Distraction techniques

When travelling, I often used (what to thought to be) a clever technique for distracting potential burglars. I would be using a big backpack and worried that someone might easily zip it open so I put, all the way around in a line, some *ahem* lady things. You know. So that it would be the first thing someone saw when they opened the bag. Hopefully they would be male and horrified by this sight and rapidly rethink his plan to steal from me.

That was the plan. I've never been stolen from while travelling but I'm not sure whether it was my clever distraction technique or luck.

Anyway, this one time, my friend and I were off backpacking around South East Asia for five weeks but we had different flights. He had had a stopover in Sri Lanka, been wined and dined and a beautiful hotel, swum in their beautiful pool and had a little nap. I, however, was changing in Kuwait and had a long eight hours in Kuwait Airport, with lots of massive duty free shops selling Toblerones and alcohol, neither of which I wanted.

For some reason, although I definitely wasn't keen on staying in Kuwait longer than necessary, the announcement for my connecting flight wasn't being made in the area I was sitting in. So I realised a bit late and had to make a dash for it. As I was running, I heard the announcements that they were waiting for one more passenger to board. That was me!

Desperately embarrassed, I arrived at the gate, panting and sweating and a stern faced lady said they were just about to close the gate and I had held everything up. I apologised profusely and handed over my backpack for her to search.

She zipped it open at double speed, her face a picture of grumpiness....

And all my *ahem* lady things spilled out all over her little desk.

She looked at me like she hated me.

I did a nervous little laugh and vaguely tried to explain how I did it to deter thieves.

"Well maybe you should have repacked it when you knew you were getting it searched," she said, very very unamused....

Woops.

The time I got my nose pierced

When I was 20, I worked in a job for a few months where I had to travel around the UK a lot. It was a slightly mad time in my life. I was fresh back from my second stint in Namibia and such a gap year casualty. You could spot me a mile off, with my colourful skirts and millions of bracelets. My hair was really short and would stick out at crazy angles when I took my hat off. I always had a hat. That's another thing. I always wore hats. I had a massive collection of them.

Anyway, this one day, I was working with three other girls in Leicester (I think). I had initially thought I wouldn't get on with one of them but we hit it off pretty soon and I thought she was fab. I had pretty much made up my mind I wanted to be her. And she had her nose pierced. In fact, all three of the other girls had their noses pierced.

After a particularly successful working day, we were all feeling a bit high and excitable. We had spotted a tattoo and piercing place and decided that we would go en masse, and I would get my nose pierced.

Off we went and I entered and announced that I would like my nose pierced please. Not having any foreknowledge of how these things are done, I offered up my nose to this complete stranger, wielding what I now know to be an ear piercing device and let him pierce me.

I wandered off, the others all admiring my pretty nose stud, feeling way cool. I left it for the a few weeks but started to feel something wasn't right when my nostril swelled up around the stud and went red. I decided to change it sooner than recommended because I just wanted to get the stud out, in case that was the problem.

I took hold of the front bit and the back bit and pulled. And pulled. And pulled. Nothing. It was stuck! I couldn't get enough of my finger into my nostril to give the back a good tug. I started to worry. I was back home by this point so my uncle got involved, tugging and twisting and doing whatever he could think of. Eventually, he came up with a plan. He would use plyers (that's right, plyers) to force it open.

That's exactly what happened. He grabbed hold of the bit on the front of my nostril with one pair of plyers and wedged another pair up my nose to hold onto the back. Very rarely have I felt less dignified. He pulled, I winced, he tugged, I made ow noises... And finally it gave way and came off. I whipped another stud straight in and the swelling and redness subsided immediately.

I showed a friend the offending nose stud and she just laughed and told me it was an earring and that I'd been pierced with an earring gun. Great.

So anyway, I was then happy. Life went back to normal. Until six months later I got a new job and was told I couldn't wear jewelry. I took out the nose stud reluctantly and, eight hours later, I went home, clutching my nose stud, intending to put it back in.

I felt the place where my piercing had been and tried pushing the stud in. Nothing doing. I checked in a mirror but couldn't see a hole anymore. I pushed, I squeezed and I almost wept. It had closed. I would have to try re-piercing. So I got an ice cube, melted it with my fingers so it would fit up my nostril then tried pushing on the front of my nostril with the stud again.

