Liverpool

When I visited Liverpool some time back something struck me about the city. Something felt strangely familiar and comforting in a way London was not and never could be. Maybe it was because there wasn't a single person wearing a suit in the city. Maybe it was because the people there seemed to have a lot of time for you. Maybe it was because Liverpudlians are insanely passionate about their sport and their music. Maybe it was because Liverpool has stubbornly chosen slow decline over big business in spite of the world and its mother trying to "invest" in the city.

Today, in Notes from a small island, I came across Bill Bryson's description of Liverpool:

"I'm exceedingly fond of Liverpool. It's probably my favourite English city. But it does rather feel like a place with more past than future. ...It is [now] impossible to believe that until quite recently - and for two hundred prosperous years before that - Liverpool's 10 miles of docks and shipyards provided employment for 100,000 people directly or indirectly.

The decline happened in a single generation...But in its heyday it was something special. Maritime commerce bought Liverpool not just wealth and employment , but an air of cosmopolitanism that few cities in the world could rival, and it still has that sense about it. In Liverpool you still feel like you are some place."

My hometown is, of course, Calcutta, India.