Never Forget

Sometimes I just add pictures to the blog and don't get chance to add the words then and there, sometimes they just don't need words, this post could fit both those situations, but I decided to pop back and add a few anyway, just to say, how much Liverpool means to me, to Jon, to us as a couple. 

First of all we are both lifelong Liverpool Football Club fans; at different times in my life I have had more opportunity to follow them closely and especially as a kid kept scrapbooks, match reports and had the posters and football cards on my wall, but regardless of how much time I get to scrutinise my team these days, I am and always will be a red. 

Secondly, we have a deep and abiding love for the greatest city in the world - Liverpool. It's where we met, where we went to University, where we collided with the backbone of our friends and where we grew - from teens to twenties. We know it's back streets and road names like a second language; and although Liverpool has changed, grown and blossomed into a renowned city of culture long after we left - it will always be our home - in the way I think the first place you live when you leave home at eighteen forever holds that special place in your heart and mind.

What happened at Hillsborough in 1989 changed the city forever, for anyone who has lived there it is there in the everyday - at grass roots level with things like not buying the Sun newspaper - no shop in Liverpool stocks the paper after what the dreadful lies written following the tragedy and asking for it is likely to get very short shrift, as several students I knew found out; but more importantly it is almost palpable in a sense of great sorrow and fierce pride coupled with a haunted injustice regarding the terrible loss of ninety six souls. I don't think it can be downplayed just how long the Justice campaign have had to fight for their loved ones to be exonerated. This year is the 25th anniversary and the inquest has only just begun to find out the real story, the truth behind the police lies and the beginning perhaps of these poor families being able to come to terms with what happened. 

So for me, for Jon, on this day, we feel the connection to our old home, our city, at it's keenest; we think of all those touched by Hillsborough and we hope for some kind of closure later this year for the families involved in the inquests. We will never forget.