And that's when it hit me. I wouldn't be able to re-pierce it. And actually, if something requires me to have plyers and moulded ice cubes stuck up my nose ... I think maybe I should let it go...

And so I did. I became one of the non-pierced masses. I was sad. But my life was easier.

The king of Edge Hill

It's Wednesday, my guest blogger's day to take over. Enjoy it!

 

Just before I start I did say I would report back on my query to the Allerdale Borough Council in last week’s blog (Allerdale Goat’s Cheese ). If you remember I had found a rather elementary error on their website which mixed up left & right in their description. Being a bit of a cynic I didn’t expect a reply. However within a few working days the actual Mayor of Allerdale’s secretary emailed me with an acknowledgement that their website did need amending as they had got the left/right bits wrong. Well top marks to Allerdale; serves me right for doubting them.

Ok so this week it was a visit to rather odd “attraction” in Liverpool. On my way to the place I passed a few interesting streets. There was one group of consecutive Groves called Fern, Moss, Lime, Cedar & Aspen making you think of being out in countryside instead of traversing a somewhat dreary urban landscape. Then came another (rather cultural) group consisting of Vandyke, Wordsworth, Boswell (curiously no Johnson nearby) & Longfellow Streets. Interestingly at the bottom of Longfellow Street are adjacent pairs of streets named Greenleaf & Whittier (presumably a nod to the poet John Greenleaf Whittier, 1807-92) and Wendell & Holmes (presumably in recognition of Oliver Wendell Holmes, 1841-1935).

Whilst looking for the place, I actually drove past the entrance nestling as it now does between two brand new blocks of housing and set back from the road – 0/10 for me for observation there then but a good excuse.

Here’s the entrance area.


Anyway having rung ahead to book a tour (which the day I went wasn’t actually necessary) I was keen to get going. The lady at the entrance told me the next tour was in 20 mins and perhaps I’d like to go and look at the exhibition area. It provided a fascinating read on a number of story boards, and was not just somewhere to park visitors while they waited for the tour guide. Here there were a couple of men dressed in clothes of the 19^th century. I could see clearly that the man kneeling, although appearing ready to pounce, presented no danger - in fact he was completely armless (haha). Yes, if you look closely, you can see that those white sleeves are actually empty!


Where was I? Well, it’s a place which had been used by Liverpool Corporation, from 1868 up until the early 1960s, as stabling for some of their horses. The horses were employed to perform tasks in the city before motorised transport became fully established. (In 1935 there were still 5,000 heavy horses working across the city but by the mid-1940s motor transport had begun to take over much of their work.) The various types of horse, going from the smaller ponies right up to the largest shire horses delivered mail, transported people & heavy goods and pulled the bin (refuse) carts round the streets to take away domestic waste. One of the boards told me that when Roy Rogers visited the city his horse Trigger had been stabled at this site. Outside the building I’d probably walked over the same cobbles where Trigger had once stood! It was an emotional moment. However the site’s use as stabling was a far later incarnation; the original was as the site of a strange enterprise employing hundreds of men. Today it is a visitor centre, opened in 2002, called The Williamson Tunnels Heritage Centreand the site is run by The Joseph Williamson Society, a registered charity. It celebrates (and partly showcases) the work of a successful businessman who seemed to really enjoy giving people work but with an odd twist. I’d just about got round all the story boards on the walls in the exhibition area when I was called through for the tour to start. Our guide was Carl and as I looked round for my fellow visitors it seemed there were….. none – ok amend “our” guide to “MY” guide; I hadn’t expected a tour for one but that’s what I got. First things first though, I had to get fitted with the obligatory (green) plastic safety hat. In the unlikely event of tons of rock falling down from overhead I would be ok. Phew that was re-assuring. We (me & the guide that is) went through the doors into the first part of the tunnel experience. I was informed about the man responsible for what I was looking at, well as much as they know so far. Williamson was born in 1769 over in Yorkshire and at some point the family moved to Warrington. Then when he was 11/12 yrs old (about 1780) he came to Liverpool to find work. He found it, and lodgings, with a certain Mr. Richard Tate, a successful tobacco & snuff merchant, who had offices & a factory in the city centre.

