When I was young, shortly before Adam and Eve drew their first bus passes, the ambitious journalist could balance a dimpled pot of ale on his head while humming the chorus to the Marsellaise.
And nary a drop would be spilled.
Such a rare gift, the young reporter faithfully believed, would persuade all that he was what was then described as “good marriage material”.
This opinion was not shared by the young ladies present, who felt a competent shorthand note would more rapidly advance his career and thus his matrimonial prospects.
But we all approach life from different angles.
And those were wild times in the old Free Library pub, which was long ago bulldozed from its berth near the Birkenhead News office and the Birkenhead Brewery depot, just off Hamilton Street.
During one long lunch hour, a homeward bound seafarer entered with a cage in which perched a parrot with whom he proceeded to have the only rational conversation heard in the pub that day. Stories were everywhere then.
The journalists would be joined by Co-op pallbearers. Then there were the lightly scented salesmen, who had cultivated the eye-winking, adjective-dripping patter needed to sell the dozens of Reliant three-wheelers in the showrooms of Argyle Motors.
The building later became the Hamilton night club.
Your perambulating pensioner was agog, listening to tales about our crusty old pie of a town and its people.
But these cub reporters were truly ambitious, believing newspaper work could lead to literary fame.
And the author/journalist we most admired was George Orwell, not so much for Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four, as for his essays, which left us such a superb picture of 20th century England.
At the time it was still customary for Wirral’s white-collar workers to wear a dark suit, tie, white shirt and polished shoes, though some of our daring chaps sported bow-ties as a badge of literary flair. The women, too, dressed primly in high-buttoned blouses and often navy jackets and skirts and mid-high heels. Flesh was hinted at rather than seen.
People are much more relaxed these days about working dress, even in formal professions such as banking, teaching, medicine and commerce.
We dressed conservatively but behaved outrageously, while it seems now that people often dress outrageously but behave conservatively.
Of course, dear old Orwell never looked good in anything. He relied entirely on talent.
