Cranky

I think the heat may be getting to me and it's only the first day of what is billed (by weather people with big smiles you would love to hit with a wet fish) as a heatwave. Well I know 28°C is hardly going to cook your brains but I do NOT do hot. I'll probably aestivate if it carries on much longer... 

It seems I spoke too soon

The non-going drama of the repairs to Victoria Pier continues to enthral spectators. It's been eighteen months now of non-stop inactivity. In March I wondered whether the arrival of these large beams meant that the end of the road was in sight. I need not have worried. 

Don't ask me ....

..'cos I haven't a clue. This fragile rusting thing attached to some boards hangs in an alley off Humber Street. I can make out the words 'The Monitor Loops' or perhaps 'The Loops Monitor'. It obviously meant something to someone at some time.

Big Lifter

The mess that is Humber Street clearly requires some heavy lifting and in a narrow street a big crane has to go up and over both sides to get the new metal work in place. Even with this machine the street will no doubt still be an array of scaffolding and supports by the time of the Humber Street Sesh in August when thousands will descend upon it in search of entertainment.

Funerary Angel

It's been a while since I posted anything for the taphophiles amongst you. Here is the final resting place of one William Henry Smith who died in 1900 aged 48. This angel in Spring Bank General Cemetery has featured before a few years ago in a rear view here.

The weekend in black and white is here.

K is for kippers, of course

Further fishy fun on Posterngate at Number 9, I think.

Hull ♡ attack

Someone has clearly entered into the full spirit of the City of Culture thing with a colourful mini-mural on Posterngate. As the whole shebang doesn't start for another year and half this may need a bit of touching up before then.

Summer meadow in the heart of town

On Blackfriargate a patch of land has been left to sort itself out and that is just what it's doing in a colourful way, of course. This mad mix of poppies, clovers, teasels and grasses is all free and could be available across town and country if councils parked up their grass mowers until Autumn. 

Fruits of the forest

According to those that know about these things this yellow fungus is not only edible but quite possibly tastes like chicken. I'll take their word for it. It looks like someone or something has taken a bite out of it already. This is Laetiporus sulphureus or chicken of the woods and this specimen is on that well known forest glade known as Fairfax Avenue.

Tall poppy syndrome

Even in these austere days the Council sees fit to go round with herbicide and clear any green growing thing from the base of every roadside post. Further they go round every fortnight with mowers trimming down all the grassy verges. It something they do because they've always done it, an utterly pointless waste of money. Does long grass threaten civilisation or do flowers portend a revolution? What harm would it do to leave things be and let a billion flowers grow? 

"We all go a little mad sometimes....Haven't you?"

I wonder if they have a fruit cellar ...

Post Office Red

When the grand old central post office up the road was closed a few years ago this less imposing but perhaps more viable post office opened up on Lowgate. Clearly it's had a recent repaint job and is looking all spick and span.

Dead Poets' Corner

I took a few more shots of Larkin's somewhat grotesque statue in Paragon Station the other day with a view to using them at some point in the future. He's always good for a post on a dull day is my view. Well it seems the dull day has arrived rather quicker than I expected as it's been announced that the man who handed on misery to man is to be honoured, if that's the right word, in Westminster Abbey's poets' corner. Would it be going too far to say that the Abbey is jumping on the city of culture bandwagon? Perhaps. The ceremony, on December 2 2016, will take place only days before the start of the Culture fest in 2017. The custom used to be to bury the famous scribes in the Abbey but nowadays they just lay a named floor stone. I'm thinking a pair of entwined bicycle clips or a hedgehog would be a fitting extra decoration anything but toads ....

Shark infested pavement

Regular readers will be aware of the Hull fish trail. Well here's another one for the collection, a rather sad looking shark, and I think it's the biggest on the trail. It's on Whitefriargate near the ugly brute I posted a while back. This shark is carved from slate and was originally in the middle of Whitefriargate but was damaged by a heavy truck. It's now repaired and out of harm's way, appropriately outside the HSBC building.

Dope Burger

Parked up on Midland Street this decorated van belongs to a take away, or rather a fast food restaurant,  by the name of Dope Burger on Anlaby Road. Despite its name, or maybe because of it, the place has rave reviews ...