Williamson was clearly a man of determined nature and good business acumen because in just over 20 years he had progressed up the company ladder and then actually married the then boss’s sister (who was the daughter of the original boss) in 1802. Richard Tate had died about 15 years earlier leaving the business to his son, Thomas Moss Tate. The following year (1803) he bought out the Tate business and with his other interests made quite a fortune. Three years after that he used some of his money to buy an estate, previously owned by a timber merchant, in the Edge Hill area of Liverpool. Edge Hill back then wasn’t part of Liverpool.

This map of Liverpool is from 1768:


I’ve put the pen on pointing to Smithdown Lane where Williamson’s yard was. You can see there were a few fields and lanes leading down to the heavily populated city area in the centre at the bottom of the map. Early in the 19^th century one writer (Charles Hand) described the Edge Hill area rather healthily as having, “fresh air and bracing breezes”. Today of course all that empty space has been built on and extends miles beyond Edge Hill.

He moved into the house a timber merchant had used as his rural retreat and started building houses in the same street. Clearly he wasn’t someone who just wanted kind of manor house away from the city standing on its own. The ground underneath this area was sandstone so the houses all had very solid foundations. However they were situated at the top of quite a steep slope. Because of that slope and in order to be able include a garden for each house Williamson had to build supports on which to make them. The supports took the form of arches onto which the land behind the houses could then be extended. Various sorts of people rented these properties from Williamson. In the 1830s residents occupations included: merchant, chemist, junior attorney, salt merchant, corn merchant, book printer, schoolmaster & gentlewoman. It is the innards of Williamson’s yard, in the next street down from where his own house was, where I’m standing with my guide who’s giving me the talk. Photos inside the tunnel were difficult because it was quite dark but I got a few which we’ll come to. Also the tunnel walk areas were kitted out with Christmas paraphernalia for kids who’ll be visiting over the coming weeks. Now, I have to say at this point, if it’s glitz and high-tech you want as your “visitor experience” this is not the place to come. However if you don’t mind a damp atmosphere and a few drips from the ceiling landing on your shoulders accompanied by a fascinating tale of 18^th/19^th century eccentricity & philanthropy then this is definitely the place to come. The story is absorbing simply because it’s not about a guy who wanted his name on a stone plaque or on a statue in the city centre. He didn’t make a showpiece for the world to see; he built tunnels underground that few would ever see. And that is what intrigues you as you walk through a small section of his hidden domain.

His yard employed hundreds of local people doing something necessary – building houses and then arches for the gardens; but then something rather bizarre – building tunnels that apparently didn’t lead anywhere. Some just went to a dead end rock face; some went on a circular route bringing you back to your start point. So the question you’re probably asking, like me, is why? At this point it seems to be all conjecture because Williamson apparently left no reason, either written or oral. Most info comes from two men who wrote about him after his death. What you do have are some of the known facts: he was a real person as records exist – he died in 1840 and his grave was found in an old churchyard when digging work on the Liverpool One development was taking place; he employed many people who were able to support their families because of the work he gave them; and that the tunnels were built because we can still see a part of them. The speculation, which appeals to other known info about his character, suggest he was simply a philanthropist who didn’t believe in just giving people money in their hand but was quite happy to reward them for work done. If there was no particular work for their skills then he would make work that they could do and then pay them for it. He employed bricklayers, carpenters, stone masons and labourers. If a worker was good there are stories of Williamson then employing his wife and even children.

It is amazing to look up at the arched ceiling with its neat rows of bricks and to think of all the men working down there, by candlelight, doing the building of it. He was known as “The King of Edge Hill” by his workers and “The Mayor of Edge Hill” by his friends but as “The Mole of Edge Hill” by his detractors. The large scale map the guide showed me marked with all the areas he tunnelled into is very impressive although unfortunately most will never be excavated because they now run under modern developments and are under council owned land.

Anyway here’s my attempt at a photo of part of the area inside the first part of the tunnel. The circular water ripples you can see are caused by drips from the ceiling landing in the hollowed out area and forming the pool at the bottom. That pool just keeps getting deeper until they can do some pumping out. Part of the reason for the constant drips is the rising of the water table: local industries that was once used plenty of water in their production processes have long since gone.


