Bloody weather

Global warming? Global cooling more like. It was effing freezing last weekend: almost liderally, mates. And now it's warm and sunny again. What's going on? I liked it back when it was predictable: when it was nice and cold in the winter with snow and stuff, and you had your parka on a lot; and then hot all summer when the plastic sandals came out and we went and swam in the Mersey off Harrison Drive.
Plastic sandals cannot have been good for your feet though. I'm surprised there's not a complete generation of folk these daus suffering from with paediatric deformities and chronic walking problems. I do notice however that there's now a new generation of 'plastic' footware which are considered trendy by grown ups which I find myself hankering after for no apparent reason and against all logic. This is a legacy of being a child of the seventies.
The swims in the Mersey I guess would have been even more dangerous to one's health back then than the endemic footware. Nowadays Liverpool's famous waterway is really rather clean and the area is noted for its beautiful sandy beaches. No - honest, it is.
Looking over the promenade wall at Wallasey these days you are no longer faced with a vista of endless (and stinking) mud flats at low tide. Now it's just miles and miles of clean sand. The council chalets have gone (see below), as has the Derby Pool. Due to the huge popularity of that area (in particular New Brighton) from the 50s onwards there there were two art deco open air swimming pools in Wallasey within a couple of miles of each other. The New Brighton baths was the biggest and had some seriously high diving boards into a 15 feet deep end. I loved them both, but with the decline of the area in the 80s they shut down, and it was a quite a shocker to go back there one year and find them demolished. The new promenade and sea defences which have gone up over the past 20 years or so do look great, and obviously work a treat holding all that sand. New Brighton these days, while not quite being the resort it once was, is looking pretty good now after an almost total facelift, and has emerged as a rather smart residential area with the obvious attraction of it's views of the Liverpool sea front across the river.
The water itself has changed colour too. Well, it must have. To be honest I cannot remember what colour it was, or maybe I've just blanked it out. Families, relatives and half our street (or so it seemed) would hire a beach chalet on Harrison Drive for what felt like all the summer holidays. Inside there was enough room for some deck chair and wind break storage, plus a gas cooker and grill which always produced stripey toast. Us kids would spend the summer on the beach. At low tide it was a case of making huge competition 'dams' against the prom steps to 'stop' the incoming tide. Then come high tide we'd be leaping from the promenade wall into the waves and end up splashing about in a mix of whatever was being pumped out into the river all along the Manchester Ship Canal. Oil, sewage, dead marine life, other floating, err, phenomena, and christ knows what else we would gulp down while attempting to regain a hold on the Harrison drive slipway wall to get back on for another jump. I can still remember gulping down water while fighting in the swell against the sea wall where there were bits of rope to climb back up. It's a real wonder we never went down with any stomach issues, not to mention tetanus from the endless scratches you'd end up with on your knees doing this.
Then there was the wandering off out to the sea, which was a long way off shore at low tide, and the race to get back and not to get cut off when it started coming in. Where were my parents when all this was going on? Sunbathing and drinking no doubt. It was bordering on neglect if you ask me.
Anyway, where was I? The weather's a bit changeable isn't it. Maybe t'was ever thus...