Journey

I have lived on the Wirral now for 35 years. Both of my children were born here.  I was first introduced to Tranmere when my parents had a terraced house.  I’d been living in Switzerland for the past 2 years and it was like coming to Coronation Street.  My parents had picked me up from Manchester airport.  It was my first experience of the North of England.  I had been to Birmingham when I was 10, (that was a journey I would never forget but that story’s for another time).  I was amazed by all the little houses, clumped together and I expected to see a cat on a roof! It was dark so I could not get the whole feeling and I was tired from travel so I thought I would not take too much notice and make up my mind when I saw the place in daylight.

Looking back over the years, spent in Tranmere and Rock Ferry, it’s hard to make sense of which parts are real and which parts I dreamt.

During the heatwave of ’76 a plague of ladybirds descended on the Wirral and stayed for several days - an alien invasion.  The ladybirds attracted other insects and different species of flies, aphids and beetles appeared in the doors, walls and under the steps.  We were careful not to open the windows too wide. I was heavily pregnant at the time and my fondness for wearing green made me a target. I remember my terror as the ladybirds swarmed around my shoulders and back.

That same summer I spent a weekend working as a bank nurse at a nursing home in Rock Park.  It was number 13.  I spent my first night pressing the residents’ clothes, sewing on buttons and placing them in laundry baskets which I left outside their doors as they slept, ready to hand in the wardrobes in the morning.

I hadn’t met any of the residents, so I was surprised when a little old lady appeared in the dining room around half past three in the morning demanding to know who I was.  Despite the heat she was wearing layers of clothes – slips, undergarments, blouses, cardigans and a coat, all the clothes that I’d placed outside her door.

I don’t know what the number 13 house is used for now.  It’s one of many places that have changed.  The flowers in my garden remind me of the church garden at St. Catherine’s hospital.  The hospital holds a special place in my memories.  My two children were born there and both my mother and I worked there.  I have been back to the building several times since for physio and other treatments and recall many times of fun and some sadness.  It’s all changing though, it’s being demolished and the whole landscape of the hospital is different. But I go to a reading group there and continue to enjoy the place especially the church garden, a beautiful, wild kind of garden that gives scent and colour all year round.