I keep taking photographs of this walk like I've never been on it before, though in fact I've been walking at least pieces of it for most of my life. But until now I've never lived close enough for the whole of it, in its many variations, to become my regular morning walk. That my feet just take me on, like an instinct or a habit they’ve developed. Three or four times every week, and before anything else I might decide to do on a given day. Out the door of our temporary Canning home, through the University, across and round the top of the city, to the hill at Everton, then winding back home in the various ways my feet decide on.
I've always had morning walks, in all the places I've ever lived, or even stayed on holiday. Always circular and sometimes they’ve been runs. But really I prefer walking in the mornings. To be born gently into the days, thinking new thoughts while the days come alive, and I do too.
During the walks and days my thoughts have included things I've then come home and written about on here. Such as the "Liverpool After Humans" story.
Or sometimes my thoughts become music, which I'll often as not sing out loud. Harry Nilsson songs like I used to sing walking up the hill to work in the 1970s, or of course Kate Bush:
”One more step to the top of the city…
Up on the angels shoulders.”
From where I can see the whole of the place and the whole of my life. Walking on the beaches and marshes of the Dee Estuary with Sarah, back and forth on Mersey ferry boats with my dad. And all the times spent in those two cathedrals over to my left.
I never run out of thoughts on this walk, up the hill or down it. And it always feels new. Like all the times, over all these days and years, when the hill of Everton and the city of Liverpool have never been the same place twice. Seasons, lives and this whole hill, never the same twice. Once full of terraces, then tower blocks and walk ups. And now, well look. Forever changing, and me too.
So I’m loving this summer and these morning walks, up round the top of the city, onto the angel’s shoulders, and who knows where next?