Try and say it. Can't, can you? I can, because I'm only typing it and you get a hall pass for that.
Thing is people around here don't like to mention Clatterbridge either because that's where you went to get treated for cancer. It's across the river on the Wirral Peninsula and grew from workhouse into hospital treating infectious diseases, of which there must have been many focused on the Rivers Dee and Mersey, which are both fairly stinky at best of times ~ place names like Black(pool) and Liver(pool) originate in how the water looked, although with United Utilities operating sewerage they could as well be called Blackshite and Livershite.
Now though they've a branch of the treatment centre that would have saved my old mum a long drive to see my old dad: at the centre of Liverpool's university district, itself featuring a teaching hospital. Delighted to see they'd a bespoke Lego model of the building, before catching myself for enjoying a trip to see someone expected to last only days. Funerals though, and in must be the Irish in me, I've always enjoyed as just another excuse for a party: travel that may include a picnic, drink to excess and working the room over a buffet in the way Oscar Wilde or Lord Byron might do. The latter's house I visited when under training at British Midland Airways and it had goblets scattered round made from human skulls. Fantastic!
But as the two women with me ~ I rarely travel without them ~ rolled the guy over and held tea to his lips, all I could do it was stand around commenting "Nice rooms, though!". I was the last person my ex father-in-law had to listen to on Earth, and it must have been a form of release. But it was Garrison Keiller who wrote how at funerals in the US, while women wail guys stand round comparing whose truck gets the better mileage.
(It also reminds of the time at a training course in Toulouse, where it being France no one ever works a weekend. I borrowed the company hack and with two Northern Irishmen and an Aussie we drove down the Pyrenees, gatecrashed a hunter's yearly lunch jamboree and got wasted in a club on tequila slammers... great course. But in NI they've a wicked sense of humour and Ed Boggs told me about a guy who went to Lourdes for a miracle cure and was disappointed until his mates said, "You're kidding, look at the shiny new wheels on your chair!".
Does make you think whether any of it is worthwhile: life, maritime drones. It was Blaise Pascal who wrote how you will never be more alone than at the point of death, and what he meant was that as you stand ankle-bound at the precipice of the world's highest bungee-jump, no matter who's watching from the balcony it is only you who's about to take a leap into the unknown; although all those NDE vids on YouTube are a bit of a spoiler these days.
But as my old Latin teacher used to say ~ manically in view of Miss Whats-her-name suffering hyperthyroidism beside us ~ ours is not to question why, ours is just to do and die. Dramatic way to describe a bit of homework, but then "Ibi est..." as we Romans say?
Ed. "There you go..." tho' Google like the Mindboggler provides varying answers.
