How tall is a Liver Bird?

Well, I suspect that is a question you weren’t expecting, and I’m not sure it was the first thing on my mind when we visited the Royal Liver Bird 360 attraction on our visit to Liverpool a few years back. But it is a really good question, and one that crosses your mind the closer you get to them. And if you’re curious, it’s 18 foot - with a wingspan of 24 foot. To put that into perspective a double decker bus is 14 ft 4” - so quite big, is a good answer.

But before we get to that, the building is pretty spectacular, and architecturally important. It’s perfectly symmetrical with entrances on all four sides, and its pioneering use of reinforced concrete earns it its place in architectural studies, but it’s also pretty special to look at. It cost £621,000 to build which is estimated to be the equivalent of around 58 million today.

And know you know how tall a Liver Bird is, do you know their names?

These questions, all perfectly reasonable when you stop and think, are coming thick and fast now aren’t they? I suspect more of you might know the answer to this one, but they’re called Bella and Bertie. The legend is that they face away from each other as if they were to ever to mate and fly away the city would cease to exist. There’s another story though, and that’s that Bella looks out to sea watching for returning seamen, while Bertie looks inward into the city making sure the pubs are open.

We started in the basement, and up we went. Firstly by a lift, then some stairs - stopping part way up to take in the views and see where we were heading next, and walking through an industrial part of the building which had a ship-like feel - not altogether surprising for a port city.

We were taken outside for a look at how far we’d got, and to look at the clocks. There’s four on the towers, pointing in the four cardinal directions. The clocks were started on 22 June 1911 at 1.40pm - the precise time George V was crowned, and became known as the Great George Liver Clocks.

Each of the clock faces are all 25ft in diameter, which is larger than that of Big Ben so they’re also the largest electronically driven clocks in the UK.

Back inside, there was time for some arty-farty shots - but it also shows how the building decor changed now that we’re in more public areas.

And still we went up, and boy was it worth it.

The views - all round - are amazing, and when you reach the top you realise why this is named the 360 experience, it really is. And despite the glorious weather for our visit on a sunny July day - it’s a windy experience too, but totally worth it.

A new, bigger rug - eventually

Just after Christmas MOH answered the door for a delivery and returned to announce he’d bought the house a present. Those words alone were enough to fill me with fear, but hoping I was wrong I braved it. My fears heightened when I saw it was a rug - MOH and I have quite different taste, and he proudly admitted that he’d copied the decor in his flat (which I liked) from one of the paint catalogues - fair dos and all that. Usually I opt for more modern styles than he does, but that’s not always the case. But seeing the package, the fear was real.

He was keen for opening it and showing me, but I’m wise to this now and instead he showed me a picture from his email confirmation. He knew from the look on my face, which clearly I didn’t hide very well, that I wasn’t keen. In fact I was so not keen that it didn’t make it out of the packaging, and spent all its time with us propped up next to the front door. He tried the ‘I don’t know how to send it back’ trick, but as he’d shared the confirmation email with me, I could help there and printed off the return label for him. He’s ever the optimist and left it to the last possible day before making arrangements for its return, and still it never made it out of the packaging, or out of our very small porch. I’m not sharing where its from, or the style/design because I’m still scarred.

NOT THIS RUG

I know his intentions were good, and his reasoning was pretty solid too - but even so, not that one, not ever.

Having broached the subject of a replacement rug in quite a unique way, we started conversations about replacing the one that was already there. It was cream-based and past its best, by a long way, I knew that and even a shampoo didn’t really help it. It was time to replace it - we were agreed - but I still really wasn’t keen on his tactics, or the actual rug. But anyway, there wasn’t going to be a new rug in the house until the offending one left, never to return.

And it went. And stayed went.

I’d been browsing websites looking at many, many rugs. He wanted a rug that didn’t show the dirt, I wanted one that wasn’t too dark and would lift the space. We looked, and became experts on the many, many rug sizes; measuring the floor to see where it might go - and finally we settled on this distressed Kamran Cayenne Red Rug from Ruggable. So while it’s lighter than MOH wanted, and the most traditional style I’ve ever chosen - the fact that it is washable is in its favour.

It’s a two part system - the top that you can see, which is light and flexible and a sturdier ‘under rug’ pad - which really acts like a large piece of velcro. There’s a knack to pairing them, and the video makes it look simple - it took me longer than I thought it would, and while I’m particularly fussy it took me a couple of attempts to get it matched with the overhang even - or at least with the pad not showing.

And before you make the same comment as MOH, yes it’s distressed and yes it’s meant to look like that. I know that I’m in for this conversation many times over with MOH, but you know it never gets old…

It’s a much bigger rug than we’ve had in this space before, and MOH is pleased he can put his feet on the rug, rather than on the wooden floor. He said walking on it feels ‘crunchy’ and that may settle down I guess. He’s already identified a potential downside of having a larger rug, and that’s it could be easier to spill things on - just as well it’s washable, hey?!

It looks pretty good, I think - and MOH agrees, which is just as well as I’m hoping we’ll get many years use out of this rug - and hopefully our next rug purchase, whenever that might be, will be less traumatic all round.

The kitchens at Belvoir Castle

I don’t know about you, but I find kitchens in large stately homes fascinating, and those in castles even more so. Above stairs at Belvoir was fantastic, but below stairs even more so - maybe it’s because I know my place, or maybe its the industriousness of them, but I know they’re always worth a look. The old kitchen at Belvoir Castle was at the centre of a series of rooms which includes larders, stores and rooms for the senior kitchen staff.

In this kitchen there were thirty plus staff preparing meals for the family, guests and the staff. It doesn’t bear to think how much food and drink was prepared in this space with its coal fired ranges and glorious copper pots and pans. And let’s not even think about keeping it or those pans absolutely gleaming.

The simplicity of the wooden lead-lined sink on tiled pillars tell its own story - and can most probably tell us many, many stories of its own.

One of the other rooms that was open to visit was The Pastry, which had a dual purpose. For what it’s named after - there’s a marble slab set below the window, which I don’t seem to have captured, but that was designed to provide a cool, dry and calm area where the cook could prepare delicate pastries and more I’m sure.

The room was also used as a space for the cook and kitchenmaids as a dining room and rest room, and it looks much more like the country kitchens we’re more familiar with - complete with some metal signs and tins that I’d be very happy to own myself.

Seeing these spaces empty is as I said before fascinating, and I bet even my most realistic visualisations are a patch on what life in kitchens like these were really like. I think I much prefer being able to imagine what it might be like, rather than experiencing them first hand - cooking meals for more than two people can be stressful enough, especially as there’s been really little opportunity to do that over the past few years.