now more than a decade of such posts, so Astute Go Stay Work Play Live Readers are very familiar with this classic formula: 

1. Take the train a modest distance on a sunny weekend morning, while doing the crossword.

2. Visit a diverting museum, gallery, castle, ancient ruin, park, village, trail, hill, barrow, stately home, bunker, etc. (Bonus for anything with Victorian machinery and exposed gears, most especially if powered by a steam engine that is actually running).

3. Take a lot of pictures and make notes while formulating bon mots in head for the blog.

4. Have coffee and cake in the tea room, preferably operated by smiling volunteers who are very friendly, if slightly harried, and maybe not entirely sure how the contactless payment thingy works. (Bonus if they have home-made flapjacks)

5. Poke around the gift shop. (Purchase optional.)

6. Go home and blog.

GSWPL is now coming to you from a temporary posting in Birmingham, working on the Opening and Closing Ceremonies of the Commonwealth Games (starting on July 28 for those who want to mark their calendars). In the Venn Diagram of my current schedule the overlapping area that includes both the Living-in-Birmingham circle and the Not-Too-Busy-To-Do-Bloggy-Things circle is exceedingly small. There are just three two-day weekends before we start rehearsals and the six-day work week starts. So on my first weekend in Brum I decided to check out a museum that Piran rated very very highly, despite its outwardly dry sounding name: the Forge Mill Needle Museum.

Located in Redditch, about half an hour from the central station in Birmingham, the Forge Mill Needle Museum is dedicated to the history and practice of needle manufacturing, commemorating a time when Redditch made 90% of the world’s needles. (Just in case you were thinking that it might not be what it sounds like. Oh no. It is EXACTLY what it sounds like.)

The restored(ish) Forge Mill. 

I did try to get someone to come with me for this adventure. But Piran is now based in the far south and I'm now in the middle north, so I turned to my friend Tom, who's an Aussie interloper also working on the Commonwealth Ceremonies. (We colonials need to stick together.) Sadly, Tom did not immediately leap at the opportunity to join me, even when he found out that it wasn't just ANY weekend at Forge Mill

Tom made little effort to disguise his lack of enthusiasm for the fascinating world of Victorian needle making. Clearly, he's not ready for this sort of varsity-level blogginess. Perhaps I needed to ease him in a bit.

So I set off on the train alone, which left more time for the crossword puzzle anyway (see above). It was a pleasant walk from the station to Forge Mill, and the evidence of 1940s weekend was apparent, with some jolly bunting up and a few folks wandering about in period dress. (Aside: I've done a lot of ceremonies now, and disappointingly small number of them have made use of a festive string on bunting here or there, which I think is a damned shame. It really cheers a place up.)

I mean come on! Who doesn't like a bit of bunting?

One of the things that excited me most was that the Forge Mill website promised "Much of the original Victorian water powered machinery remains and is working on Tuesday afternoons and weekends (March to October)" (Once again see above, including much-beloved working machinery!). Sadly, the waterwheel at Forge Mill is currently utterly immobile and covered by a tarp (despite the fact that it was a weekend between March and October) so I couldn't even get a nice photo. Major disappointment, and one which I may take up with the management at a later date, though in the moment I soldiered on. 

The museum is set up to take you through the whole process of needle making, which you are now going to hear about in excruciating detail. Because that's how we roll here at GSWPL. The signage in the museum claimed that there were 30 different processes involved, though I struggled to define precisely all 30. Nonetheless it was certainly painstaking, starting with a heavy coil of thick steel wire, which requires the first step: drawing. The heavy wire is drawn through a series of increasing smaller dies to bring its diameter down to that of whatever size needle is being made. Originally this was done by hand by winding the wire on a large drum turned by a handle to give some mechanical advantage. 

Step 2 is to cut the wire to the length of two needles, because when making needles you do them two at a time for the first bits, so you can stamp and cut the eyes for two needles from one die, saving time. Step 3 - rubbing - straightens out the lengths of wire, which retain a bit of curve from having been drawn and coiled. 

Rubbing is done by packing hundreds wires into the centre of rubbing ring - two flat iron donuts (not one of Tim Horton's more popular varieties) connected together at the bottom but left open at the top. Once packed with wires, the whole double donut is placed upright so it can roll left and right. Along the open top, the Rubber sets a long flat piece of curved metal called a rubbing iron between the flat donuts and on top of the wires so he can press down hard on the hot iron, rolling the ring and wires back and forth under the weight of the rubbing iron, thus straightening the wires. (And yes, that would have been easier to explain if I'd taken a photo, but the whole rubbing ring display was under a very glare-y bit of plexiglass and - shockingly - Google images returns nothing appropriate for the search term "Victorian needle making rubbing ring" so you'll just have to use your imagination, aided by my brilliant description.)