Bring out your dead

I mentioned so time ago that the old burial ground of Holy Trinity church on Castle Street stood in the way of proposed improvements and that a large portion of it would have to cleared. People were asked to make contact with the authorities if their ancestors were interred in here. Anyhow some work has started, all hidden behind a whopping high fence. However they forgot about the bit where the old wall stands so it's possible to hold a camera over and take a sneaky peek. They've cleared the gravestones and some kind of drill is in place. Clearly this has done irreparable damage to the place. At least the trees are still standing, hopefully the bat roost is undisturbed.

Now all this might be deemed fit and proper; clearing ground for development and so on, if the proposed road scheme were just itching to start. But, and this comes as absolutely no surprise, there is still no planning application in place and the Highways Agency now claims there are environmental issues it has to overcome. The start date is pushed back to 2020 or even later ... or never. I let you draw your own conclusion about the announcement of this further delay coming just after the recent election. You get the feeling we'll all be dead in our graves before this is started.

PS. I should add that all the exhumed bones will be reburied in an unspoilt part of the graveyard. And this from the local paper is advice to anyone who thinks their ancestors may be buried there to call the project team on 0113 2836805 or email A63castlestreet.hull@highways.gsi.gov.uk

The trouble with kilts ...

... is that you can't read the little bits of Larkin poems scattered around Hull station without looking faintly funny as you lift first one foot then the other to see the literary gem beneath your pleated tartan.

Going, going, almost gone

The recent fire at the New York Hotel uncovered weaknesses in the neighbouring Albert Hall on Midland Street. The Council, for once not taking its time, issued notices to fix it by the end of the month or it will be demolished. Well as you can see the facade, which was dropping bit and bobs on the pavement below, has gone and the rest will no doubt soon follow at the tax payers expense while the Council chase up the owners for the money ....

My left foot

Here's one of Margot's photos of irises on Ella Street and me waiting patiently and not quite out of view in the background ...

Gardener's Arms

With the University just a short walk down the road this place is very much a favourite with the academic (and perhaps not so academic) crowd. It's usually full to the brim and overflowing at lunch times. Along with this sunny beer garden there's also pool tables and no fewer than 17 TVs (blimey!) all showing sport, sport and more sport!!! (how nice...)

Fat Larry's as was

Fat Larry's if I remember right sold second hand CDs and that sort of stuff a few years back. This corner block including the shop next door was known as Pools Corner selling anything second hand, TVs, bikes, furniture and lots of  fishing gear as I recall. They ran a cheque cashing scheme as well. I may have bought a TV from there many, many years back (I've checked with Margot and yes we did, says herself, it was the one that went pink! Hmm.). Well Fat Larry is long gone and Pools Corner is now Ella Street Social Club.

One flew over the Crow's Nest

Outside this Italian restaurant on Newland Avenue was parked the smallest delivery van I've ever seen. This place was a year or so ago called La Perla, new name, new decor and it's getting good reviews. I've seen the menu and like all these places it's far from cheap for what is essentially pasta with some sauce on top. Thirty years ago this was a greasy spoon of a place by the name of the Crow's Nest (if I remember me rightly) it specialised in bacon butties and tea served in a pint mug! Autres temps, autres goûts! 

Keep focused

Oops!

Astonished brickwork

Ella Street (or at least its residents' association) has a thing about birds, there are bird tables along the length and little model birds attached to street furniture, I've posted about this a while back (here). What I didn't know then but have found since is that this avian fix has extended to putting up little quotes from literature with a birdy theme. Various authors from Wordsworth to Poe were chosen. Anyhow this being Hull and reason being what it is I suppose they could not escape the Larkin effect. At least this is one of his more cheery verses, yes I know it's difficult to believe. 

And while I'm on about old baldy, some of you may recall the fibre glass toads that decorated the town a while back on the celebration (there is no better word for it) of his death some 25 years earlier, well wait five years and suddenly it's thirty years since his death and a reunion of toads is planned this year along with a very large inflatable toad to hang over the town centre. You know a dead Larkin is the gift that keeps on giving ... It's a culcher thing, innit!

This is on the wall of the Jewish cemetery at the far end of Ella Street and close by that delight of modern architecture that I posted the other day .

