WßD Drawbridge
Windsor Street Days
Part Six
Chapter Three
Drawbridge
Part I
When the Drawbridge Goes Up
As a boy, the drawbridge was a vital part of my defences when laying out the battlefields on the carpet.
I often use the analogy in adult life too.
In my family the phrase 'Ay up! The drawbridge has gone up!!' informed us that somewhere, something, someone, was not in too good a shape.
As a physical act, I've always been slightly in awe when the physical drawbridge is raised to allow us to pass through without hindrance on the waterway, slightly embarrassed with the line of cars temporarily held up.
I often use the analogy in adult life too.
In Liverpool, I’m always inspired by the horizontal drawbridge at the Albert Dock as it moves horizontally. Watching the mechanisms enthrals me, as too the locks on the Rivers Avon and Severn where pleasant, halcyon summer days in Britain go hand-in-hand with occasional danger, damage, injury, perhaps even fatality for the unwary.
The Swing Bridge on the Albert Dock Liverpool
Thus, the Swing Bridge in Liverpool’s Albert Dock, allows the roadway to turn on itself horizontally to allow ships and three-master sailing ships to egress and enter. Many times I’ve thoroughly enjoyed watching this in operation, standing by the pillars on the right, or otherwise seated within the balustrade at one of the many coffee tables.
Great times. This black and white image licensed by Adobe also hallmarks my Liverpool home; just the other side of the Liver Building where we have Princes Half Dock and then the Waterloo Warehouse Dock Basin. So, whenever I am in Liverpool I stay just up the road to the right of this picture still in my home territory and within sight, sound, and smell of the Mersey and the Irish Sea. Grand!
Part II
We may have fewer drawbridges today, but metaphorical drawbridges abound.
Physical drawbridges may hint at being a thing of the past, a reminder of less happy, less stable times. But their effect remains their platform now this maelstrom 24/7 lifestyle we all must live today.
Mental ill-health is on a steep rise. We have more suicides than ever. A line of poetry I read at school - it had a huge impact on me - perfectly describes it, though I cannot find its source...
“When earth’s foundations cracked, crumbled and collapsed.”
ermmm, yes …
shattering everything,
when all came crashing down about me.
When I sense that all is not well, when I no longer smile at the comical analogy of the grace of the Swan above water belying furious activity below water to maintain that appearance of grace, then the message is clear.
Raise the drawbridge.
When I do so, I take stock. I slow down. I think things through and adopt a more measured approach. I can evaluate strengths and weaknesses. I’m able to see my strengths and able to gauge their pliability and suppleness.
As I grow older, I become wiser, hopefully. That is not a given.
As I grow older, I become less willing to let go.
As I grow older, I refuse to accept that what I did with ease, with aplomb, with style, with awe, yes, and grace, fifty - forty - thirty - twenty - and even ten years ago, I simply cannot maintain to their original degree. Maintain, retain, but adjust to current circumstances.
Suddenly, I'm at war with myself, or, staying with the nautical … all at sea.
Part III
I pause.
I consider.
Danger looms.
Suddenly I see it.
"Stop all engines!"
“Abort landing! Up, up!!”
"Raise the drawbridge!!!"
Part IV
Slowly, peace and calm return. Hectic schedules are set aside. Less time is spent flying the screen, less interaction, and less emphasis on messaging.
There comes a time when I must attend to personal needs, listen to my body, pay attention to my immediate tasks, and pay closer attention, still, to bringing circadian rhythm into line again with natural light and darkness.
It is only for a time.
I have the right to concentrate on my affairs. Too many people in less happy lands would give anything to enjoy this right.
Never, in 68 years, can I recall a time so hellish, so evil in international concepts as I do now.
Yet I grasp, too, that I'm now finally understanding what my parents, grandparents, uncles, and aunts felt ninety and eighty years ago.
Part V
Do I lower the drawbridge yet? It looks all clear…
“All clear?”
Do you know what you've just said?
No. What?
For twenty years, every Tuesday night at the stroke of 7 pm the local fire station tested the air raid siren. It was intense. A slow whine, steadily building in intensity until it crescendoed across the busy town of Cheltenham, travelling across the park and seeming to hit my window full on.
During the war, there were several covering north, south, east, and west. As the all clear sounded in Cheltenham, when the wind was southwest, family and friends who lived during the blitz described how one could hear the air raid sirens starting up in Gloucester, a two-minute flight away.
Time and again I'd hear Mum and Dad chatting privately. One would say, “Aye' There she goes. The All clear, Nance, dear!”, and Mum would always reply, “Oh how I loved that sound, Des. I knew we were safe again, at least for a time.” The note of trepidation still clear in the voice.
Part VI
On a Tuesday night - I was about 22 years old (1977) - I was at my desk by the window and heard the siren. I looked across the park from where it stood high above the fire station tower, and across to the Gas Works clocktower (still there but as part of the Tesco Supermarket complex) - “yep bang on 7 pm.”
It would sound for about 30 seconds and then would follow the long winding down. If the wind was in the right direction, I could hear it long after others had lost its sound, its last decibels seeming to be trying to burrow deep into the bowels of the earth.
Suddenly though, on this particular Tuesday evening, it dipped. That was quick! Hang on it's going up again! And I froze in my seat. (I was studying for my police promotion examinations at the time). I'd heard the air raid sirens countless times in wartime newsreels, but never in real life.
Downstairs, I heard Mum. Hassled movement. Dad was on ‘evenings’ (6 pm - 2 am) so not in. I walked to the landing. Mum looked up the long staircase.
“I never thought I'd ever hear that again.
Now you can get an incline, Ken,
of what Dad and I, all of us, lived through.
Remember this.. .!”
And Mum was different.
There was belligerence and seriousness, steely defiance, that I eventually summed up as, and called, ‘Mum's wartime seriousness’, some might prefer wartime spirit. But, to me, that romanticism was very definitely absent. No. This was a seriousness, quite different. There was a recalled fear. I learned to appreciate that adjective for the first time.
I saw this twice only. Once, in a photograph from November 1944 (below) sitting with her brother’s skipper eight weeks before they were all killed, and the other in November 2014 (also below) when Mum was reading her brother-in-law’s Handley-Page Halifax Crash Report (1943) and compiled at the turn of the century.
But I have a memory of Mum's humour too. When I was getting too big for my boots in 2014-2015.
“Yes, Sur!” … and lighting the room up as only mum could! (That too is on the carousel).
Part VII
So, is it all clear yet?
No. The drawbridge stays raised for the duration. Another one of my parents’ stock war-time phrases.
Oh, Dad! How long do I have to do this stupid duty?
You’re off school, Ken, for six weeks.
For the duration!
It is easier. There is less demand. Less stress.
In this incidental strictly-come-dancing-x-factor-love-island-apprentice-no-deference Era, I think the phrase is Me Time.
It seems selfish. I prefer to call it taking stock and concentrating on enjoyable priorities.
5 February 2025
All Rights Reserved
LIVERPOOL
© 2024 Kenneth Thomas Webb
First written on 30 October 2021