Next up, Step 4: Pointing, as demonstrated by this mannequin wearing a jaunty paper hat and some pretty inadequate PPE in the form of a kerchief tied over his face.

Pointing was a notably dangerous job (even by Victorian standards) therefore highly paid. Pointers sat at a spinning stone grinding wheel holding five or six wire blanks flat between their palms, rolling them back and forth while pressing them against the grinding wheel to create the sharpened needle point. This process naturally created a toxic cloud of stone dust and metal filings which the pointer breathed in constantly, causing a condition known as Pointer's Lung (a form of silicosis). Not only that, but the grinding wheel itself was known to break apart completely on occasion, which would have been at first surprising and then almost always lethal. Pointers rarely lived past 30. The display in the museum noted that hand-pointing is still used (with modern dust-extraction methods) for specialist surgical needles. Though judging by the sideburns on the gentleman in the accompanying photo I question whether that's still the case in the 21st century.

After pointing, the blanks needles must be skimmed (Step 5) to remove the scale created by heating and rubbing, leaving the middle of each wire clean for the next steps: stamping and eyeing (Steps 6 and 7). Stamping is accomplished with a kickstamper - a large press with a stationary bottom die and an upper die that drops on top of the blanks to create an impression where eyes of the needles will be. The Stamper raises and lowers the heavy upper die with a rope-and-pulley system operated by his right foot, and the best could process three blanks per second.

Skimming machine, with kickstamper and fly press in the background. Steps 5-6-7.

The stamped blanks are then passed on for eyeing. Usually done by women, eyes in each two-needle blank are punched with a fly press, which Astute Go Stay Work Play Live Readers will remember from our visit to the Coffin Works, also in Birmingham.  

The next comes spitting, heading and cheeking (Step 8-9-10 for those keeping track), also usually done by women, often working at home. This sort of piecework was common and meant that women could remain at home and care for children (who might also be put to work) while also earning a wage. Stamping and eyeing leave sharp edges and flashing around the inside and outside of the eye which cut any thread thus rendering the needle largely non-functional. Spitting involved threading the two needle units onto metal spits which were placed in clamps to allow the flashing to be ground off by hand.

Needles - still stuck together, threaded onto spits.

After grinding the outside, the needles are (finally) broken apart and the area at the break filed clean. Then batches of needles could be threaded onto wires and spun around, cleaning out the inside of each eye. 

At this point, the needles go back to the mill. Because they're made of mild steel wire, they must to be laid out on heavy iron trays and put into a furnace to harden them and prevent them from bending (Step 11). Once the needles in each tray reach a temperature high enough to turn cherry red, the tray is carefully removed with heavy tongs and its contents quickly dumped into a barrel of oil to cool. (The best oil for hardening came from sperm whales. Obviously. Nowadays, nitrogen gas is used.) At first water was used for cooling, but this had a tendency to curve the needles, thus negating the hard work of the Rubber back in Step 3. 

Trays of needles ready for the furnace.

After the furnace the needles are hard but also incredibly brittle and fragile. This requires another trip into a cooler furnace for tempering (Step 12), and another oil bath. 

And at this point, gentle GSWPL Reader, I sense you may almost be fed up with the minutiae of Victorian needlemaking, but the fun is not over yet. Oh no! There are five more steps before we end up with a lovely packet of sharp and shiny needles. It's time to move into the next building where the water-powered machinery runs the scouring mill (or doesn't run, even if the website says it does. Boo.) Scouring is how the needles acquire their fine, shiny surface, and involves packing 50,000 needles and soft soap into a tightly bound sausage wrapped in burlap and called a sett.

A tray for packing setts with a completed sett in the background of what we're going to call an art-shot, as opposed to an over-exposed failure.

Creating these setts is Step 13, after which two packed setts are placed under a runner of the water-powered scouring mill where they are pressed and rolled back and forth (Step 14). This process could take a day for lower quality needles, or up to a week for the brightest and best quality needles. 

The scouring mill in action. Obviously this is not my photo, but that of the lucky Chris Allen who took it eleven years ago and posted it to Geograph (A seemingly-defunct bit of the internet that promises to be very useful for future blogs.)

