Ten
We’re on holiday! We haven’t had a summer holiday because we thought we’d be taking time off to put in a shed, then Guy’s office got busy and said he couldn’t have time off in September, so as it’s 1st October, we’re off! We considered a quick trip to Florence, but dismissed it as too pricey. Then we had A Brilliant Idea. There’s some dispute as to whose idea it was, but as it was a Seriously Brilliant Idea, I’ll claim it… Guy has an old Flymo – not just an OLD Flymo, but an ORIGINAL old Flymo – one of the blue ones they made before housewives decided that orange would be prettier. We also have a book called ‘Bollocks to Alton Towers’ which is full of weird and wonderful British attractions to visit that don’t involve queues and car parks and overpriced grotty sandwiches. And it has details of The British Lawnmower Museum in Southport. We have emailed them and said ‘we’ve got an old blue Flymo, would you like it, we’ll deliver’ and they’ve emailed back hugely quickly and said ‘yes please how lovely’ so there we are – that’s our holiday sorted. We decide we’ll go to the Mower Museum and then also visit whatever else is in the book for Liverpool, regardless of what it is or how weird it sounds. So we’re also visiting Port Sunlight, and the Williamson Tunnels. Excellent! Needless to say when our respective offices say ‘ooh a week off how nice where are you going?’ and we proudly say ‘The Lawnmower Museum’ there has been a somewhat mixed reaction…
We book ourselves a hotel online (in the right area, sounds ok, food looks good) and away we go. To enliven the northbound journey we play ‘Spot The Shed’. Simple rules – all you have to do is spot sheds. I think I’ve won with a fabulous set of sheds just off the M6 at Birmingham, but Guy thinks that Railway Sheds don’t count. Best shed sighting on the northbound journey? About 9 garish orange sheds for sale, weirdly, on a garage forecourt…
The sat nav takes us straight to our hotel and it’s lovely – we have a four poster bed and a set of steps in our room; it’s like a mini-suite! And the best bit is that it has a view of a huge fir tree just outside the window, complete with squirrels, and also a view of the hotel garden – with a SHED!
On Tuesday we set off to the mower museum with the sat nav doing its stuff again – it takes us past Aintree racecourse and straight to Stanleys Hardware in Southport, home of the British Lawn Mower Museum – Stanleys is a corner shop, and the museum is in the rooms above. We find Brian, the curator, who we have been emailing, and we announce ‘hello we’ve brought you a Flymo!’. We wait expectantly. He is underwhelmed. Maybe he gets people saying ‘hello we’re brought you a Flymo’ every day, but we’ve travelled 200 miles to be here and we wanted a little more ‘WOO HOO’ about it. We show him the mower (which looks lovely since Guy scrubbed it) and he begins to liven up…
He invites us to look around the museum, and he turns on the audio guide which tells you which mower to look at and when. It is BRILLIANT! Not just the audio tape, but the whole thing… there are all shapes, sizes and ages of mowers, from steam powered mowers to the latest solar powered robot mower, and everything in between, including a very stylish but totally useless early sit on mower that looks great but apparently falls over if you corner too fast, and chops off your feet if you go backwards.
There are celebrity garden tools too – a trowel from Alan Titchmarsh, a mower covered in pink furry fabric from Paul O’Grady… and Joe Pascquale’s strimmer. When we emerge from the museum to the shop beneath, Brian has re-assembled the handle on the Flymo and is suitably impressed with it – he says its better than the blue one he already has, because it works. He tell us about the lottery funding he’s got to make a CD of ‘about to be redundant’ sounds (like typewriters, old mowers and stuff) and says that he’ll be using Our Flymo for the hover noise. We are ridiculously pleased, like when your child gets picked to be Mary at Christmas… we smile a lot.
Eventually we tear ourselves away from Brian and head to Southport proper to find some lunch. We park at the ‘park and ride’ and admire the incredibly enormous beach where Red Rum used to train, and use the incredibly lovely eco-loos at the park and ride, and eat lunch. Then we head south again to Liverpool to another delight from the book – Port Sunlight. Seriously weird place! It’s a ‘village’ built for workers at the Lever Sunlight Soap factory to live in – their boss (Mr Lever, no less) decided that workers would work better if they lived in nice houses, so he built them nice houses. There are lawns in front of the houses, wide pavements, and even wider roads. Masses of trees, no road markings, no takeaways, no garish signs, just peace, quiet and quiet living. It’s like stepping into the set from The Truman Show. Very, very strange, and utterly lovely.
