Yoko Ono is back in Liverpool, a city she never forgot

She was labelled a witch and a band wrecker. Now, 38 years after the murder of her husband John Lennon, Yoko Ono has returned to his home town to tell their story

“Your life is being conducted in front of the world, like a play,” Yoko Ono tweeted recently. “Know that it is, therefore, a play to people who watch it.” That Ono is on Twitter makes utter sense: her aphorisms were almost like tweets before the thing was invented. She has always been ahead of her time. People seem to have hated her in so many ways that I assume she must see herself as a character in a story in order just to live, just to continue being her own woman.

She is here now in front of me, a tiny woman in her shades and her hat tending to the final details of her exhibition in Liverpool, Double Fantasy. I see apples on Perspex plinths, to replicate the apple that an apparently rude John Lennon took a bite of when he met her at the Indica gallery in London. Ono, who for so long was ageless, is now 85 and needs a bit of help. I am told she is feeling emotional. She doesn’t do jetlag, apparently. The next day she will visit the house Lennon grew up in and sit in his bedroom, feeling him close.