The next pic shows the left side of the pool with the scaffolding supporting the walkway we had to go on to get to the next section.


This next pic is of the area directly above the pool with the ripples in and you can just about see the high arch and the bricks forming it on the right.


Next is the walkway to the next section


This walkway takes you through a narrow passage to the next tunnel where there are a few more displays.

This is a pic of some of the items recovered from tunnel excavations. Many had been used by the council to landfill with rubbish. The interesting thing in this one is the collection of shells at the far left on the lower shelf. They are oyster shells and the guide told me they were quite a common food for the workers because supply was a lot more plentiful in those days.



Next pic is of a double arch. The three small figures you can see, on the arch, are a Father Christmas, a snowman & a reindeer; these are part of the decorations for the kids who’ll be visiting between now and Christmas.


A little bit further round and I was shown another area of the tunnels which can only be viewed through a glass panel in the wall. Down the stairs back to ground level for a few closing comments and that was the end of the official tour. However as I’d been the only one on the tour I’d got to ask loads of questions so the whole thing was just really fascinating.

One story is that when Robert Stephenson (he of “The Rocket” fame) and his workforce were digging a tunnel down to what is now the railway terminus at Lime Street Station the floor of their tunnel gave way. Heads appeared through the floor and it was Williamson’s workers who were digging under the level of the men working for Stephenson.

So was he a philanthropist? Was he eccentric? Was he just keen on building “things” but especially houses and tunnels? Given the discovery of certain chapel –like features in the tunnels some believe he might have been preparing a place of safety from what he thought was a coming Armageddon. Was he? I suppose you could answer yes to all of those but we’ll never know for sure. As I left the centre, the lady on the till said the tunnels were actually warmer than the area on ground level!

Here's a pic of the cafe area from outside looking through the glass wall. If you look carefully you can see the double arch inside. The streaks down the glass are meant to be icicles just in case you were wondering.


Finally here’s a view of the rest of the yard with a row of boarded up stables in the distance.




Before leaving I asked the guide where Mason Street was so I could look at the houses. He said they were all gone except one small bit. Here it is – it’s No.44 Mason St. As you can see it’s just the front wall of a house which has been preserved by putting a metal frame behind it to keep it upright; and this is all that remains of Williamson’s actual house. There had been another storey above but it had to be removed by the council to make the site safe. Entrance hatches to the tunnels lie behind this frontage but are not open to the public.


And that was it. Time for home and a nice hot cup of tea as it had been freezing outside as well as inside the tunnels.

I’d like to finish with a couple of rather contradictory quotes about the city of Liverpool:

1. In the mid 17^th century Sir Edward Moore wrote that the men of Liverpool are, “….the most perfidious in all England, worse than my pen can describe”

2. In 1772 Dr Dobson, a physician to the Infirmary and whose work on diabetes was influential in bringing it under control said:

“The degrees of the soil, the purity of the waters, the mildness of the air, the antiseptic effluvia of pitch and tar, the acid exhalations from the sea, the pregnant brisk gales of wind and the daily visitations of the tides render Liverpool one of the healthiest places in the Kingdom.” Of course it is!

Mystic Maisey

The other night, something quite strange and potentially supernatural happened. My first thought was, "I could write about it for Chat magazine." Obviously. So here is the article I am planning on sending them. I thought it could be called Mystic Maisey, just because it sounds good, although the story is not about me being being mystic at all.... O well.

Mystic Maisey

Ever since I was a child, I've always felt that I was destined for great things. I was very aware of other possible realms and wanted to investigate the potential for supernatural activity. Once, when I was eight, my tooth fell out and when I put it under my pillow, it turned into a 50p. For me, this was proof that there were other beings sharing planet Earth with us.

Back in November 2012, I was watching television with my fellow mystic, Divining Danda. There was a sound from the kitchen that neither of us could work out. It may well have been the surround sound as one of the speakers is next to the living room door. But Danda decided to check it out anyway. He got up walked to the kitchen and stopped.

"Laura," he called. "Come here a minute."

I got up and went to see what was happening. At the far end of the kitchen is a light switch that you work by pulling a string. On the end of the string is a pen shaped like a golf club.