We have a lovely cup of coffee in a peaceful tea shop and watch the gardeners dead heading the roses slowly. We watch decorators painting a house slowly. Even the cats move slowly… You find yourself driving at about 20mph on these completely empty roads, only occasionally meeting a learner driver going equally slowly. Nothing moves fast, there is no urgency, no stress, no noise… When you leave the village it’s a shock – you’re instantly back into fast streets, crowded buildings, noise, signs, people in baggy shell suits… and you want to turn round and head back into utopia… Brilliant place. Can we move there?
On Wednesday we head for the Williamson Tunnels. This one again from the book, and it’s a series of totally pointless tunnels built under Liverpool itself. They don’t go anywhere or do anything, and may just have been built because Mr Williamson liked tunnels. Needless to say, we are Very Excited about this… The sat nav does its stuff until a large roundabout a mile away when it insists we turn left. We can’t, it’s a no-entry. We go straight on and the sat nav goes berserk until we end up back at the same roundabout. This time we turn right, and the sat nav goes berserk again. We try to outwit it, and end up on the roundabout. One more go, trying to drive past all the bits we don’t like. We end up in a taxi rank, turn round and then we’re back on the bloody roundabout. This time we go in COMPLETELY the opposite direction and eventually the sat nav relents and shows us another way to the tunnels – after a few twists and turns, we arrive - WE MADE IT! It’s shut. Opens again Thursday. Bummer. So we visit Liverpool instead.
We try to find the ‘bohemian quarter’ which Guy’s weekend Guardian had helpfully said had nice shops and bistros and was next to a 200 acre park so you couldn’t miss it. We miss it. We head for the Albert Dock instead, on the basis that there are signs for it. We park in a newly built (actually so new it’s still being built) multi storey car park and then tramp across a building site to the Albert Dock. We are in need of a loo by this time, but it’s shut. There’s a map to another one but we can’t make it out, so we go into the Tate Gallery instead. Deeply unwelcoming building, hugely noisy, grumpy staff. Can’t exactly recommend it… Nice loos though!
We walk into Liverpool thinking we must be missing the point slightly – this is the 2008 Capital of Culture. Or it will be when they’ve rebuilt it. We have never seen so much building work in one city – every 10th person you pass on the street is a construction worker.
We take a touristy photo to remind ourselves of the day:
We wander round a bit, pass the Cavern (you sort of have to, don’t you?) and find ourselves a nondescript (but cheap) eatery for lunch. We sink into a large squishy sofa and look down a long street lined with tall old buildings. Guess what’s at the other end? That bloody roundabout…
On Thursday we do make it back to the tunnels which are interesting, although the guide is sadly not interesting, tempering everything with ‘this might have happened but we’re not sure’ or ‘it is said that … but we can’t confirm it’.
This is one of Williamson’s ‘Double Tunnels’. Why did he build it? Because he could…
We think she should have followed the book’s example and said ‘this bloke was clearly barking, let’s celebrate him for being nuts’ and left it at that…
We’re very aware that today is Thursday and at 4.15pm it will be ‘about this time next week’ since the time last week when Mr Planner said we should know. At 4.15 we’re still on the motorway and we don’t know whether there’s anything sitting on the doormat at home, so we decide that after this long another few hours won’t matter, and we’ll phone him on Friday instead. When we get home there’s nothing on the mat, nor the email, nor the fax. Honestly, you give people all these ways to get in touch and… nothing. On Friday morning at 9.30 I phone. Answering machine. Bugger. At 10 I phone the main planning desk and ask if Mr Planner is in… the lady doesn’t know but says she’ll take my number and go look and call me straight back. She never calls back. At 10.30 Guy phones and talks to Mr Planner. WE GOT PLANNING PERMISSION!!! WOO HOO!!! And it’s only taken 5 months, 3 weeks and 2 days…
We are oddly calm about it. After all this time we don’t think it’s sunk in. And then, after about an hour, it does. HOORAY! We can start BUILDING STUFF!! Now the fun starts!
Achieved: WE GOT PLANNING PERMISSION!! Eventually!
Hours worked: None yet, but we’re about to start moving stones…
Progress: WE GOT PLANNING PERMISSION!!
Purchases: A postcard of a brilliant advert from the Lawnmower Museum to frame and put on the wall of the shed. Which we now know we can build because WE GOT PLANNING PERMISSION!!
