I woke up at about eight o’clock with the mother of all hangovers. I’m
told that some people can’t eat if they have a hangover. Danny’s an
example of this – food the morning after a tankfull always puts him in a bad
way. But I’ve always found that the best cure for a hangover is getting the
largest possible fry-up inside me. Brian tells me it’s my liver crying out
for protein to help it detoxify my bloodstream. Well, I’m not going to argue
with a scientist. So I went down to the restaurant, went over to the buffet,
and helped myself to about half a dozen hash browns, four fried eggs and five
or six grilled tomatoes. I noticed Brian and Lydia, sitting at a table for
four, looking like a couple of fourteen-year-olds on a first date.They hadn’t,
had they? I mean, not Brian. He was only interested in the cartilage content
of hamburgers and the merits of the A+ engine. I sat down with them and
starting to hack my way through the pile of fat and carbohydrate with which I’d
loaded my plate. Brian had adopted the same technique, except with about ten
rashers of bacon. Maybe he really was trying to keep his strength
up. After about ten minutes, Danny came down. Now I was feeling a bit
off-colour, but he was a colour of his own invention. A sort of light puce, I’d
call it, if I knew what colour puce is. It just looks and sounds too much like
puke for me to resist. In fact, thinking about it, if you had to describe
Danny, you’d say he was light puke. The carpet in the restaurant was quite a
strong green colour, and between Danny’s light puke colour and the carpet,
there was one heck of a clash. I felt the need for sunglasses. Mind you, I’d
needed sunglasses from the moment I woke up. Danny went over to the
breakfast buffet, lifted a few metal lids from the trays of breakfast foods.
He shuddered. He poured himself four glasses of orange juice and carried them
over to the table. He sat down. He looked at my breakfast. He shuddered. He
looked at Brian’s breakfast. He seemed to emit a slight cry, and then
disappeared from the restaurant as fast as he could move without actually
running.“Well he could at least have said ‘good morning’,” commented
Brian. “Obviously it’s not just the Dee that has a fragile ecosystem,”
I replied.We took an hour or so to eat breakfast. If you’ve got a
self-service buffet you don’t really want to stop until you’ve had your
money’s worth. And then the money’s worth of other people who have left
the restaurant suddenly. Then we went off to our rooms to collect our things.
After we paid the bill we wandered outside to collect Diana. I’d asked the
woman on the reception desk, and Danny had definitely checked out. So we
walked round the hotel, and found him out on the towpath, contemplating deeper
things and looking into the canal. Or maybe looking into the canal and
contemplating deeper things, if you know what I mean. Judging by the look of
pain on his face, he was probably thinking how much more fun it would be to
drown himself there and then. After a while, once he’d promised he wasn’t
going to throw up in the car, we dragged him round to the car park and we all
climbed in. But we made sure we put him in the front, and opened the window.
Brian headed us out of the city, first of all in the direction of Whitchurch,
so we could follow the A41 round the ring road. We turned left as we hit the
ring road, and followed the signs for Liverpool. We agreed that this was it,
we were definitely going home, and drove straight past the zoo, despite Lydia’s
protests. Well she lived in Liverpool – she could always come and visit
another day.So after two hundred miles, and on the fourth day, we were
reaching the end of our Quest. I knew that, finally, incredibly, I would soon
be on my way home. But I must admit to a certain sadness as we left that
beautiful city. Fact is, with Chester, even though it’s hard to find a
decent pub, the place’s sad history, and its soft pinky-brown crumbling
buildings just seem to seep into your soul. We left Chester and drove
through some pretty boring countryside for a while. Very flat.
