We’re coming to you from the concert room at St. George’s Hall.
This is the first building in the world to have air conditioning.
A labyrinth of Victorian cast iron brings warm air in and takes stale air away.
This building breathes
When Dickens performed here, he called it the most perfect room in the World.
When he read here or Lesley Garret sang here or lovers exchanged their vows here it literally took their breath away.

And now the singing and the laughter have stopped
Even Liverpool has had to learn to walk alone

No more crowds pouring out of the stadiums into Glawdys Street or Priory Road with hope in their hearts
No more high heeled hen nights I-will-surviving around Concert Square
In the churches, no choirs sing
No cellars full of noise
Listen
one of the World’s most joyously musical cities has fallen silent.

Instead of those hen knight conga lines or stadium waves there’s a whole new social choreography - that reassuring “yes I’m still here” nod on your morning walk, the conversations held through open windows - the people sitting talking on opposite ends of the park bench - as though the empty space between them was full of ghosts

One thing about silence, is that it makes you listen
You learn what’s important

Like your breath for instance

Which can be taken away
Or can take your loved ones away.
One hundred and fifty thousand of them
Many of them alone. Gasping for one last breath. You learn how important it is to have a hand to hold in those last moments, to have the chance to say - at last - the things you always meant to say.
One hundred and fifty thousand funerals with no “the family would like you to join them after the service for refreshments” and for solace and for memories, for I haven’t seen you in donkeys’ years embraces.

We probably all know someone

And then there are the people who we didn’t quite know
Like Brian - the man who ran my nearest Merseyrail station who I saw nearly every day but whose surname I never knew and who died of Covid right at the start of this.

Brian was one of those people who always went the extra mile. He remembered your name. He asked after the children. He passed on news. If you’d had a long journey home, if you’d missed your connection or if the trip had been a waste of time, and you saw Brian as you climbed down onto the platform, you could have a bit of a banter and think - ah well home now.
All of these little gestures added up to one great gift ... a gift he gave freely to everyone ... he made you feel as if you mattered.
Brian gave you back a little bit of your humanity with your change.
Being pleasant, showing an interest, doing his best for you ... taking the trouble to raise a smile … these may sound like small, unheroic virtues. But they are the qualities that have got us through this.
The stern, joyful discipline of noticing other people, keeping an eye out for each other, being interested enough to speak and to listen, of wishing them well, of doing your best for them. They’re the virtues in which this city abounds.
In the silence we have heard one great truth - we mean a lot to each other.
The little gestures - the are you alright?
I’m off to the shops can I get you anything?
I’m sorry for your loss?
These are mighty as vaccines.
for the growing good of the world - wrote George Elliot - is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully.”

I was thinking about those benches. Nearly every bench in the city has a little plaque in memory of someone. There are ghosts on those benches and they’re saying, come here and sit by me.
The prom where I walk every day is built on rubble that was brought from Bootle after the Blitz. A bright Phoenix from the flames.
The lost are never really lost. They’ve gone before us, as we say, marked with the sign of faith. They’re not silent. In the laughter of memory, in the sigh of grief, they speak to us.
Of course we never walk alone.
And one day soon we will - like this place - breathe easy again.

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