Another (expletive deleted to keep
this blog child-friendly) week.
As I write this it is Saturday
lunchtime and apart from a very brief excursion out into Heswall for a coffee
on Thursday morning I have spent most of the week in bed.
I
think I overdid it a bit when we went to see the Giants the Friday before
last.
Partner-who-loves-tea has
womanfully (to my surprise the Microsoft Office Spillchucker didn’t reject that word - blogger did!!) stepped in
and kept the show on the road despite an exceptionally busy week at work where she was working her multi-coloured socks off.
I may
have mentioned this before but I love her very much and cannot imagine where I
and Son-who-watches-films would be without her.
She is a gem in a million. I'd show you a photo but then she'd chop my head off... Ah well - if you never take risks what is life worth? Here is one of the first photos I ever took of her in March 86 when we began courting.
I’ve been off Facebook for a week
and there are 99 notifications.
That
seems a few too many to go through at the moment!!
I had a quick look at my e-mails and one of
them was from the Royal Signals asking to see the
photo from a few posts back –
thanks for the idea Adrian.
We shall see
what they come up with.
Until Thursday I had no interest in
what dropped through the letterbox (of which the above is only a small sample).
Shows what a sad state I was in!
But since then I’ve been delighted and helped a lot by the postcards and
letters and bits and pieces that have come through the mail. I hope those concerned will forgive slow
replies.
You were promised the Giants…
You were right, Marcheline, not these Giants -
These Giants -
On Friday 24th July the Giants paid
their second trip to Liverpool. It
lasted till Sunday and they were here to tell the story of Liverpool’s involvement
in World War I. The Giants came to
Liverpool in 2012 and their popularity was such that they were welcomed back by
an estimated 1 million viewers on the streets of the city and along some of its outskirts.
There were plenty of people all
around the city centre waiting to see them on Friday morning.
We saw Xolo the Dog first. It is pronounced Chohlow. I picked a space between two young ladies to
get a view because I knew that a dog, even at ten feet tall, would be hidden by
the crowds.
Just as Xolo arrived at the gap so
did a marshall – damn…
Oh well, at least the Superlambanana on the Royal Court got a good view.
And so did the police helicopter
that took those
fantastic photos I blogged about last week.
The Little Girl Giant had only just
woken up from her sleep in the Queensway Tunnel.
At around 20 feet tall she is quite
splendid.
We walked across St John’s Gardens
to see the Grandmother as she woke up.
An ideal spot to view from would be the Museum steps but they were roped
off for health and safety reasons. I
suppose the Museum was afraid of being sued by someone who couldn’t tell a step
from a step. The world has gone mad, I
tell you!
Any way, back to more sensible and
fun things. All ages were there and the
excitement built as the music around the front of St George’s Hall changed.
On the radio someone had asked how
the Lilliputians who attend to the Giants manage for toilet facilities seeing
as they will be out all day. That’s always a popular subject to ask astronauts,
Formula One drivers, etc. The answer in
this case was a wooden portaloo for the Little Girl Giants attendants and a
posh ‘welfare’ van for those of the Grandmother.
I have to show the British bobby
with his helmet. It was 28ºC - you can
tell it’s hot when the bobbies are in their shirt sleeves.
This seagull has a good spot.
The
original statue of the Spirit of Liverpool was located on top of the Walker Art
Gallery on William Brown Street for more than a century from 1877 but it had to
be removed in 1993 as the marble had deteriorated so badly that the sculpture
was no longer structurally safe. A replica Spirit of Liverpool was carved from
a 41 ton piece of Chinese marble in 1993-1994. The replica was put back in
place of the original on the roof of the Walker Art.
This seagull has a good view as
well but seems more interested in the crowds below. He’s obviously wondering what on Earth is
going on.
The Grandmother Giant spent the night
snoozing in her wheelchair and that was the first thing to arrive on the scene.
And here’s the grandmother. Strewth, she’s tall. 25 feet tall,
actually.
“Hello little people.”
She weighs five tons.
But she doesn’t look overweight.
Weight Watchers eat your hearts out. “
SHE'S 85, half Irish, half Breton,
smokes a pipe, spits and if you see her lift her skirts run for cover - she’s
about to fart.”
Unfortunately there was
a slight accident in Liverpool – she farted and her head fell off (well, not
quite off but it got dislodged causing a fifteen minute delay to the evening schedule.
“She looks just like me Aunty May,” said a
girl from Birkenhead.
Some of the movements are made by
the Lilliputians jumping off the lorry on ropes. Great fun.
One small step for Grandmother, one
giant leap for Lilliputiankind.
And here comes the live music lorry
with Jean-Luc Courcoult, writer/director of Royal de Luxe, the creators of the
giants.
Since 1979, led by Jean-Luc
Courcoult, Royal de Luxe have travelled around the world with their small and
large scale shows. They are invited into the heart of the cities, surprising
all generations and allowing them to escape from reality for a short time.
From 1993, Royal de Luxe became synonymous
with over-the-top, extravagant theatre: the Saga of the Giants began and became
a major chapter of the company’s history. Manipulated by Lilliputians, these
Giants bring stories to life on city streets over several days. Their audacity
and their poetry, mixing time and genres, with different giants moving at the
same time at various ends of a city results in thousands and even millions of
spectators.
In 2013, Jean-Luc Courcoult
was decorated with the title of Knight of the Order of the Arts and Letters of
the French Republic by Jean-Marc Ayrault, Prime Minister of France.
If you ever get the chance to see
them it is worth the squash of people and the traffic jam home and there aren’t many
things I’d say that about.
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