After my poem on the madness that is lunchtime, I have begun to realise quite how important it is to take an hour or at least some time, away from your morning work and experience something else for a time.
I feel it is particularly true for any job, such as office work, where you are stuck in one room or a certain sterile atmosphere for most of the day. Hell, just the chance to use your legs is something!
So I thought I would occasionally make a circuit of certain streets in the office district of Liverpool and recount the sights and any thoughts or feelings they stirred.

Sometimes it is the people who strike me (not too hard, though) and sometimes the buildings. Today it was the sky. After the terrible weather we’ve had, I was surprised to see the sky was of the deepest and most luxuriant blue. Every view that stood against it seemed worthy of capture on celluloid.
But I had no camera.
It was the shadow of swiftly racing clouds that first drew my eye upwards today. Walking along Old Hall Street I noticed these dark shapes, like the wings of giant bats flapping across the buildings on the sunny side of the street.
My journey takes me across the old slave exchange behind the town hall and down Castle Street. Castle Street is usually thronging with business types, cramming into the nearest coffee shop or delicatessen. Today, Friday, it is quieter; the streets easier to navigate. The only hold ups are near the cash machines which boast double-sized queues today as wages are raided and spilled in the pub. Friday lunchtime in The Cornmarket or The Slaughterhouse. It’s nearly over for another week!
The William Hill bookmaker’s on Castle Street has been refurbished. Punters don’t know where to put themselves, with that new carpet smell and flatscreen monitors quite literally all over the shop. I’ve just missed the 1.10 from Arlington, South Africa. There are no English meetings until after lunch. I resist the lure of the dogs with ease.
Dropping down Brunswick Street the view ahead sees the shops and offices give way to the riverfront and the Graces. My street is calm, but a man passing in front of me is struggling like a mime artist in a strong wind.
I ready myself for the struggle as I join The Strand. The wind has whipped up and the walk becomes bracing. What a feeling to step into the current of a wind straight off the Mersey. It seems to ebb and flow at times as it races towards me. It apes the traffic stream as it flows at speed towards me, and then dies to a calm at some unseen red light.
Liverpool is the only UK city I have been in where you can walk around and get the same feeling as if you’re on a boat somewhere out at sea.

(To be continued...)

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