There is nothing which touches this switch and pen except the door to the garden. Neither of us had been in the kitchen or opened the door. Yet, as I looked, the pen was swinging vigorously from side to side....

And that's when I knew it. They were hungry. There were ghosts in our kitchen and they were hungry. So occasionally, I leave out a lettuce leaf or some bread. It hasn't been touched yet but I know they are there and they are hungry. I sensed it when I saw the pen swinging.

For now, I just hope my hungry ghosts don't do anything more than that! If they start raiding the fridge, I'll have to get the Ghostbusters in!

.....so what do you think? Worthy of Chat magazine? The standards are quite high so I just hope they'll accept my story.....

The worst landlord ever

When I was in my second year at uni, my friend and I decided to move off campus into our own place. We looked at a few places but settled on a flat on a council estate, mainly because it was over the road from university.

When we looked at it, however, it was a little rough around the edges, to say the least. There were chips in the paintwork in most of the bedrooms. There was a huge hole with piping exposed in the bathroom wall. There were odds and ends of crockery in the cupboards. Nothing had been cleaned. There were no curtains or even a curtain pole in my room.

The estate agent confidently assured us that everything would be sorted by the time we moved in. There would be professional cleaners and builders etc who would get the place ready before we arrived.

We found two flatmates to fill the other rooms and, a week later, my friend picked up the keys and headed there with all her belongings, ready for the exciting new adventure. I was working until early afternoon so it would be a few hours before I got there.

I got a phonecall shortly after she had walked through the door, which I thought would be full of excitement and anticipation. Instead it went something like this:

"It looks exactly the same as when we viewed it the other week. There's still a big hole in the wall and it's a mess."

She called the landlord and said there was still a hole in the bathroom wall and that it wasn't safe. His response?

"What's the problem? Are you going to climb into the hole?!" followed by a little chuckle at his own wittiness.

When I got there after work, we donned house clothes and yellow gloves and got to cleaning. We packed up all the bits in the kitchen which had been left and put our own stuff in the cupboards.

When the landlord eventually came round to sort out the hole in the bathroom wall, he brought a man with him who, I got the distinct impression, it seemed he'd picked up randomly on the street while driving to the flat.

At one point, the man was cleaning the oven which, we had insisted, needed a proper industrial clean out as it was so dirty. The man, who spoke no English, just kind of muddled through and my friend had decided to keep an eye on him. This was how she saved our cutlery from destruction as he reached for a knife to start scraping the dirt off the inside of the oven.

"No!" she said, speaking slowly and clearly, as though talking to a child. "We use these to eat with. You need a sponge or a scourer."

He also tried using the oven cleaner he'd found, on the inside of the bath, which he'd been asked to clean. Again, Sophie stepped in, speaking slowly and clearly and handing him some bathroom detergent spray.

That was just a hint of things to come. He owned the flat upstairs too and the girls living there had some hilariously bad set up where he would pitch up every month and collect the rent in cash, all £1400 of it. We gave him cheques for a while before insisting he give us his bank details so we could pay him properly, by bank transfer. That honestly took about six months from first asking him before he gave us them.

When there was a water leak upstairs because someone left the tap on and water was flooding out through our light switches and down the walls, he said there was no need to get anyone out to look at the damage or fix anything because it would be fine.

He'd show up at odd moments and start talking nonsense. Like the time he turned up at my birthday party and started rambling on about this idea he had to store memories on a computer chip so as not to forget them.

He was from Sri Lanka and would just disappear off there without any forewarning, leaving no-one in charge of his business dealings. So, for no discernible reason, we wouldn't be able to contact him for a month. He didn't see what the problem was.

He once threatened to turn up, pack my bags and put them outside. When I pointed out that he needed to go through a court and have a properly authorised eviction notice to do anything at all, he flipped out, said he didn't care about my 'rights', and said we owed him money. It's all hilarious now, but honestly, it was quite ridiculous.

The more I think about it, the sillier it seems. After we moved out, he insisted two people's rent hadn't been paid and so kept the whole deposit (four people's rent). When I called to ask for the other two people's rent back, he said he'd 'told the police on me'. I said the police don't get involved with rental disputes as it's not violent crime. He stopped picking the phone up when I called.

