Ever since I moved to Birkenhead in Merseyside I have been “moving out soon”. However after some seven years in the town that statement has grown to become less and less convincing.

Five of those years have been spent living at the same address, this from a person who was once known for making a mess of peoples address books as I moved around from place to place. Paradoxically it has been my northern friends who have moved away from the town, leaving me as probably Birkenhead’s most unappreciative tenant.

I have made two failed attempts to leave Birkenhead. The first was back in 1995 when I tried to make a move to Cambridge in the South of England. However that quickly fell through when my friend Mark Dawe announced that it had “gone too far, get out”. I wasn’t really sure what had ‘gone too far’ but one thing was certain, I wasn’t going anywhere apart from back to Merseyside.

Last year (1998) I again tried to move, this time setting my sights to a much more achieved goal with a move locally to Oxton. However after some rather questionable work practices of a local letting agency I was once again left disappointed.

However the seven year stretch in ‘Birkenhell’ is about to come to its end. The once inevitable and now almost unbelievable is about to happen… I really am moving out of Birkenhead!

Yes this coming weekend I will be moving into a new flat in Bebington on the Wirral. It may not be so far from Birkenhead, but you have to know Birkenhead like I do to appreciate the fact that you don’t have to go far from it to be a million miles away!

There are some though who feel that my moving away from Birkenhead will mean a huge decline in my fountain of story worth material. They think a move to a quieter neighborhood will have me climbing the walls in a search for some sort of incident, drama or excitement. Perhaps they’re right, but I am not so sure. I tend to be able to find stories in the strangest places. However Birkenhead has provided me with some great material for my often animated and sometimes plain unbelievable stories.

I came to live in Birkenhead quite by accident… [Click here to continue reading this article at ‘Meanwhile’]