The first time I saw Princes Park Gates I was a 16-year-old who'd just started work in my first job after leaving school.
A news reporter named Mary Borg pointed them out to me as she crunched the gears on her old Austin 1100, for the umpteenth time that day, as we careened through the roundabout at the end of Princes Avenue.
A redoubtable figure and something of a legend in her own lifetime, Mary had left school at 14 but was "self-educated" to a high level and had come to journalism late in life.
She was an excellent reporter (but a terrible driver) and did not suffer fools gladly.
Nevertheless she had great patience with a wet-behind-the-ears Lancashire lad, learning to become a press photographer while she was the doyenne of the Catholic Pictorial - then a Liverpool-based weekly newspaper with a circulation of 30,000.
Liverpool born, with a Maltese father, Mary was a real enthusiast about the city and its rich history and heritage.
I distinctly remember her waxing lyrical about Princess Park gates and I have a image imprinted in my mind of the iron portals with their dazzling gold-painted central "starburst' features.
They were among the many fascinating sights of Liverpool that Mary pointed-out to me as we went from one assignment to another, like the long gone Southern Hospital and the washhouses started by Kitty Wilkinson.
How pleased Mary would be to note that Princess Park gates have been renovated and returned to something like their original splendour.
But how horrified she would be to find that these imposing Victorian relics are now marred with in a piece of municipal vandalism in the shape of a plastic "Clean it up!" sign posted as a warning to miscreant dog owners.
This notice should surely never have been fixed to the glorious gates and I can only hope that the council will make arrangements to have it moved elsewhere.
Otherwise, I fear, they run the risk of the feeling the wrath of Mary Borg, perhaps in the shape of a thunderbolt ordered-up from her elevated place place in Heaven.
I joke not. Mary was such a good talker that I'm sure she will have no problem getting a word in the right ear!
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