Nobody In Particular: A Heartwarming and Hilarious Account of Growing Up in Merseyside in the '50s and '60s - Softcover

NOBODY IN PARTICULAR is the hand-on-heart, honest, charming and occasionally tear-inducingly tragic, often laugh out loud funny story of what it was like to grow up in Liverpool in the 1950s and '60s as the youngest child in a large and somewhat eccentric Anglo-Irish family: Cherry's father would while away the hours playing his guitar in the outside loo until the pubs opened while her mother seemed to be either menopausal or depressed or both, and devoted most of her energies into saving for a divorce or her own business - whichever came cheapest! Capturing the despondency and deprivations of post-war England as embodied in the back streets of Liverpool and the subsequent vibrancy and liberation of the swinging sixties - the decade of the Beatles, national strikes and Liverpool FC winning the FA cup for the first time - this is an ebullient tale told by a natural storyteller. NOBODY IN PARTICULAR is not only a funny, affecting and nicely self-deprecating personal story (peopled by some splendidly observed larger-than-life characters - her family) but also a rather wonderful slice of social history, evoking a bygone yet still familiar and fondly remembered era.

Looking back, being the youngest of nine children and a change of life baby, conceived and born on Merseyside during the war, was probably not the best start for my Mam or me...

Hand-on-heart honest, charming, occasionally tear-inducingly tragic but more often laugh-out-loud funny, Nobody in Particular is Cherry Simmonds' account of growing up on the back streets of Liverpool in the 50s and 60s, the youngest in a large, eccentric and sometimes exasperating Anglo-Irish family. Ruling the roost was Mam - menopausal and always saving for a divorce, or her own business, whichever was cheaper. And then there was Dada - who when he wasn't in the pub could invariably be found practising the banjo in the outside lav, and her five brothers and three sisters - two died, three got married (which amounted to the same thing according to Mam) and National Service would take care of the others...

From the despondent, still-rationed post-war years to the heady, swinging 60s - when Liverpool suddenly found itself fashionable, put on the map by the Beatles, rock 'n' roll, industrial strikes, and Liverpool FC winning the Cup - this delightful memoir by a born storyteller brings a bygone yet familiar and fondly remembered era vividly - and vibrantly - to life.