#woolton village

[javelinbk]

Paul McCartney singing ‘Twenty Flight Rock’. The day Paul met John, The Beatles Anthology (1995) - part three (part one, part two)

[kinsfaun]

Paul McCartney aged 15 in his school photo, June 1957. Liverpool Institute.

[foryouwereinmysong]

[undying-love]

Paul Du Noyer on interviewing McCartney:

"And now, in 2001, when the promotional agenda has switched back to Wings, you almost have to coax him off the subject of John Lennon. Is it just force of habit, or maybe the need to exorcise some kind of long-nosed, bespectacled, sharp-tongued ghost inside his head?"(2001)

"The world's most famous living Liverpudlian has grown more open about the world's most famous dead Liverpudlian. Unbidden references to John Lennon occur in almost every interview I've done with Paul McCartney. It's clear their complex partnership still stalks the halls of his memory. I sit with Paul as he completes a questionnaire for MOJO magazine's All-Time Heroes issue, in 2001:

Who is your hero? John Lennon. When did this person first have an impact on you? At Woolton Village Fête in the year of Our Lord Whatever. What is it that you admire in them? Massive talent, great wit, courage and humour. Have they had an influence upon you? Very much so. Have they ever disappointed you or has your admiration ever faded? Yeah, from time to time, when we were having a barney. But only infrequently.

-Paul Du Noyer (Book: Conversations with McCartney, 2016)

[crepesuzette2023]

hello, I was wondering if you have any fics you like where Paul is the one pining?

Thank you so much for this question, and sorry to have taken so long to reply. I hope you still find these useful!

The lovely thing about J/P fic is that both John and Paul excel at pining. Scholarly tomes should be filled with arguments about who does it better. (Is Mutual Pining really the ultimate, or can something be said about the solo work of either man surpassing their 'collaboration'?)

As per your ask, it's Paul turn in these recs. I've decided to include fics in which they are in a relationship, of sorts, but where there's an element of Paul feeling that John is out of reach, or that Paul doesn't have enough of John — there's a distance to be bridged (but how?).

Early Days: Before the Fete

I've Just Seen a Face (sleepprettydarling): Five times Paul sees John before the Woolton Fete, one time he doesn't. G-rated, but the longing is *everywhere*.

Early Days

Two of us (burning matches) (@scurator). John corrupts/awakens Paul.

Above us only sky (candle_beck). "Paul is tired of being so good."

The first year (candle_beck). "They didn't get along, Stuart and Paul."

Lifting Latches/Sending Postcards (thinkpink20). Swapping clothes and becoming lovers...slowly. You can feel Paul's heartbeat when you read this.

On Menlove Avenue (thinkpink20). One of my favorite summaries ever: "It's a dark, dark night in Woolton."

Hamburg Era (roughly)

Mistletoe (thinkpink20). Paul observes John at Christmas, and finally takes action.

Like Love, the Archers are Blind (@dailyhowl). "He can’t ever be truly mad at him. Because his frustration melts like sugar on his tongue when he thinks about them sat across from each with their guitars and a notebook between them. Thinks about riding on the bus together with greasy packets of chips, stalking through record stores and strolling by the docks. How familiar and comfortable it feels to be together. What they have is too golden, too warm to ever stray from. And now he’s drowning in it." Come onnnn

Sinful (thinkpink20). "He tells himself it's just the grime around him, dirtying up his mind."

Beginning Fame

the touch of the velvet hand (downtothelastdrop). “Well then,” Paul countered, “you’ve not felt what I can do.”

I'm Telling You (aceonthebass). Paul pitches a 'soft' love song to John.

wouldn't it be nice? (@pauls1967moustache). John marries Cyn. What about John&Paul?

Geodesic Dome Era

open heart (@revollver). Vampire AU. Paul needs John—in more than one way.

Way up Top (@boshemians). The Beatles in Greece. "Underwater Paul snakes his arm around John’s wrist and presses their chests together, struggling for something."

1968

Days Like This (@eveepe). "His mouth was strangely dry, and he could feel his heartbeat pulsing in the scar on his lip."

Bad luck to talk (7intheevening). Paul is yearning for what he and John used to have—without being quite aware of his feelings. (Subconscious pining?)

Lost (@ohjohnnysblog). Paul needs a reminder of his and John's happier past. He goes to see Astrid...