You want the whole picture and the whole poem? Surely you do, it's really not that long, honest.

Coming 

On longer evenings,
Light, chill and yellow,
Bathes the serene
Foreheads of houses.
A thrush sings,
Laurel-surrounded
In the deep bare garden,
Its fresh-peeled voice
Astonishing the brickwork.
It will be spring soon,
It will be spring soon—
And I, whose childhood
Is a forgotten boredom,
Feel like a child
Who comes on a scene
Of adult reconciling,
And can understand nothing
But the unusual laughter,
And starts to be happy.

Philip Larkin

A stylish exit

Living near the large cemetery and crematorium on Chanterlands Avenue means funeral cortèges are a common sight in these parts. Most involve black limousines but I've noticed a worrying trend lately for grey hearses (!); this will never do. A few, very few, involve the old style horse drawn hearse like this one that clip-clopped slowly along Cottingham Road yesterday; a fine if, as I suspect, expensive send off.

Four walls and a roof

Here's another of the modern architectural delights on Saint Ninian's Walk.  I've shown it in black and white but you are not missing much colour since it is a pale blueish white, somewhat akin to a cyanotic corpse, in reality. I like the little sun hole in the roof which looks like an afterthought, the rest is just dire.

The Weekend in Black and White is here.

"Bag it and bin it; that way we'll win it ..."

Bricknell Avenue, Hull

Mobile refuse containers or wheelie bins as everyone calls them are surely the bane of modern life. Designed to save the planet by aiding recycling they have multiplied so that now each household in the land has at least two sometimes three, four or even five depending on how eco-stupid the council is feeling. Naturally a population of 70-80 million bins cannot be contained and so it spreads along the streets like a plague. As for the trash collected I'm told most of it gets put on to big ships and sent to China where no doubt it gets converted into wheelie bins and exported back to dear old Blighty....

And if you think leaving a bin on the street is a harmless pastime think again ...

From the Criminal Justice Act 1982

"137 Penalty for wilful obstruction.

(1)If a person, without lawful authority or excuse, in any way wilfully obstructs the free passage along a highway he is guilty of an offence and liable to a fine not exceeding [F1level 3 on the standard scale]."

F1level 3 is £1,000!

So that's where it went

You expect large tanks and boilers in an industrial site. But I bet you don't usually find them right up on the the top floor. I'm trying to imagine how they got it up there in the first place. Never mind, it must be worth a bob or two in scrap once they figure out how to get it out of there.

This is the old Clarence mill being brought down to earth slowly but surely. The plan is for a hotel to rise from this. Well that's the plan ...

Yet another Council cock-up

I've posted about Prince Street before, it's probably one of the most photographed spots in the old town. A Georgian archway leading to a pleasant little row of houses. Naturally it's all listed buildings; grade 2 protected. So in a well ordered society a Council would never, ever install five gas meters with plastic covers right slap bang in the middle of a tourist attraction. But you have never come across an organisation quite like Hull City Council. And to add insult to injury once the Council realised that what they had done required planning permission it set about applying to itself for retrospective permission to vandalise the neighbourhood. Well this was too much for anybody to take lying down, even one long serving Councillor who can normally be relied on to back up any silly move from HCC said it was 'stupid'. Outrage was being shown, words like 'crass' and 'deplorable' were being bandied about in the local paper. One objector described the meters as looking like a men's urinal ...
The Council realising the jig was up have now decided to remove these meters admitting that this should not have happened as "the gas meter boxes are not in keeping with the surrounding listed buildings". (You don't say!) Which is all well and good if this were such a rare occurrence but such acts of gross stupidity seem to be the modus operandi of HCC; well it's only public money so they just don't care.

No Council officers were injured in the making of this post nor have any lost their jobs unfortunately

Stylish nonsense

As the winner of several design awards the Scale Lane bridge has many of the attributes of stylishness. It was hideously expensive, looks like someone's doodling made real and serves no useful purpose other than to amuse Hull's hardy tourists.

I noticed after I had taken this that the demolition of the Clarence flour mill in the background has begun, I was guilty of looking at the clouds and not at what was in front of my nose.

City Daily Photo's monthly theme is 'Stylish'