Chris also posted this excellent description, which I see no need to edit: "The waterwheel drives a crankshaft via gearing and this drives scouring runners on two floors. The runner closest is moving while the two on the right are disconnected with their drive rods roped up. The white vertical wooden beams oscillate back and forth and pass up to the floor above to drive a further 8 sets of runners - the white beams have the onomatopoeic name of whee-whaws." Whee-whaws! Fantastic! (Chris also noted that this machinery was in commercial use until 1956!)

Following days of scouring, the setts are re-packed with a mixture of olive oil and tin oxide and put back in the scouring mill for 2-3 hours to glaze the needles for a final time. After glazing (Step 15), the needles are removed from the setts and washed (Step 16), then placed in rotating barrels of hot sawdust to dry. 

Barreling is Step 17. These barrels of sawdust were rotated with power from the waterwheel and could dry a load of needles in about 20 minutes.

In order to separate the dry needles from the sawdust, the mix is placed in a fanning out tray, which, when skilfully tossed in the air, separated the heavy needles from the lighter sawdust. (Step 18... it's the home stretch now!)

The fanning out process is similar to panning for gold or winnowing chaff from wheat. 

Finally, finally, finally, the finished needles are individually poked through a small sheet of carefully folded, black, acid-free paper and set into little books to be sent out to distributors. 

A collection of decorative needlebooks in an upstairs display at Forge Mill. Apparently these novelty books of needles were sometimes given as small change instead of coins when making a larger purchase. Which, given how elaborate the whole process of making them was, seems a bit sad.

I think that's 19 steps overall, though each of those steps could probably be broken down further. Regardless, I think we can agree that the whole business was incredibly painstaking and also pretty clever. I think it's great that there was a time when we where smart enough to make big heavy machines to manufacture things, but still needed dozens of highly skilled people to operate those machines. Yeah, those people worked in pretty awful conditions, and some got horrible diseases, and they were paid meagrely, and worked long hours. But at least they had work. 

Though really, those hours are shorter than some of the days in my upcoming schedule. 

Just sayin'.

Once I'd made sure I thoroughly understood the whole scope of needlemaking so that I could spend 2,000 words explaining it to you in unnecessary detail, I spent a bit of time poking in the upstairs displays. The mill wasn't confined to the manufacture of simple hand-sewing needles, they also made pins, knitting needles, surgical needles, fish hooks, hat pins, sewing machine needles, gramophone needles, bookbinding needles and gigantic mattress needles, used for stitching the two sides of a mattress together. There was even an example of what was claimed to be the longest needle in the world, at 6'1". These were made for attaching buttons longways through the sides of mattresses, and are definitely not something you want to encounter in a dark alleyway.

When I finally emerged into sunlight, I enjoyed a mandatory coffee and cake (carrot, though naturally Victoria Sponge was also available) and had another crack at the crossword puzzle. I also wandered around the 1940 Weekend displays of the Worcs 9th Batt. C Company Home Guard re-enactment group which was charming but fairly standard WWII fare. Lots of stuff about ration books, gas masks, and machine gun emplacements, with Glenn Miller on endless repeat in the background. 

Still, it was a warm, sunny day and there are worse ways to spend a day like that than watching an octogenarian try to explain the model Enigma Machine he'd made in his basement to an utterly baffled pair of under-ten-year-old boys.

I also bought a few needles in the gift shop, including some useful looking curved ones, and a pair of wicked mattress needles about a foot long. Because how great is it going to be when some weirdo task crops up that requires a foot-long needle, and I've got not one but two standing by? Very great. Then it was back to the train station for a quick trip home, aglow with the satisfaction of having ticked all the appropriate bloggy boxes for the first time in far too long.

Doing something

Maybe this happens to you too. It starts with a list of Things To Do pinging around your brain. Perhaps your list is something like this: go buy diesel injector cleaner, take out the garbage, book flights home for Christmas, go for a run, replace the starter battery, go to Lord Mayor’s Show, properly dispose of contaminated diesel fuel, write blog about your weekend, book a flu shot, just please for the love of God get off the damned couch, etc. Or perhaps you don’t live in London and also pretend to regularly write a blog and also qualify for free NHS flu jab and also own an aged narrowboat with an exceedingly temperamental diesel engine. Nevertheless, whatever is on your list, sometimes deciding what to do is a bit paralysing. You start one thing, but then bounce off that and towards something else that you can’t concentrate on, and then on to a third thing you don’t finish, then back to the first thing, and eventually it all just feels stuck.

Stuck like my boat is stuck… in the process of having a nasty bit of fuel contamination dealt with by way of a new fuel lift pump, fresh fuel filter, clean diesel, and, for good measure, a new starter battery, glow plugs, and ignition switch. Because it’s never just one thing.

