Sitting in the back snug of Ye Cracke– the alehouse recalling John and Stu supping underage– you can see Lennon at seventy-five. No longer holding court, a swaying docker the spit of Sutcliffe-in-shades is raging: ‘…from back-jigger scrapes to Shea Stadium– we’ve heard it all from The Quarrymen to Hamburg, and back again. You can stick Charles Hawtrey and the Deaf-Aids. Sick to the back teeth of yer NYC t-shirt, fur coat and shades. We admit it, yer did great, so welcome home, kid. Now shurrup about it and get the round in!’ You can see Lennon at seventy-five striding across the rain-pitted Pier Head. In donkey jacket he’s back from that upper class, accentless, dinner party chat. Canapés and champers, not brown bitter in pints. And whether he sold out or not, long past the point. Or you find almost an orphan, his blistered fingers clutching Strawberry Fields’ gate, chained-up and rusting. In Mendips, the last tourists of the day file out and fail to see in the window his old ghosts gathered again. Lennon at seventy-five has wrestled back his white piano from the National Trust, and it’s on to The Zanzibar for comeback night– Yoko at John’s side, quite happy in her sack. Scouse troubadours bundle guitar cases through the club’s blue neon doors, singing: ‘There he is, up there again. That’s John Lennon, he’s one of ours.’ Published in 'The Seventh Quarry'