Rush hour blues

I caught the 6am train from Runcorn yesterday, to get to the London Book Fair for 9am; I had composed a letter to the editor of my local paper about the ghastly ordeal of the rush hour before I'd got to Euston, so confident was I that the tube at 8.15am would be hell on earth. Wrong. It was really quite civilised - no shoving, even room to read the paper in comfort. Where was everyone? Was it Sunday? Was it Christmas? Was it a parallel universe?
No - just late. When I lived in London, most people got to work for 9am. These days only London laggards and country mice are still commuting at such a decadently late hour. This became clear at the end of the day when I caught the tube back to Euston at 7pm and the place was crammed with worker bees released from the hive, a good 90 minutes later than the 1980s norm.
So I can still write my hurrah-I-don't-live-in-London-any-more letter to the editor of the Liverpool Daily Post. For a while there I thought I'd have to revise my prejudices about my erstwhile and unlamented home, but I'm safe after all.

Time and tide

There aren't many businesses that make the 200 year mark; there are even fewer which are still under family control, let alone with the sixth generation having both hands on the wheel. Liverpool has one of these treasures – and a shipping line, to boot. Capsica launched our latest book (TIME AND TIDE) on 8 Feb looking at this intriguing asset – the Bibby Line Group. Remarkable company, fantastic project, terrific people.
For more on the book launch, the book and the business, go to http://icliverpool.icnetwork.co.uk/liverpooldailypost/ourview/columnists/peterelson/tm_headline=success-based-on-staying-local-and-ahead-of-the-times%26method=full%26objectid=18611357%26siteid=50061-name_page.html
(If this URL doesn't work, go to http://icliverpool.icnetwork.co.uk, click on Daily Post, find the columnists, look for Peter Elson's column of 12 Feb.)

Star attraction

It's Liverpool's 800th anniversary this year – at least the octocentenary of Bad King John's concession to a few local burghers who had been whingeing about paying for King John's new castle so the Bad King could set sail for Ireland with all its Celtic gold, colleens and wolfhounds. But glossing over the expediency of giving the little fishing village a Royal Charter, it now means we, the current denizens of Liverpool, can kick up our heels in fine style. The picture above does not show Liverpool, but Verona. The fantastic thing lighting up the big piazza is not a flimsy special effect, but a solid steel structure created in 1984 by what the Italians call an archisculptor (great name) called Rinaldo Olivieri. It's huge, it's fantastic, it's staggeringly impressive, and if Liverpool's City Fathers chose to commission something of this scale and quality, it would be quite something. OK, City Dads, come on, beat this.
Toodle pip.

Taking wing

Why Batland? Mostly because I'm a dreadful old bat, but also because I have a house in Transylvania, home to the most stylish bats in the business.

For the time being (and for the last 18 years) I live in Liverpool – the original, not one of the 15 or so around the world – and almost make a living as a publisher of gorgeous looking, life-enhancing non-fiction books under the imprints of Capsica and Garlic Press. Have a look at http://www.loveliverpoolbooks.com for some of them.

Garlic Press, incidentally, had nothing to do with the Transylvanian connection. I was taking drawing lessons, and we had to bring in a kitchen implement to sketch. I brought in a garlic press and it occurred to me that it would be a great name for a publishing house. At the time (1992) I was a business journalist and it hadn't occurred to me that it might be me doing the publishing. It's an odd world.

Gagging to know more about Transylvania, eh? It IS a real place and ISN'T full of vampires. Full of vampire-chasers, certainly - lots of foreign (ie not Transylvanian) nutters running around the mountains looking for Dracula. But although Vlad the Impaler's 14th century castle is in the valley below my house, and the village next to mine is named after a bat cave, and you can occasionally hear wolves howl from my back door, the place is idyllic ather than Gothic. Not dark and dangerous, but light and full of wildflower meadows. Much more of that later.

For now, the sun's out and it's Chinese New Year, and Liverpool has the oldest Chinese community in Europe, so I'm off out.

T'ra.