In Liverpool you can sense the water, that big, open, moving thing at the bottom of the city. You don't know it's downhill, until you roll along Church Street past the hordes and chain stores, through the financial district and down Castle Street. You don't realise there is a bottom to the city, and that it's wet. You're too aware of the old lot trembling down Lime Street, falling out of old pubs that pump odorous kareoke like the Mersey pumps mulch.
In Liverpool, in St. James's garden and beneath the Anglican Cathedral, you are enclosed by the dirty tombstones of orphans. Packs of drunks screech at one another, arguing with their children because they said they'd wanted bottled water, but in fact the child wanted something more syrupy, like Fanta. But there is calm in that garden. The grass is thick and cool, even on hot days. The leaves jig softly. If anything, it is a reminder, but one that you do not mind being reminded about.