“Flat round here,” I commented. “Flat and boring,” replied Danny.“Well
the whole Wirral’s a bit flat and boring,” interjected Lydia. “In fact,
it’s worse than that. A bit of the Wirral’s actually in Wales, and that’s
just a giant industrial estate. Sometimes I think the only reason they put the
Stanlow oil refinery on the Wirral was to brighten the place up a bit.”“And
so OMD could make a song about it,” pointed out Danny. Come to think about
it, Danny has a certain resemblance to one of the blokes in OMD. You know, the
bass player who couldn’t dance. Except Danny plays the electric guitar and
can dance – well, so he tells me. Not too long after that we hit the
outskirts of Ellesmere Port. We agreed that skirting was what outskirts were
for, so that was what we did. The A41 runs sort of round the bottom of the
town, and then back out into what’s left of the countryside. Then we entered
Merseyside, as the countryside gave to suburbs again, and then the suburbs to
warehouses, and then on the right we saw the oil tanks of Port Sunlight
gleaming white in the sun. At least, I assumed they were oil tanks. Maybe they
were full of washing-up liquid. And now we were really running out of
A41. We passed through what was apparently Tranmere without noticing any real
change in the environment, and then we were into the Wickes-and-Toys ‘R’
Us-belt that encircles all medium-sized towns in this country. And cars were
emerging from the gaping mouth of the tunnel, which was disgorging southwards
from Liverpool.“You know why there’s two tunnels, don’t you?” remarked
Brian, “they started from Birkenhead and Liverpool, but they missed each
other in the middle and came out in different places.”“That’s not right,
is it?” I asked. “I mean, that’d never happen – they’d plan better
than that? Or they’d notice the tunnels were getting too long.” There
was a kind of stony silence. It’s not true, is it?There was a slight rise as
we neared the river. We came to the top of the hill, and I found myself
actually catching my breath. A strange thing, I’d seen the view through the
buildings and across the Mersey to Liverpool. And it had looked absolutely
beautiful. We came down to a strange roundabout, with some shabby looking
buildings in the middle and a fenced-off car park. All in the middle of the
roundabout. We started round it. There was a set of traffic lights halfway
round, and we checked out the exits while we sat at red. A few minor little
roads that didn’t seem to lead anywhere, the A454 round to the Wallasey
tunnel, and the A41. But that was back to Chester. We went round again.
Definitely right. The A41 only went back to Chester. We’d done it.
Literally. The end of the road.“Three days’ driving, and we’ve made it
from Westminster to Wallasey,” I remarked, as Brian drove around to find
somewhere to park. “What do you mean?” asked Lydia.“Well, that was
the whole point of the Quest,” explained Danny. “From Westminster to
Wallasey.” “But this isn’t Wallasey. It’s Birkenhead.”It was a
bit of a shock. I didn’t believe her at first. Westminster to Wallasey had
become imprinted in my mind as a kind of mantra. But eventually Brian
persuaded me that “Baker Street to Birkenhead”, as well as being more
accurate at both ends, was also just as alliterative. Brian parked up
next to the square. I say the square like there’s just the one. There may be
more. But I only saw one. Funny place, Birkenhead. Generally a bit grimy, but
some of the buildings are rather attractive under the grime. Quite grand.
Where’s there’s muck there’s brass, I suppose. Or was. Especially around
the square. We walked back down to the roundabout, and found a decent
viewpoint, and had a good look across the river at Liverpool.I’ll tell you
what it was like. It was like going out one evening and meeting your mother,
and she’s dressed as a queen and talking like a duchess. That’s what it
was like. A side to Liverpool I’d never imagined. I mean, I’d been to
Liverpool lots of times, but of course then you see it from the inside, as it
were. Sort of, at home. Where it’s not putting on airs. And you know there
are some grand buildings, but they don’t really stick out like they should.
But seeing Liverpool across the Mersey, on that late-August late morning, made
you wonder. The Royal Liver building, and the Catholic Cathedral, and all the
others, were shining in the sun. It was like looking over the Jordan, and
finding that Jerusalem the Golden had acquired a Scouse accent while I wasn’t
looking.“It made sure it could be seen as you came in from the sea,”
commented Brian. “Makes you realise where its money came from. Funny it
should look its best at the tradesmen’s entrance.” We had to get off
pretty sharply, to stand a chance of making it home before Monday night. But
before we did we grabbed a drink each at the Worsley Arms, the pub overlooking
the roundabout at the end of the A41. Lydia bought a bottle of brown ale, and
had the barman open it, but walked out with it when we’d finished our
drinks. We went back to the car, Brian drove us back for one last trip round
the roundabout, with Lydia pouring the brown ale out of the window and onto
the road like some kind of libation to the god of the A41. And then we headed
for the tunnel. Brian did offer to go back round the roundabout, and follow
the route all the way back to London down the A41, if we wanted. We declined.To
next chapter