Of Time and the City

(# Liszt:

Consolation No. 3 in D Flat Major)

(# U naccompanied piano plays

a gently flowing melody)

(T erence Davies narrates... )

Into my heart an air that kills

From yon far country blows

What are those blue remembered hills

What spires, what farms are those?

That is the land of lost content

I see it shining plain

The happy highways where I went

And cannot come again

(# Piano continues to murmur... )

I met a traveller from an antique land

who said:

Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

stand in the desert

And on the pedestal

these words appear:

"My name is Ozymandias,

King of Kings:

"Look on my works, ye mighty,

and despair!"

Nothing beside remains

Round the decay of

that colossal wreck, boundless and bare

The lone and level sands

stretch far away

"If Liverpool did not exist, it would

have to be invented." [Myrbach]

(# Handel:

Music for the Royal Fireworks)

(# Trumpet voluntary

accompanied by brisk drumming)

(# Trumpet ornamentation continues... )

(# Trumpet music concludes

with a flourish)

We love the place we hate,

then hate the place we love

We leave the place we love,

then spend a lifetime trying to regain it.

Come closer now...

...and see your dreams.

Come closer now... and see mine.

No meat on Friday.

Confession on Saturday,

emerging cleansed

and pleasing to God.

Mass on Sundays,

and Holy days of obligation.

Despite my dogged piety,

no great revelation came.

No divine balm

to ease my soul.

Just years wasted in useless prayer.

If I pray long enough,

I would be forgiven.

If I am forgiven,

I would be made whole.

All I'll need then is the girl.

Suddenly, I knew, suddenly, I thought...

...it's all a lie.

Paradise betrayed.

There was no God, only Satan,

sauntering behind me with a smirk,

saying, "I'll get you in the end".

Tu es Petrus.

You're a brick, Pete.

Here, people married.

Here, people died and were buried.

In deconsecrated Catholic Churches,

now made into restaurants

as chic as anything abroad.

Now the congregation can eat

and drink in the sight of God,

who will, no doubt,

disapprove of cocktails in Babylon.

Is this happiness?

Is this perfection?

As you are now, we once were.

[James Joyce]

(# Tavener:
The Protecting Veil)

(# Violin sustains long, lingering notes)

They that go down to the sea

in ships

and that do business in great waters,

these see the works of the Lord,

and his wonders in the deep.

[Anno Domini]

(# Tavener:
The Protecting Veil)

(# Violin sustains long, lingering notes)

"Removed from the sight

of happier classes

"poverty may struggle along as it can."

[Friedrich Engels]

(Archive radio report)

'Preston North End 2

- Blackpool 3

'Everton 2 - West Ham United 0

(Radio report fades)

On slow Saturdays,

when football, like life,

was still played in black and white,

and in shorts as long as underwear.

When it was still not venal.

When sportsmen and women

knew how to win and lose with grace

and never to punch the air in victory.

Match over, pea soup made,

my mother calling from the kitchen;

my eldest brother listening to

the football results

in front of the Bakelite radio,

marking his coupon,

hoping to win millions.

Accrington Stanley,

Sheffield Wednesday,

Hamilton Academicals,

Queen of the South.

And on ever slower Sundays,

when it felt as if the whole world was

listening to the "Light Programme",

Kenneth Horne, promptly at 2 o'clock

and long before the repeal

of the Sexual Offences Act,

would visit two of

his very special friends.

(Radio) '... I was recommended

to a firm of solicitors in Lincoln's Inn.

'The brass plate on

the door read:
Bona Law.'

(Laughter)

'Hello! Anybody there? '

'Oh, 'ello, I'm Julian

and this is my friend, Sandy.

'I've got me articles

and he's taken silk... frequently.

'Well, Mr Horne, how nice to

varder your dolly old eek again.

'Oh, what brings you trolling in here? '

'Can you help me? I've erred.'

'Yeah, we've all 'eard, ducky.

It's common knowledge, innit, Jules! '

- 'Will you take my case? '

- 'Depends on what it is.

'We've got a criminal practice

that takes up most of our time.'

- 'Yes, but apart from that.'

- 'Oooh! Ain't he bold! '

(Davies) But the law proscribed

and was anything but tolerant.

As when, contemporaneously,

two gay men were arrested

and convicted

and were to be made an example of.

And the judge said to them

before he was passing sentence,

"Not only have you committed

an act of gross indecency,

"but you did it under

one of London's most beautiful bridges."

(Archive report) 'Show place of the

North, The Ritz Theatre, Birkenhead,

'again presents

a replica Royal Film performance

(# Johnnie "Scat" Davis:

Hooray For Hollywood)

At seven, I saw Gene Kelly

and Singin'in the Rain

and discovered the movies, loved them

and swallowed them whole.

And my love was as muscular

as my Catholicism,

but without any of the drawbacks.

Musicals, Melodramas, Westerns,

nothing was too rich or too poor

for my rapacious appetite

and I gorged myself with a frequency

that would shame a sinner.

But soon, darker pleasures.

At 15, I saw Dirk Bogarde

in Victim

and discovered something

entirely different.

And when I was not at the movies,

on Friday nights,

I was at the Liverpool Stadium

watching the wrestling.

Not for its pantomimic villainy

but for something more illicit.

And in short, I was afraid.

As I struggled with

my adolescent desires,

as I waited at the top of the aisle,

as the wrestlers swaggered up

from the ring,

their trunks tight across the buttocks,

I could feel their body heat

as I furtively touched a back or a thigh,

choking with schoolboy guilt

and trembling with the fear

of the wrath of God.

Oh, save me from those dark desires

which thrill and compel.

The world. The flesh.

And the Devil.

(Bell rings)

(# Male voice sings Perotin's

Beata Viscera)

Caught between Canon

and the criminal law,

I said goodbye to my girlhood.

Here, I wept...

...wept and prayed until my knees bled,

but no succour came -

no peace granted.

Here was my whole world.

Home. School. The Movies.

And God.

You, who damn but give no comfort.

Why do I plead?

Why do you not respond, angel eyes?

Jesus, mercy. Mary, help.

Lull me to safety.

(# Plainsong continues... )

Between sleeping and waking,

Earth does not revolve.

And slow turns the life

of meagre timbre,

of dullest breath.

Between birth and dying,

some lovely moments grow.

And sorrows not known until tomorrow,

cloud the happy hours

spent dreaming in the sun.

Between joy and consolation,

no easy path.

Some flights of fancy,

some colour.

Glorious old Hollywood;

small, comic England.

Black and white.

Between loving and hating,

the real journey starts.

Let go the latter, embrace the former,

then fall to heaven on a gentle smile.

Between waking and sleeping,

the earth resumes its turn.

The soft light fills the room,

the nightly demons perish from the bed,

and all humanity braves another day.

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