Wet and Windy in Wirral

We arrived in Liverpool on Wednesday 17th January, after a 1.45 hour flight from Geneva on Easyjet. On arrival, we hired a car which conveniently had no road maps or atlas, and attempted to find our way to the Wirral. After a few wrong turns, taking the wrong tunnel under the river, and winding our way through small country towns with no street signs (handy, that!), we finally arrived in Heswall, Wirral at the house of Sylvia and Derek (Anura's godfather).

This is a lovely two storey house on the bank of the river Dee. On the opposite bank on a clear day we can see Wales, and it is a lovely view from our upstairs bedroom window. Sylvia and Derek have been wonderful hosts, and we have enjoyed a very relaxing couple of days in spite of the weather.

Unfortunately on Thursday the Wirral has been hit with the worst storms on record for 17 years, with winds blowing at 80-100 miles per hour and heavy rain. 16 people have been killed by falling debris, walls of houses have collapsed on top of cars, roofs have blown off, and lots of areas have been without power. Thankfully, we just experienced the wind and rain, and there was no damage to this house. All around us there are broken trees, fences and damage to property, particularly the local sporting ground which has huge cricket score boards and screens blown over and smashed to pieces!

Yesterday we ventured into the city of Liverpool, and went to two cathedrals - the Anglican (which is a big, dark, depressing building but has a great view from the tower) and the Metropolitan which is a catholic cathedral that is very beautiful and very different from any other we have seen. After that we walked into the heart of the city to the official Liverpool Football shop so that our soccer fans could look at the amazingly expensive merchandise! The shop was packed (big game here today against Chelsea - Liverpool won 2-0) and there were security guards everywhere!

Today we spent the day and evening with our friends, John and Carole Steele. They took us to visit Port Sunlight, which is a lovely village that was built specially by the Lever brothers to house the workers from their Sunlight Soap factory in the late 1890's/early 1900s. The village was really very advanced for the times, it had lovely houses (with bathrooms!), a pub, women's hall, dance hall, hospital, fire station and shops all enclosed in the village walls with the factory. The grounds were well maintained, and the working conditions were excellent with a 5 day paid holiday each year, high wages (for the times) and the 8 hour working day. There is a lovely art gallery there that houses the art that Lord Lever collected during his lifetime - fantastic amounts of Wedgewood, chinese ceramics, pre-raphaelite paintings and sculpture.

Not sure if you have noticed, but in our family room on the wall next to the table is a print that Anura inherited from his grandfather. We have spent a lot of time appraising this print with friends and family trying to work out what it means. It is a picture of a dog with his head on his master's knee, and they are sitting in a gaol cell. We were amazed to find the original of this print in the art gallery! It's called "Fidelity", and it was very exciting to see the original, as we had no idea where the print had come from and were not expecting it.

Tomorrow morning we are leaving and heading to Worcester, to visit relatives and see the places where Anura's grandfather grew up. On Monday, we head to Bath to stay with Nola and hope to visit Oxford university. Then it's off to London for more great adventures on the London Eye, visiting Madame Tussaud's and avoiding having our heads lopped off at the Tower of London...

We leave the UK on the 29th and return to Geneva for one night. Then we'll be leaving on a jet plane, don't know when we'll be back again... returning to school, work and reality.