What Was Remains -- Peter Leyland

What Was Remains

I make no apologies for telling you about the people in this photograph, although the story may seem a little sentimental. Anyway, they are a group of ex sixth-formers who had met up in Liverpool towards the end of the 1960s and were at the time either working or beginning university studies. I received the photo recently as a Christmas present from a member of the group shown. It is one of two taken in 1971 outside The Palm House in Sefton Park by another of those in the picture.

 

At one of a number of re-union meetings a couple of years ago, I asked them all whether it was ok to write about the group in one of my monthly Authors Electric blogs, and they all agreed.* For various reasons, which I hope will become clear, not all were there at this re-union, but I will tell you about each one in the photo as far as I know their story in relation to myself. Friends are becoming increasingly important to me I get older. 

 

There is Vince, perhaps the easiest to identify in the photograph because he is holding a guitar and wearing a hat. Vince was, and still is, a gifted musician and used to play for us in a room called 'The War Office' at Ye Cracke, a well-known Liverpool pub. At the time we were just about able to afford a pint of brown and mild and would spend Friday evenings making it last and listening to him play. His version of For Emily, Wherever I May find Her, is seen by me now as a paean to disappearing youth, although then it was a powerful rendition of youth's promise.

On Vince's right is my best friend Malcolm with whom I dated girls from a local school (although his dates lasted a lot longer than mine) and who bought me Leonard Cohen’s Beautiful Losers for my 21^st Birthday with the inscription ‘Keep Smiling’. We kept in touch through the 70s but gradually drifted apart, and I was devastated to learn at one of our gang re-unions that he had died of a heart attack at the age of 40. It made me remember vividly how he had come to my house one evening with his brother to tell me that his father had died from the same thing. We were just 15 and my own father had died a few years before.

 

I will pause here to say that Liverpudlians are an emotional lot who wear their hearts on their sleeves. Mum always said it was to do with the Irish in us, but I don't know. Anyway, if ever I meet another Scouser on my many travels, we will immediately reminisce about the schools we attended, which of the two great football teams, Red or Blue we support, and the places where we lived. Then I ask them if they have heard of The Institute, which Paul McCartney turned into LIPA, or The Scaffold, or the poet, Roger McGough? Very soon we 'are away' as the Liverpool expression goes and my wife will become a Scouse widow for as long as it takes.

 

The Scaffold, from left to right: John Gorman, Mike McGear who is Paul McCartney' brother and who also went to 'The Inny' and Roger McGough. Their most well-known song was Lily the Pink.

'The Inny' or The Liverpool Institute, was my school. Malc attended Hillfoot Hay and had introduced me to many of the friends in the photograph. To his right is Sue, who attended Newhays, the sister school of Hillfoot Hey. This was a common feature in Liverpool at the time. Our sister school was Blackburn House, next to the chip shop where we bought our lunchtime scallops. When I was studying Russian a number of sixth-form girls from Blackburn House joined us for Mr Salmond’s Russian lessons - but that’s another story - it was Sue who sent me the photograph and who said in an accompanying comment, that, 'You actually started my sentient life, introduced me to theatre - the Everyman... music and all that friendship. As you once wrote "what was still remains"'. 

We all shared the poetry of the time.The Mersey Sound by Henri, McGough and Patten was published in 1967 and is one of the biggest ever selling poetry books; there was art at the Walker Art Gallery; and plays at The Everyman Theatre. Black Comedy was a then popular medium and we went there to see Joe Orton’s What the Butler Saw and A Day in the Death of Joe Egg by Peter Nichols, both groundbreaking dramas. Sue herself had a wonderful career, starting up a highly successful and forward-thinking nursery in the 80s and 90s. She became Woman of the Year and the nursery is still operating today.

 

Just above her is Elaine. She went to La Sagesse, a convent school about half a mile from my house in Aigburth, and she and I would often go with others to The Walker, where there is a fine collection of Pre-Raphaelite paintings. Elaine is artistic and a great traveller, and she always made me think of Elizabeth Siddall, a female member of a group known as The Brotherhood who lived in the middle decades of the nineteenth century. All were poets or artists. Prominent among them were Gabriel Dante Rossetti, William Holman Hunt, John Everett Millais, and William Morris. There were other art galleries in the surrounding areas - Manchester City Art Gallery, and The Lady Lever Gallery at Port Sunlight - all with Pre-Raphaelite paintings. Oh what a time it was, it was, a time of innocence, a time of confidences, we sang at Ye Cracke in imitation of Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel on their album, Bookends.

Actors from Desperate Romantics:  a TV series about the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood originally shown July-August 2009

 

Next to her is Alan, a student of chemistry, who had and still has a vast knowledge of popular music. With him I shared a love of Catch 22, the satirical anti-war novel by Joseph Heller. When meeting up Alan and I would call each other Yossarian or Doc Daneeka or Hungry Joe, the names of characters from the book. If you know the story, it is an account of the return from action of a long-range American bomber crew told with an accompanying satirical comedy about life in the US Air Force. As the plane comes in to land Yossarian is desperately trying to save the mortally wounded air-gunner, Snowden, from spilling his torn and bloody insides out of his flak suit into the plane. Snowden says, 'I’m cold. I'm cold', as Yossarian watches him die. It is probably one of the most stark and savage anti-war pieces in modern fiction

 

And there is me standing between Ken and Keith, looking down, my arm on Keith’s shoulder. Keith attended the same school as I did. Once we took a bus to Bournemouth together because I wanted to visit a girl I had met on holiday in Cornwall. I saw her but afterwards Keith and I couldn't get a place in the youth hostel and had to spend a cold night on a bench by the seafront wrapped in newspapers. After the photo we lost touch and I never saw him again. Ken became a market gardener and once came to see me in Guildford where I was living at the time - now married to the girl from Bournemouth. He gave me a book of Shelley’s poetry. When I was boarding the train to Cambridge just recently, where I was meeting up with the group again, I heard a shouted "Pete!" It was Ken and on the journey we talked non-stop so that I completely forgot to eat the sandwiches that I had brought with me.

 

Below them are Dick, a colleague of Neil the photographer, and a couple called Peggy and Rob that I didn’t really know. Finally, at the bottom wearing a tie is Neil himself. Neil is a supporter of the Blues like I am and has travelled extensively in pursuit of a photographic career. I am so pleased at the way he has caught us in the black and white photo, some looking at the camera, some seemingly oblivious to the moment. I also love how he has captured the tracery of the branches against the roof of The Palm House.

50 years later we met up again and Neil look another photograph outside The Palm House with eight of those twelve who were still in touch. Sue is sitting next to me holding the first of the two original photographs on her lap. And underneath my copy of that photo she had written:

"Love, all alike, no season knowes, nor clyme, 

Nor houres, dayes, months, which are the rags of time."

                                                                                             Peter Leyland 26th December 2022 

*Anyone that I have not been able to contact about this photoblog are welcome to get in touch