When I was a young boy living in Liverpool England in the 1960’s, most of what we needed to get on with life was within walking distance.

Their was a;

A newsagents for candy, papers and mom and dad smoke

A fishmonger, butcher, small general store

A Pub, well ok more than one, after all this was the UK

A cafe

A cinema

A dentist and doctors office

A chemist

A hardware store

A general store selling cans of beans etc.

A park

A fish and chip shop

A haberdashery (My mon loved that place for all my homemade sweaters)

A school, this was a 20 minute walk, I was hardly ever driven to school

Not only that. My mom worked a 5 stop bus ride away, my dad worked for the local water authority as a “turncock” so he was all over the city centre.

There where many areas in Liverpool like this and most of them ran into each other, so if the fishmonger did not have that trout, you may have to take a little longer to walk to the next one.

This would be what be known as a 15 minute city, not that we called it that, it was just our neighbourhood.

I am really trying to understand what this protestors are all up in arms about, to be it seems to be the “freedom people” who can no longer complain about the mandates, we we dont have much of any, they just need something else to protest about.

Going back this way of having everything within a 15 to 20 min walk away would, reduce the amount of traffic as well as get people out and walking more. Do I think it will happen? Maybe, one can only hope, but unless smaller local stores can compete for regular goods such as groceries, then I am not seeing much hope.

I found a picture of the pub that was on the corner of the street I lived on until I was 8, I was even born in the front bedroom of number 12 Coleridge, with the aide or a midwife, no doctor in sight, but that is for another blog post.