Liverpool

I had the opportunity to live and work in Liverpool for 4 years. Like you I've heard all the jokes, remember it featuring on the news throughout the strike torn 70's for all of the wrong reasons and as a follower of LFC marvelled at the football team of the 70's and 80's. So the opportunity to live there was not to be missed., All the stereotypes are more or less true, but in their own place they're brilliant people and it's a hugely compelling city which challenges you to dig a bit deeper, get under its skin and get to know the better. The revamped and impressive centre remains only 1 mile from poverty. New buildings sit uncomfortably beside those that have been derelict for decades. Many areas are a terrible mish mash of Victoriana, 60's failed regeneration and swathes of cleared land for which no new purpose has ever been found. It has beauty and despair rubbing shoulders with one another, the glue of two iconic footballs teams and a proud and justifiable tradition of humour mixed with a realisation that for all the investment (and everything Capital of Culture status brought it) nothing really changed. Its rough and beautiful, hopeful and depressed, blinged up and skint all at the same time and I loved it.