Dad visits me in Liverpool

My Dad came to stay for a few days last week and it was really lovely to show him round "my" Liverpool.

I have held off posting this entry because I was hoping for photos but I can always add them later.

By happy chance his visit coincided with 20/08/2008 which was a key day in Liverpool.

We got up early, had our breakfast, met up with Colin and then went into town.

We started with a visit to Turning the Place Over opposite the railway station at Moorfields. A fantastic artistic endeavour that I knew that he would appreciate, being a scientist/engineer type person. The only thing that disappointed him was that the office block is empty, there was no-one sitting at their desk while the front of their building revolved on a spindle!

Then I took him and Colin into the Council Chamber and showed them where I sit and pointed out the Lord Mayor's dias and explained about the mace, and how the meetings work.

Then we walked over to St George's Hall (and popped into Millenium House on the way to see where select committees sit, a very different proposition to the Council Chamber in terms of architecture and design).

St George's Hall, or should I say the Heritage Centre, went down well as it always does and we spent an age in the court trying to work out where the jury sat, which bit was for the witness box, where the press sat etc. I still dont quite understand who would have sit behind the dock, within touching distance of the prisoner.

We were moved, as I always am, by the petty crimes that could land someone suffering from abject poverty in the dock with the possibility of transportation to another country.

Then we went to the Liverpool World Museum, looking at a few Lambananas on the way.

We had lunch in there, it is one of my favourite lunch-time venues, and then had a look at a couple of the floors of exhibits. He was very enthused by the space and satellite floors and we got very engaged too with the natural history floor, looking at skeletons of early man. I think it is a great museum, although, like the film museum in Bradford, I do get cross when the interactive displays that so excite the kids are broken.

We were tiring now so we went home for a few hours (and watched some more of the Lympics) and then, having checked the tide time-tables which I have now learnt you can read in the Echo every night (!!), we went up to Crosby to see the Iron men - and at mid tide they were magnificent.

So he might have only had a fairly whistle-stop visit, but we got the best stuff in. (Last time he came a couple of years ago we spent our time on the Albert Dock so we had covered some other important bases already)

I had a great time, I hope he did too - and I cooked, on both nights, glory be!