29. You couldn’t make it up [Great George Street, Liverpool]

We’re in Liverpool again. I blame the artists: in the run-up to Liverpool Biennial, artworks described as ‘crazy’ by one of their curators dot the city and there’s something about them that I can’t resist. So Milo and I have come to Liverpool and stomped all the way up Greenland Street to see a huge [...]

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24. Beauty among decay [St. Luke's Church, Liverpool]

Milo has not been well. He has spent the past 48 hours clinging, limpet-like, around his mother’s neck. He has slept there (he slept, she got a crick in her neck), eaten there (he ate, she got banana and porridge mashed into her hair) and cried there (he cried and then added snot to the [...]

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19. Everything new, everything the same [Liverpool One, Liverpool]

And so we’re back in Liverpool. The seagulls squawking overhead remind us of our proximity to the Mersey; gaggles of neon-clad kids saunter self-consciously past shop windows, surreptitiously checking their reflections.
‘I used to live here,’ I tell Milo as we watch the parade of Scouse youth.
I can see him processing a street style that is [...]

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9. Gaia’s last hurrah [Astley Green, Lancashire]

Back in the early 90s I lived in a knackered old mansion house in Liverpool. It overlooked Sefton Park and had long since been given over by the landlord, Mr Hyland, to the ravages of student life. It had no central heating and was so filthy that my mum refused to sit down when she [...]

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8. Sunshine and scousers [Bluecoat Gallery, Liverpool]

It feels like it’s been raining forever. Day after day of me peering hopefully out of the window or packing away the rain cover for the pushchair, only to be disappointed. There have been weeks where I’ve battled through high winds, being battered by great globs of Mancunian rain. And there has been me, propping [...]

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