The magpie takes off and flies to the tree in front of the grave stone for Catherine Wilkinson (started the first public bath facility in Liverpool during the 1830s). I slowly approach the tree and take photos of the magpie while still keeping track of the couple. They soon leave the sitting stone and walk my way. After they pass the magpie leaves the tree and flies off over their heads as they turn towards the tunnel out of the gardens. I follow. As I approach the tunnel entrance soon after I see them on the level above walking back towards the cathedral entrance. I assume they went inside - they were not anywhere in sight when I get to the top and exit the path from the gardens.

    I go east on Mount Pleasant and turn north on the continuance of Rodney Street which is now called Clarence. A quick turn east on Brownlow and I enter the empty lot where the old transformer used to be before it was knocked down a year or so ago. This is what we have always called Big Heart Park - it is still a big empty space in front of the old mail sorting building, though for how long is anybody’s guess as much land is being cleared here. The grass is growing taller in Big Heart now, but the old mound with large rock buried underneath is still a feature - the path that crosses the open field detours around this mound that dominates the place like an old barrow.

  There are not many people in the square today (Friday), but there are still a few tents with goods for sale. People who do pass through move quickly by, as if on their way to somewhere else. There is one exception to the fast pace of the pedestrians. An old man is making his way very, very slowly across the square - he is moving at such a slow pace that it seems like he is in a completely different time scale, like a Slow Lorris. He is injured in some way and is using two metal support sticks to move his body along. He is moving so very, very slowly that it amazing that no-one bumps into him. It is almost as if he is a fixed object relative to everyone else, yet he does move, steadily and unstoppably.

  I am standing in front of the T.J. Hughes display window. I glance inside the store and see an overly large man in his late fifties sitting on a bed. He is clearly not in the best of health and seems out of breath. His wife who is much smaller sits on a nearby chair as a floor salesman gives his spiel. The man is trying out the bed to see if he wants to buy it, but he doesn’t look at the salesman - he just stares straight ahead. He is worn-out and tired, not so much with the day but rather with his whole life. I get the feeling as I watch the silent tableau through the display window that the man is not so much interested in buying the bed, but knows that he must go through with the bed-buying ritual.

    I soon leave the market square area and move on down Stafford Street going north until I reach London Road. I use the pedestrian lights to cross this busy divided thoroughfare. I walk north along Soho Street until I come to the large open space of the Throat Field. Everything is pretty much as it had been the year before, very empty and vacant though not at all sad as it was in earlier years. I didn’t spend much time here but continued along Soho until it come out to Everton Brow Road. The field that had been there to the side of (what used to be) the church of St. Mary of the Angels is now paved over and turned into a parking lot with large metal fencing and an in-and-out metal gateway.

    The gateway is closed and there are no cars in the lot. Not much use to anybody it would seem, especially to the people living there. The same faded Jesus pictures and church closing protests are there on the front door of the church. Plastic flowers are still on the locked metal gate, but not so many of them - an old cause fading away. The flowers that used to grow by the church’s sign have been cut and the wild flower weedy places inside the fence and around the bell have been covered over and wiped out by large pebble gravel.