While your list may not be the same as mine, I suspect you'll still understand how I felt one Saturday not long ago, when the sky was sort of clear but my brain was definitely not. Luckily, Piran plucked me out of the mire with a short phonecall and reminded me of something I knew already, but needed to be told again: Doing something is almost always better than doing nothing. So I got off the couch (one thing done already!) and got properly dressed and headed to the City for The Lord Mayor’s Show.

So… there’s quite a bit to explain here. Astute Go Stay Work Play Live Readers have certainly already internalised the concept of the City of London so I won’t beat that dead horse again. However, we haven’t yet covered the Lord Mayor of London yet, let alone his show, so settle in.

The Lord Mayor of the City of London is, naturally, the mayor of the City of London and also the head of the City of London Corporation (the municipal governing body of the City). The Lord Mayor of London has nothing to do with the directly elected Mayor of the Greater London Authority. Clear as mud? Good. Within the City, the Lord Mayor is accorded precedence over everyone other than the Queen and in modern times their role is about supporting and promoting local residents and businesses - especially the financial sector - by delivering lots of speeches, hosting visiting dignitaries, being driven around in a Rolls Royce Phantom, and looking good in ermine and tights.

The Lord Mayor of London is elected yearly on Michelmas, and in November the new Lord Mayor is sworn in. One of the ancient requirements of the office dates back to the reign of King John in 1215, when the King granted the City the right to elect its own mayor. (Prior to that the mayor had been appointed by the sovereign.) (Yes, prior to 1215. This is not a recent phenomenon.)

"Know ye that we have granted … to our barons of our city of London, that they may choose to themselves every year a mayor, who to us may be faithful, discreet and fit for government of the city, so as, when he shall be chosen, to be presented unto us, or our Justice if we shall not be present… and he shall swear to be faithful to us…” (from the 1215 London Charter)

Astute Go Stay Work Play Live Readers will note that this charter requires the Lord Mayor to be presented to the sovereign or his Justice and swear fealty, a requirement still observed today. In medieval times, this meant the newly minted Mayor sailed up the Thames from the City to the seat of royal power at Westminster. That trip gradually attracted more and more hangers on and eventually grew into a festive terrestrially-based parade now known as The Lord Mayor’s Show!

So the Lord Mayor’s Show is a parade! And who doesn’t love a parade?

Fun Fact: The term “float” used for parade vehicles originated with the decorated barges that made up the Lord Mayor’s procession along the Thames.

Actually, it’s not just one parade but two. First, the entire menagerie travels from Guildhall - the ceremonial and administrative centre of the City of London Corporation - to the Lord Mayor’s official residence at Mansion House and then to the the Royal Courts of Justice on the Strand. Whereupon everyone in the parade hangs about on the street for a bit while the new Lord Mayor swears an oath of allegiance to the Queens Bench. Following that, everything starts back up again for the triumphal return to Mansion House.

This is where I came in, because my busy morning of dithering meant I didn’t arrive on scene until the procession was already at the Royal Courts. The parade is now so extensive that it’s actually longer than the distance between Guildhall and the Royal Courts and has to budge up into side streets between the Strand and the river before the return journey.

Carriages waiting outside the Royal Courts

This meant that when I finally arrived, I was the one parading past the muddled floats, lounging marching bands, the odd tank surrounded by soldiers drinking cups of tea, and a lot of signs like the one on this excellent vintage horse-drawn double decker bus:

Presented by the Worshipful Company of Wheelwrights, a City of London livery company. Livery companies are a whole other rabbit hole we’re about to dive down, so I hope you have a fresh cup of coffee and are sitting comfortably.

Livery companies started life as medieval guilds and have evolved into modern trade organisations for various crafts, fields, and professions. Many show their medieval roots in their names, such as the Mercers (general merchants), Fishmongers, Haberdashers and Goldsmiths. Livery companies are normally styled as The Worshipful Company of Pewterers or, to cite a more modern addition, The Worshipful Company of Management Consultants (which really does not have the same ring). The term “livery" originally referred to the specific dress or uniform worn by the household servants of noblemen and by extension came to mean any special dress denoting a particular status or trade. 

There are currently 110 livery companies registered by the city of London, including the mellifluously named Worshipful Society of Apothecaries and the less romantic Worshipful Company of Tax Advisers. The list of livery companies is maintained in a strict order of precedence established in 1515 (when there were only 48), and is based on their economic power at that time. The remaining 62 companies are ranked according to seniority, which explains why the Launderers outrank the International Bankers. Go Launderers! 

