Richard Baum

Last night I went to the Liverpool Sound concert at Anfield, headlined by Sir Paul McCartney, a man so dazzlingly wealthy and with a musical back-catalogue so ludicrously accomplished, that even a brief contemplation of the scope of his life makes my brain hurt.

Here’s a guy who’s more famous than The Queen, and has been since my parents were in short trousers (or, in my mum’s case, whatever young girls wore in the early 60s). Until I was about 16 I thought that “Yesterday” was a centuries-old folk song, and scientists have now proven that the tunes to “Hey Jude” and “Let It Be” are automatically woven into the genes of foetuses in the womb, along with the ability to see and cry.

I wonder, what does he do with his days? When you and I get up and go into the office, what does he do? And how can he do it, given that his appearance anywhere is fairly likely to cause hysteria? What is he doing right now, I wonder? And how does it feel to churn out a new album every couple of years for the entire duration of my life to date, only for everyone in every audience you ever play to to actually want to hear things from decades before?

I also wonder how he manages to be even anywhere on the “normal” spectrum after this much adulation for this long. I get light-headed and ego-maniacal for weeks after the odd occasion I get stopped in Tesco and asked about a planning application. Macca gets kings and presidents falling at his feet every day for 50 years, and other than his over-use of the thumbs-up and peace gestures, he appears at least as sane as most of the people I bump into daily.

Ah well, I comfort myself with the fact that I don’t need to think particularly long and hard about him. He seems capable of taking care of himself, and I have more pressing needs to attend to, such as the new version of the Prestwich Plan, which I have been working on over the weekend in front of an audience of 36,000 screaming fans.

This plan will hopefully become the document which drives forward the work of the Local Area Partnership for the next three years. The priorities within it have come from discussions with partners such as the Police, Fire and NHS, as well as being the priorities of the community as represented by the local Councillors who they elect.

Achieving the targets in the plan will also be the agenda for the two sub-groups of the Local Area Partnership. I chair one of them, the Developing Communities Group, and we meet for the first time this year on Wednesday. I suggested Wembley Stadium, but apparently the likely crowd demand has meant us booking Prestwich Methodist Chirch Hall instead. I spent time on the phone to the Local Area Partnership manager this morning, finalising the agenda for the meeting.

Also this weekend I chased up some very outstanding casework to do with Woodward Road. I wrote on here about some mysterious green sludge which had appeared there six weeks or so ago, and I had asked the Council to clear it up. Despite numerous promises to the contrary, the Council still haven’t sorted it out, and so today I asked them yet again to take a look. This is another issue to be brought up at the next Local Area Partnership meeting where Council officers will be there in person to answer residents’ queries.

Which just goes to show that whilst Beatle-mania and the adulation of millions would be nice, all I really want is for someone to replace the paving slabs on Woodward Road. Maybe that’s what Macca’s up to on his days off…

Rick