Wings Era

Red Lights, Green Lights, Strawberry Wine (@savageandwise). Paul is with Linda and Denny, but waiting for John to call him back again...(Linda POV).

Later Days

Nude (@ohjohnnysblog). Paul buys nude pictures in a gallery and thinks of John.

Modern Love (caesdoublesteps). For a lighter touch: Paul negotiates with Yoko to give him Self Portrait, the movie about John's semi-erection. Yoko has a counter-offer.

AU

Sleeping Sand, Morning Moon (@dailyhowl). Playwright Paul grieves a dear friend and the end of a relationship. He escapes to a Scottish village and falls in love with resident eccentric John—but his heart is not ready. (It will be.)

[rockytheraccoon]

“At Woolton village fete, I met him. I was a fat schoolboy and, as he leaned an arm on my shoulder, I realised that he was drunk. We were twelve then, but, in spite of his sideboards, we went on to become teenage pals.”

- Paul McCartney on meeting John Lennon.

[thebeatles]

John Lennon had Paul McCartney write his introduction for his book In His Own Write (1964).

It reads:

‘At Woolton Village fete I met him. I was a fat schoolboy and, as he leaned an arm on my shoulder, I realised that he was drunk. We were twelve then, but, in spite of his sideboards, we went on to become teenage pals. Aunt Mimi, who had looked after him since he was so high, used to tell me how he was cleverer than he pretended, and things like hat. He had written a poem for the school magazine about a hermit who said: “as breathing is my life, to stop I dare not dare.” This made me wonder right away – “Is he deep?” He wore glasses so it was possible, and even without them there was no holding him. “What bus?” he would say to howls of appreciative laughter. He went to Quarry Bank High School for Boys and later attended to the Liverpool At College. He left school and played with a group called the Beatles, and, here he is with a book. Again, I think – “Is he deep?” “Is he arty, with it or cultured?” There are bound to be thickheads who will wonder why some of it doesn’t make sense, and others who will search for hidden meanings. “What’s a Brummer?” There’s more to “dubb owld boot” than meets the eye. None of it has to make sense and if it seems funny then that’s enough. – Paul McCartney, 1964 PS I like the drawings too.’

Also added in table of contents: "*Written in conjugal with Paul."

[delightfullyatomicfest]

John’s biography of The Beatles in the first issue of Mersey Beat in July 1961:

Once upon a time there were three little boys called John, George and Paul, by name christened. They decided to get together because they were the getting together type. When they were together they wondered what for after all, what for? So all of a sudden they grew guitars and fashioned a noise. Funnily enough, no one was interested, least of all the three little men. So-o-o-o on discovering a fourth little even littler man called Stuart Sutcliffe running about them they said, quite ‘Sonny get a bass guitar and you will be alright’ and he did – but he wasn’t alright because he couldn’t play it. So they sat on him with comfort ’til he could play. Still there was no beat, and a kindly old man said, quote ‘Thou hast not drums!’ We had no drums! they coffed. So a series of drums came and went and came.

Suddenly, in Scotland, touring with Johnny Gentle, the group (called the Beatles called) discovered they had not a very nice sound – because they had no amplifiers. They got some.

Many people ask what are Beatles? Why Beatles? Ugh, Beatles, how did the name arrive? So we will tell you. It came in a vision – a man appeared on a flaming pie and said unto them ‘From this day on you are Beatles with an ‘A’. Thank you, mister man, they said, thanking him.

And then a man with a beard cut off said – will you go to Germany (Hamburg) and play mighty rock for the peasants for money? And we said we would play mighty anything for money.

But before we could go we had to grow a drummer, so we grew one in West Derby in a club called Some Casbah and his trouble was Pete Best. we called ‘Hello Pete, come off to Germany!’ ‘Yes!’ Zooooom. After a few months, Peter and Paul (who is called McArtrey, son of Jim McArtrey, his father) lit a Kino (cinema) and the German police said ‘Bad Beatles, you must go home and light your English cinemas’. Zooooom, half a group. But before even this, the Gestapo had taken my friend little George Harrison (of speke) away because he was only twelve and too young to vote in Germany; but after two months in England he grew eighteen and the Gestapoes said ‘you can come’. So suddenly all back in Liverpool Village were many groups playing in grey suits and Jim said ‘Why have you no grey suits?’ ‘We don’t like them, Jim’ we said, speaking to Jim.

