Feeling the fear and dreaming it anyway

‘We will shortly be arriving at Liverpool Lime Street.’

As the guard made his announcement on Friday and I gazed up at the looming stone walls lining the train-track I was sent hurtling back to the first time I’d ever heard those words, the first time I’d ever made that journey, fear pooling in the pit of my stomach, at the age of 18.

Back then, I’d been arriving in Liverpool to go to university here, all on my own, with all of my studently goods stuffed into a battered suitcase that had once belonged to my grandad.

Let’s just say I had quite an extreme version of the Gen X childhood. So while other first year students arrived in the comfort of their parents’ cars, with the comfort of their parents’ company, I was doing this rite of passage solo.

As the train came to a halt at Lime Street on Friday and the doors automatically slid open, I smiled as I remembered how 18-year-old me had to reach out of the window on the train door to open it from the outside, and how panicked I’d felt that I’d mess it up and incur the wrath of all the passengers waiting behind me.

And as I strolled out of the station on Friday and made my way to the bus stop I remembered how 18-year-old me had fumbled her way through that very same exit, clutching a piece of paper in her clammy hand as she tried to work out the directions to the street where a minibus would be waiting to ferry students to the halls of residence.

And as I boarded my bus on Friday, I remembered my 18-year-old self finally finding the minibus and clambering on board, all of a sudden acutely conscious of her battered suitcase and her London council estate accent and her cheap clothes.

And as I got off the bus on Friday, only five minutes down the road from the halls of residence my 18-year-old self had been bound for, and I let myself into my Airbnb apartment, I marvelled at how far I’d come from that nervous, awkward teenage girl.

arriving at my ‘very Liverpool’ apartment!

And I felt so, so grateful that, in spite of the fear she’d felt, and all the inadequacies she experienced, being plunged from a council estate into such a middle class world (because back then only 10% of people went to university and let’s just say the vast majority did not come from estates) she somehow found the grit and the courage to make that train journey all by herself.

And although my 20-year-old self ended up dropping out of university because she couldn’t stand being permanently broke and craved being back in a world she felt a part of, the wheels had been set in motion for the life I would go on to have.

Because my 19-year-old self had the good fortune to meet a Liverpudlian writer named Jimmy McGovern while she was here. A writer from a similar background to hers, who went on to achieve huge success writing series for television, without having gone to university.

And after she’d dropped out of uni and saw McGovern write breathtakingly brilliant dramas about the kind of people she knew and could relate to (dramas like Cracker and Hillsborough, to name just a couple) my 20-something-year-old self started to believe that maybe, just maybe, she could become a writer too.

And as I sat in my apartment this morning, putting the finishing touches to my ninth World War 2 novel and 50-somethingth book, I remembered a time when my 19-year-old self had walked past outside on her way to buy a loaf of bread with the remaining pennies of her student grant.

And I remember how stressed she’d been that all she’d be able to afford to eat that week was toast.

And I remember how scared and sad - and hungry - she’d felt.

And I wished I could have magically slipped downstairs and through some kind of time portal back to 1989 and grabbed her hand and told her not to worry. 

And told her that thanks to her grit and her courage she would one day end up coming back to Liverpool as a published author, staying in a super cool apartment with a mural of her beloved Beatles on the wall.

I wished I could have given her a hug and told her that it was all going to be better than she ever could have imagined because she found a way to believe in herself in spite of everything. She felt the fear but she kept on dreaming anyway.

Until next week, sending love from Liverpool!

Siobhan