retiredmartin

July 2023. Liverpool.

I’m easing myself back into blogging so excuse these short posts. My latest excuse, after major surgery and a night in Fanny’s Croft, is a lack of internet not solved by switching-off-and-on-again. Summat to do with metering, I find out.

I’d left the Tin Shed in Formby with plans to head off to New Brighton and New Ferry using my day ticket.

But, due to the wonders of science, I can now see (and shamelessly nick for my own blog), the pretty pictures Mrs RM was taking and thought “I really ought to join her, you know“.

So I arranged to meet at the Thomas Rigby, and admired the sunset behind Capricorn Kitchens as the train passed Bootle (in a hurry),

and approached the site of the new Everton stadium.

It occurs to me I’ve never explored Stanley Dock; Anastasia reminds me why;

But then again, don’t go anywhere with a girl called Anastasia. I’m sure Julian Cope wrote a song about that.

Bramley Moore Stadium, or whatever it gets named in a sponsorship deal, looks impressive from a speeding train.

At the moment the pitch resembles the Baseball Ground c.1975, not that that hindered Derby County.

Whether a new ground will boost Everton’s on-fields fortunes the way it did those of Reading, Darlington and Manchester City is a matter for debate, but the undoubted winner will be the Bramley Moore pub (top), whose Facebook page reveals a proper community local reveals a neat line in marketing.

Proximity to a Premier League ground hasn’t done much for the boozers around the Etihad, mind.

The road from Bootle to the bright lights of central Liverpool is lined with closed pubs.

And the odd open one;

See here and on Pubmeister’s blog here and some open ones on Phil’s excellent blog here.

I took the photo of the Yates’s Wine Lodge as I emerged from Moorfields Station,

and I assumed that circle was a fault on the camera, but since it’s on Google Maps as well, I can only assume it’s a UFO*.

*Sort of explanation here. It’s not a UFO, it’s art.