After playing in the clubs a bit, everyone said ‘Go to Germany!’ So we are. Zooooom Stuart gone. Zoom zoom John (of Woolton) George (of Speke) Peter and Paul zoom zoom. All of them gone. Thank you club members, from John and George (what are friends).

[ultra-francesca-mercury]

july 6

1957

Paul McCartney and John Lennon meet for the first time at the Village Fete in the Liverpool suburb of Woolton, where Lennon's group, the Quarrymen, are performing. When they meet again, Lennon asks McCartney to join his band.

[javelinbk]

Good luck to all fifteen year old boys going to village fetes today… I hope you find your future musical partner/lifelong obsession

[barelyaveragebarley]

Today, 67 years ago, John and Paul met at the Woolton village garden FÊTE. The fucking FATE!!!Like- AUGHGHGAHH it was fate!!!! it was destiny they were meant to be they're soulmates how am I supposed to be normal about any of this?

[kinsfaun]

[whitealbum]

neighbor still setting off fireworks? bestie it’s july 6th are you celebrating the anniversary of the woolton village fete

[undying-love]

Did Paul go to the fete to see John or to "pick up a girl"?

Two quotes from The Lyrics:

"Would John and I have met some other way, if Ivan and I hadn't gone to that fete? [Because] I had actually gone along to try and pick up a girl."

But he said earlier in the book:

"[John and I] were introduced by a mutual friend named Ivan Vaughan, who took me to see John play at the Woolton Village Fete."

In the first quote he makes it seem like he and Ivan just happened to be at the fete that day, and that he went along because he wanted to pick up a girl, but in the other quote he says Ivan took him to the fete so he could see John play.

Ivan was a mutual friend, and nobody can tell me that Paul wasn't dying for Ivan to introduce him to John, based on the way Paul describes seeing John before the fete ("I had seen him a couple of times and thought, ‘Wow, you know, he’s an interesting looking guy.’ And then I once also saw him later I was like, ‘Oh, that’s that guy off the bus’. I’m talking to myself, in my mind I thought, ‘I saw that guy off the bus, oh he’s pretty cool looking. Yeah, you know, he’s a cool guy.’).

Furthermore, according to Ian James, he "helped Paul to prepare for meeting John at St. Peter’s Church on 6th July 1957." (link) So, him being at the fete was indeed to met John. He even was preparing for it.

By the way, here is a very interesting excerpt from Philip Norman's Paul McCartney: The Biography

Though the summer of 1957 was a gloriously hot, sunny one in Britain, Saturday, 6 July, turned out cloudy and humid. Paul arrived for the rendezvous by bike, wearing his silver-flecked oatmeal jacket and the narrowest black drainies he'd yet smuggled past his father. He later admitted he was thinking less about meeting John Lennon than his chances of picking up a girl afterwards."

So he was wearing a silver-flecked jacket and very narrow black drainies at the fete. No wonder he has to say he only went there because he wanted to pick up a girl.

[cheeselist]

Dewlay Lancashire Creamy

A visit to Liverpool provided surprisingly few cheese-buying opportunities. The primary cheese shop is some way out of town in Woolton, so instead I headed to a recommended deli and importer of fine foods, Delifonseca, which is on the river, south of the Albert Dock area. Many of their cheeses are indeed fine foods imported from the continent, but I was able to buy a portion of Lancashire Creamy made by Dewlay (the Wigan pronunciation of du lait, apparently).

Dewlay Cheesemakers were founded in 1957 and are based in the village of Garstang, north of Preston. I visited the impressive dairy and visitor centre, powered by a wind turbine, in 2018 whilst in the Forest of Bowland, trying both the Garstang Blue and the Lancashire Crumbly at the time.

The Creamy is also a cows milk cheese, made to an unusual two-day curd recipe. A two-day curd mixes curds from consecutive days together before pressing, which results in a more mellow, buttery cheese than the simpler and cheaper one-day curds. Garstang dairy makes tonnes of the stuff, and it's packaged up in 200g pieces under the Garstang label, or to supply on to various supermarket brands including M&S and Booths. My piece was cut from the original truckle however. It's a smooth yellow block, few marks, no rind. Similar to the Crumbly version (which was so delightfully crumbly I could barely cut it), it has a soft, milky flavour with lemony tang; the Creamy also has a caramel finish which in my opinion puts it right ahead.

Delifonseca, Liverpool. £21/kg.