July 2021: Hyperlocal

Books read this month: A Pair Of Jesus Boots (Sylvia Sherry, Penguin, 1969); A Pair Of Desert Wellies (Sylvia Sherry, Jonathan Cape, 1985); Rocky And The Ratman (Sylvia Sherry, Jonathan Cape, 1988); Rocky And The Black Eye Mystery (Sylvia Sherry, Jonathan Cape, 1992).

I had a romance with my past this summer. Everyone remembers a book they read in school, don't they? We can all recall those hazy afternoons, bellies full and energy empty, when the class took out a reading book (what other kinds of books are there?) and each of us took turns to read a page or chapter out loud.

I started going to school in the 1980s when my nan lived in Toxteth, Liverpool 8. The area hadn't been touched since the war. As a kid growing up in the time of space travel, IBM and Donna Summer, it felt like the place - full of empty streets, stray dogs and ripped mattresses - had been discarded despite being located the throw of a rock from Liverpool's city centre. I was there a few times a week, travelling on buses, cutting through 'ollers' and dodging dog shit and delinquents. But the place had a magic, too. Music spilled from windows, exotic smells drifted across tenement landings and the people couldn't smile wide enough. You'll read a lot about inner-city problems and local tension in the area around that time, and there's obviously lots of truth to that, but my memories also include the oft-overlooked fact that ordinary people lived ordinary lives with extraordinary incidents intruding every so often.

That describes lots of the plot of Sylvia Sherry's 'A Pair Of Jesus Boots', first published back in 1969 but enjoying a paperback resurgence with an English teacher of mine in the mid-80s following a TV adaptation on the BBC. The story centres on our scallywag hero Rocky O'Rourke and the trials and trouble that follow him, his family and friends around an estate close to where I used to visit my nan. A story of historical hyperlocal importance, when I shared the fact I was reading it on Twitter recently, an invisible republic of Scousers revelled in the nostalgia. The book still resonates as it tells a tale as old as time, the beast looking for beauty in the belly of the whale. There's lots of silent night streets, peering around corners, sinister shadows and imagined dangers hidden in the dark. The real dangers, of course, are hidden in plain sight and, 'A Pair Of Jesus Boots' being a book aimed at teenagers, you don't need intuition to spot them coming. Just memories and the melancholy that often comes with the strongest of them.

Now I was hooked. I turned the last page, but couldn't leave Rocky, his sister Suzie and the avenues and alleys of my childhood behind. Craving more, I set off on a deep dive and found the follow-up 'A Pair Of Desert Wellies' hidden deep in the depths of eBay. Published sixteen years later, its plain prose and sinister arc are clearly the result of a writer returning to a well that sprung in a moment of inspiration that perhaps disappeared as quickly as it arrived. But, wait... is this story of kidnap, escape, extortion and explosions outlandish when it's written in a time a person can still be persecuted for the colour of their skin? 'A Pair Of Desert Wellies' might not be hard-hitting citizen journalism from the frontline, but it could be the first work of fiction to include references to the civil unrest Toxteth erupted with in the early 1980s. It'd be disingenuous to suggest Sherry's story is hard-hitting, but the poverty, pointlessness and points of views presented in this follow-up will tug at the memories of those who lived through the time.

Cut to just three years later and Sherry's words are back skulking around Prinny Avenue and surrounds in 'Rocky And The Ratman'. In truth, those I asked have no recollection of this third book in our collected memory of 'A Pair Of Jesus Boots' and the feelings it left with us all, but I found this part of the continued adventures gripping. All of us the other side of 40 remember an older member of the community who was viewed with suspicion by the rest of us and often had a cruel nickname (by us it was 'Cherry Top', the fella' who put boot polish on his bald head to go for a pint). Times were different and Sherry skillfully paints a picture of desperation amongst these deft paragraphs filled with daft names and dead eyes. Our hero Rocky is still having problems with his mam, brother and rival gangs, but this time there's a tangible darkness on the edge of town as drugs spill out onto the canvas.

The quadrilogy (is that a word?) comes to an end as the nineties begin and Rocky's world grows larger. Gone are the boa constricting 80s and in their place comes a decade filled with hope standing on the shoulders of giant promises. The mist from the Mersey seems to lift in 'Rocky And The Black Eye Mystery' and light fills the wide open sky above Liverpool 8. Promises to communities, such as those described devastatingly simply by Sherry, have a habit of being broken though and the author captures times of dispersion and rehousing well as shared spirit falls apart with and without outside help. Once again capturing the unique atmosphere of Liverpool and some of its people, these short and sharp chapters detail the social problems linked to the returning protagonists of the series and injects a compassion that is sorely missing from today's portrayals of working class life for kids.

Within these books, you'll recognise symptoms and traits that are diagnosed, deliberated and defined immediately today. There are moments when the author's lightness of touch betrays the reality of these heartbreaking situations, but this tactic also means the books never stray into sentimentality. Sherry just writes what others see each and every day.

Look after each other, everyone. Al x