Plan for the week: Find bricks for path, speak to Keith the Shed, mark out properly for base, move pile of stone in the way, saw off a branch that needs moving, visit salvage yard (well, it is still our holiday…)
Fascinating fact of the holiday: Brian (lawnmowers) is the former British Lawn Mower Racing Champion. He achieved speeds of 85mph on his sit-on lawnmower. Blimey – that’s quicker than my Smart!
Best overheard conversation in a restaurant: “Well I did see the aardvark yesterday morning heading for his burrow, but he wasn’t looking too well.”
Guy’s ‘head in hands’ moment: When I, sitting in the glorious hotel restaurant, with my lovely husband, drinking excellent wine and eating delicious food, say ‘there’s a lovely gloss finish on that wood panelling’.
Best advert at the Lawnmower Museum: I don’t know about you, but I always dress like this to mow the grass. So does Guy…
We book ourselves a hotel online (in the right area, sounds ok, food looks good) and away we go. To enliven the northbound journey we play ‘Spot The Shed’. Simple rules – all you have to do is spot sheds. I think I’ve won with a fabulous set of sheds just off the M6 at Birmingham, but Guy thinks that Railway Sheds don’t count. Best shed sighting on the northbound journey? About 9 garish orange sheds for sale, weirdly, on a garage forecourt…
The sat nav takes us straight to our hotel and it’s lovely – we have a four poster bed and a set of steps in our room; it’s like a mini-suite! And the best bit is that it has a view of a huge fir tree just outside the window, complete with squirrels, and also a view of the hotel garden – with a SHED!
On Tuesday we set off to the mower museum with the sat nav doing its stuff again – it takes us past Aintree racecourse and straight to Stanleys Hardware in Southport, home of the British Lawn Mower Museum – Stanleys is a corner shop, and the museum is in the rooms above. We find Brian, the curator, who we have been emailing, and we announce ‘hello we’ve brought you a Flymo!’. We wait expectantly. He is underwhelmed. Maybe he gets people saying ‘hello we’re brought you a Flymo’ every day, but we’ve travelled 200 miles to be here and we wanted a little more ‘WOO HOO’ about it. We show him the mower (which looks lovely since Guy scrubbed it) and he begins to liven up…
He invites us to look around the museum, and he turns on the audio guide which tells you which mower to look at and when. It is BRILLIANT! Not just the audio tape, but the whole thing… there are all shapes, sizes and ages of mowers, from steam powered mowers to the latest solar powered robot mower, and everything in between, including a very stylish but totally useless early sit on mower that looks great but apparently falls over if you corner too fast, and chops off your feet if you go backwards.
There are celebrity garden tools too – a trowel from Alan Titchmarsh, a mower covered in pink furry fabric from Paul O’Grady… and Joe Pascquale’s strimmer. When we emerge from the museum to the shop beneath, Brian has re-assembled the handle on the Flymo and is suitably impressed with it – he says its better than the blue one he already has, because it works. He tell us about the lottery funding he’s got to make a CD of ‘about to be redundant’ sounds (like typewriters, old mowers and stuff) and says that he’ll be using Our Flymo for the hover noise. We are ridiculously pleased, like when your child gets picked to be Mary at Christmas… we smile a lot.
Eventually we tear ourselves away from Brian and head to Southport proper to find some lunch. We park at the ‘park and ride’ and admire the incredibly enormous beach where Red Rum used to train, and use the incredibly lovely eco-loos at the park and ride, and eat lunch. Then we head south again to Liverpool to another delight from the book – Port Sunlight. Seriously weird place! It’s a ‘village’ built for workers at the Lever Sunlight Soap factory to live in – their boss (Mr Lever, no less) decided that workers would work better if they lived in nice houses, so he built them nice houses. There are lawns in front of the houses, wide pavements, and even wider roads. Masses of trees, no road markings, no takeaways, no garish signs, just peace, quiet and quiet living. It’s like stepping into the set from The Truman Show. Very, very strange, and utterly lovely.
We have a lovely cup of coffee in a peaceful tea shop and watch the gardeners dead heading the roses slowly. We watch decorators painting a house slowly. Even the cats move slowly… You find yourself driving at about 20mph on these completely empty roads, only occasionally meeting a learner driver going equally slowly. Nothing moves fast, there is no urgency, no stress, no noise… When you leave the village it’s a shock – you’re instantly back into fast streets, crowded buildings, noise, signs, people in baggy shell suits… and you want to turn round and head back into utopia… Brilliant place. Can we move there?
