I recently visited a friend who lives just outside Liverpool.  He will tell you he lives in a posh bit of the Wirral, but it’s just outside Liverpool as far as I am concerned.

As part of the visit we were treated to a night out in the city, my first.  It was a strange experience overall, but I managed fully take in the 2008 European City of Culture, in between avoiding puddles of vomit.

We had been wandering around a few bars when I was approached by a young lady of the region.

“Are you a scouser?” she asked in the broadest scouse accent it has ever been my pleasure to hear.

I have no idea why she asked me if I was a scouser.  I do not look like a scouser, I don’t think.  I wasn’t speaking scouse, but I suppose I was in an area densely populated by scousers.   I quickly weighed up the pro’s and con’s of pretending to be a scouser, with the pro’s topped by nothing more than a brief but awkward conversation, and con’s topped by a fatal stabbing, national press coverage and my name used in knife crime adverts for years to come.  The decision was fairly simple.

“Er, no I’m not a scouser.” I replied, matter-of-factly.

With that she sighed and moved on to a guy a few feet away.

“Are you a scouser?” she asked him.

This seemed like a bit of an unnecessary question, as the answer was self-evident.  It was clear to me and everyone else present that he was, in fact, a genuine scouser.  The ‘conversation’ vs ‘knife attack’ ran through my mind once again.

“Yeah.” he replied in the high pitched tone generally heard among the natives.

With that, she proceeded to give him a thorough tonsil lashing.  Which I think it is fair to say he seemed to enjoy.  I had not anticipated this in my brief assessment of the outcomes.  At no point had I considered the question “Are you a scouser?” being used to uncover the final unknown quantity in her decision to snog me.

That said, if my list of pro’s and con’s had been topped by ’stabbing’ vs ’snogging’ I would probably still have denied I was a scouser.  She wasn’t that fit.

As an aside, has anyone else seen the Lambananas?  There are lots of them around the city and they strike me as a little bit sinister.   If someone is going to mix animals with fruit I would much prefer to see a Chimpinapple or Rhinorange.