Sunday, August 1, 2010

Loquacious in Liverpool

The toilet badly built, sort of sandwiched into a cupboard as an after thought, the ridiculously slow ethernet internet connection in your accommodation when you would at least expect high speed wireless in a place as pretentious as highfaluting, haughty, "modern" Britain, the cafes that close at six in the evening, if not before, seldom later and the weather, well don't talk about the weather and if it doesn't rains it pours and incessantly but if the sun struggles through all of a sudden it is liveable in Liverpool.

Down into Liverpool One, Cafe Nero, coffee is decent enough, free copy of the 'Daily Mail' and oh, there is "quality journalism"; the 'Times' skimmed and scanned, treated with the contempt that it deserves, especially those bits that imply, the no news journalists who lie, and, sun still shining, into Waterstones and once upon a time it was easy in an English bookshop to find a book, on politics, history, current affairs, that deserved a second look. Well, there is still the alibi Pilger or Chomsky and, providing you conduct yourself with a modicum of surreptitious decorum, they will let you peruse. Yes, be thankful for small mercies and then back onto the street where it is wet feet. It is raining again. The manufacturers of consent have done their job well and as you achieve your own modus vivendi life really does become hunky-dory.

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