On Wednesday we head for the Williamson Tunnels. This one again from the book, and it’s a series of totally pointless tunnels built under Liverpool itself. They don’t go anywhere or do anything, and may just have been built because Mr Williamson liked tunnels. Needless to say, we are Very Excited about this… The sat nav does its stuff until a large roundabout a mile away when it insists we turn left. We can’t, it’s a no-entry. We go straight on and the sat nav goes berserk until we end up back at the same roundabout. This time we turn right, and the sat nav goes berserk again. We try to outwit it, and end up on the roundabout. One more go, trying to drive past all the bits we don’t like. We end up in a taxi rank, turn round and then we’re back on the bloody roundabout. This time we go in COMPLETELY the opposite direction and eventually the sat nav relents and shows us another way to the tunnels – after a few twists and turns, we arrive - WE MADE IT! It’s shut. Opens again Thursday. Bummer. So we visit Liverpool instead.
We try to find the ‘bohemian quarter’ which Guy’s weekend Guardian had helpfully said had nice shops and bistros and was next to a 200 acre park so you couldn’t miss it. We miss it. We head for the Albert Dock instead, on the basis that there are signs for it. We park in a newly built (actually so new it’s still being built) multi storey car park and then tramp across a building site to the Albert Dock. We are in need of a loo by this time, but it’s shut. There’s a map to another one but we can’t make it out, so we go into the Tate Gallery instead. Deeply unwelcoming building, hugely noisy, grumpy staff. Can’t exactly recommend it… Nice loos though!
We walk into Liverpool thinking we must be missing the point slightly – this is the 2008 Capital of Culture. Or it will be when they’ve rebuilt it. We have never seen so much building work in one city – every 10th person you pass on the street is a construction worker.
We take a touristy photo to remind ourselves of the day:
We wander round a bit, pass the Cavern (you sort of have to, don’t you?) and find ourselves a nondescript (but cheap) eatery for lunch. We sink into a large squishy sofa and look down a long street lined with tall old buildings. Guess what’s at the other end? That bloody roundabout…
On Thursday we do make it back to the tunnels which are interesting, although the guide is sadly not interesting, tempering everything with ‘this might have happened but we’re not sure’ or ‘it is said that … but we can’t confirm it’.
This is one of Williamson’s ‘Double Tunnels’. Why did he build it? Because he could…
We think she should have followed the book’s example and said ‘this bloke was clearly barking, let’s celebrate him for being nuts’ and left it at that…
We’re very aware that today is Thursday and at 4.15pm it will be ‘about this time next week’ since the time last week when Mr Planner said we should know. At 4.15 we’re still on the motorway and we don’t know whether there’s anything sitting on the doormat at home, so we decide that after this long another few hours won’t matter, and we’ll phone him on Friday instead. When we get home there’s nothing on the mat, nor the email, nor the fax. Honestly, you give people all these ways to get in touch and… nothing. On Friday morning at 9.30 I phone. Answering machine. Bugger. At 10 I phone the main planning desk and ask if Mr Planner is in… the lady doesn’t know but says she’ll take my number and go look and call me straight back. She never calls back. At 10.30 Guy phones and talks to Mr Planner. WE GOT PLANNING PERMISSION!!! WOO HOO!!! And it’s only taken 5 months, 3 weeks and 2 days…
We are oddly calm about it. After all this time we don’t think it’s sunk in. And then, after about an hour, it does. HOORAY! We can start BUILDING STUFF!! Now the fun starts!
Achieved: WE GOT PLANNING PERMISSION!! Eventually!
Hours worked: None yet, but we’re about to start moving stones…
Progress: WE GOT PLANNING PERMISSION!!
Purchases: A postcard of a brilliant advert from the Lawnmower Museum to frame and put on the wall of the shed. Which we now know we can build because WE GOT PLANNING PERMISSION!!
Plan for the week: Find bricks for path, speak to Keith the Shed, mark out properly for base, move pile of stone in the way, saw off a branch that needs moving, visit salvage yard (well, it is still our holiday…)
Fascinating fact of the holiday: Brian (lawnmowers) is the former British Lawn Mower Racing Champion. He achieved speeds of 85mph on his sit-on lawnmower. Blimey – that’s quicker than my Smart!
Best overheard conversation in a restaurant: “Well I did see the aardvark yesterday morning heading for his burrow, but he wasn’t looking too well.”
Guy’s ‘head in hands’ moment: When I, sitting in the glorious hotel restaurant, with my lovely husband, drinking excellent wine and eating delicious food, say ‘there’s a lovely gloss finish on that wood panelling’.
Best advert at the Lawnmower Museum: I don’t know about you, but I always dress like this to mow the grass. So does Guy…
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