And that was my experience with the worst landlord I have ever had. It was like living in a comedy.

How I feel about Christmas

When I was growing up, Christmas was loads of fun. I'd often wake too early and try nudging my brother awake. He's three years older than me so his excitement levels were slightly lower than mine. He'd grumble a little, turn over and keep sleeping. I'd be hopping about with excitement but didn't want to go downstairs alone so I'd wait.

Eventually he'd wake up and we'd go downstairs. A long flat parcel with a message from my grandfather and grandmother meant a chocolate selection box and I'd get involved straight away. Usually something like a caramel or a fudge bar would become breakfast. We'd spend a few hours playing with our presents. I think the year I got a karaoke machine and a Christmas karaoke video was probably the most unbearable for my family.

Next on the agenda was Christmas lunch. I've got quite a big extended family and we would all (about twenty of us) to go round to my grandparents' house and my grandmother would cook a huge Christmas dinner. You know the type of thing I mean, where the table is laden with bowls and plates of anything you could ever want. There are huge gravy boats at regular intervals and we're all trying to get hold of something which is at the opposite end of the table.

Then there was more present giving and, due to seat space, us kids would all sit on the floor and show each other our presents or, if it was my cousin and I, we would be making up dances to Backstreet Boys songs, or sometimes just making up songs about ourselves. One such song went:

Me: My name's Maimee.
Cousin: And my name's Maura.
Both: And our motto is - nab, neb, nib, nob, nub.

My goodness, we were lyrical geniuses!

Sometimes there'd be another do in the evening with the even larger extended family of second cousins and aunties once removed and all that. Often it would be on Boxing Day though and Christmas Day evening would consist of more chocolate, more playing with games and sometimes calling my friend, Ruth, to who's side I was mostly stuck during my childhood. I usually would have been given a book so would have my face in that for a while too.

It was fun. Now it's fun in a different way. It's fun to watch the kids doing all that. For me, it's fun to have time to read a book and have a cup of tea and do nothing. And I love to give presents I know people will like. I've got something really good for Danda.... Shhh.... Don't say anything. Actually, it's me who mustn't say anything. I keep on almost giving him the present cause I'm so excited.

Usually I feel quite neutral about Christmas itself. When I was a kid, I was massively excited about the very prospect of Christmas, of putting up the tree, of opening the presents, of being with all my cousins and playing with all our presents. Now, it's less about Christmas itself and more about giving nice things to people and having time to relax. But I made a promise to myself a few months ago, to be more excited about things. So I am going to embrace it more. I shall wear my Christmas jumper as often as possible and listen to Christmas songs and put some decorations up (just realised what a humbug I am, I don't own any Christmas decorations at all. Even if I got a tree, I'd have nothing to dress it with.... Shame on me.)

Things Danda often says

Me: Put the TV on.
Danda: It won't fit!

Me: Danda, put the kettle on.
Danda: It won't fit!

Me: I need a wee.
Danda: I haven't got one.

(He does a variation of this story every time he sees a cat.)
Danda: I came home the other night and I'd forgotten my keys so I looked through the letterbox and the cat was sitting there so I said, "Let me in," and he said, "Me... Ow?"

Danda: Ohhhh, do we have to watch another food programme?
Me: Yes.

Danda: The French are revolting.
(This is a reference to the revolution, not just a comment on the French nation.)

(Variations on this are said every time Danda tries something new. It happened yesterday when we went ice skating.)
Danda: Did you see that bloke come running over when I got on the ice then? Did you see him? He come running over and said, "Oi, no professionals!" I said "I'm not." He said "Well, you should be cause you'd win the world cup at ice skating."

Danda: Aren't I the tallest, most handsome man you know?

Danda: Why do girls wear perfume and make up? Cause they smell and they're ugly.
(I like to think this is a funny little joke...)

Danda: Ah, ah, ah, ah.... *pointing to his open mouth and doing a sad face*
(This means he would like a cup of tea and he has seen me move in the general direction of the kettle.)

Danda: Shall we tidy up, its getting a bit messy.
Me: Do we have to?
Danda: No.
Me: Ok.