Bonus Fun Fact*: The Worshipful Company of Merchant Taylors and the Worshipful Company of Skinners have long disputed their ranking in the order of precendence, so each year at Easter they swap places between six and seven on the list. This is thought to be the origin of the phrase “at sixes and sevens”. (*Note: not guaranteed to be a fact)

Extra Bonus Fun Fact**: Membership in a livery company conveys upon the liveryman the Freedom of the City of London. Now largely a formality, it once conveyed other privileges, including the right to drive sheep across London Bridge, as demonstrated by Stephen Fry in this diverting 45 minute dive into the City. (**Note: Actual fact!)

One of the other privileges of liverymen is the election of the Lord Mayor of London. Each year, the members of the City’s livery companies come together for the election in Common Hall, which is not a physical location but rather the name given to a gathering of liverymen. The physical location of the Common Hall is Guildhall, which is all appropriately medieval-sounding, given the Lord Mayor of London occupies one of the world's oldest continuously elected civic offices.

Back at the parade route, I was getting a bit peckish and decided to find a nice cafe to sit down, warm up, and possibly get a start on the blog while waiting for the parade to get going again. Sadly, even through the Lord Mayor’s Show attracts thousands of people to the area, very few of the local places were open. This is quite common in the City, which is utterly dependent on the 500,000 people who work there during the week (pre-COVID), as opposed to the mere 9,000 who actually live within the City’s boundary. On weekends the City is normally quite deserted and most shops, pubs and restaurants don’t bother opening up. 

Instead, I wandered into St. Bride’s, a lovely Christopher Wren church complete with a crypt that boasts a bit of Roman paving and spire that’s said to have inspired the design of traditional multi-tiered wedding cake. 

St. Bride’s is also known for its association with journalism and the printing trade, which is no surprise given its location just off Fleet Street. And the church enjoys a close relationship with the Worshipful Company of Stationers and Newspaper Makers. The City is like that - it’s just utterly packed with history and connections that fold back on themselves over and over. This is true all over England, but in the City it’s concentrated to an almost ludicrous degree. This is evidenced by the amount of time it took me to write this post. I normally spend a fair bit of time clicking around semi-purposefully soaking in information about whatever is the topic at hand. For this post that process was notably longer because there is just so much to soak in.

Anyway, St. Bride’s was open and, more importantly for me that day, they were serving tea and coffee and had a tempting array of packaged treats so I made a donation and settled into a seat in the quire to relax for a bit. By this point AGSWPLRs will note that we’re now 1,700 words in and there’s still no parade in sight. What can I say? It was that kind of day. But fear not, I finally made it out of St. Bride's and onto the parade route where I stood outside Blackfriar’s Station waiting for what seemed like ages. Luckily, there were Morris Dancers, so that was as bafflingly diverting as Morris Dancing always is.

I appreciate a bit of traditional folk dancing as much as the next blogger, but you don’t have to watch these guys for long to understand why people make fun of them.

And, finally, finally, the parade could be heard approaching, led by the Band of The Grenadier Guards and the Band of The Coldstream Guards. 

And then it was really was a proper parade. 

These look like they belong in an opening ceremony somewhere in my past.

The Guild of Young Freemen, with wicker representations of Gog and Magog, two legendary giants who are the traditional guardians of the City of London. Gog and Magog also famously appear as large wooden carvings at the Guildhall. (See previous note about everything connecting to everything else...)

The Bank of England, taking their gold out for a walk

And a pipe band!

Of course it’s not a proper parade without a skip covered in astroturf full of giant fuzzy green chickens...

Is it possible these guys also need a new fuel lift pump?

Or might they consider a houseboat call?

And finally, after the fancy dress and the soldiers and the liverymen (soooooo many liverymen) the man of the hour appeared.

The Right Honourable Vincent Keaveny, Lord Mayor of London. And the utterly Cinderellian Lord Mayor’s State Coach, the oldest ceremonial vehicle in regular use, which dates from 1757.

And then it was over, except for the cleaning up. As with any parade that includes livestock, street-cleaning is a necessary part of the aftermath. But because it's London, even that comes with a footnote. The phrase "after the Lord Mayor’s Show, comes the dust cart" has long meant a disappointing or mundane event occurring straight after an exciting or magnificent one. As in, "We were expecting a great game after last week's barn-burner, but it was all a bit after the Lord Mayor's Show." Which accorded perfectly with the next item on my agenda that Saturday: a trip to the Marble Arch Mound. The Marble Arch Mound was very, very after the Lord Mayor's Show. 

And eventually I booked flights for Christmas, and got my flu jab, and, obviously, I wrote a blog.

Don't ask about the boat.