Water Troubles

I took this from the bus on my way home thinking to post about the evils of fluoridation and Hull City Council's wish to override the wishes of the surrounding villages and pollute the water with toxic chemicals so that the ignorant, sugar loving children of the city of culture would have fewer dental fillings and extractions. I was going to mention how a certain councillor who has no qualifications in dental matters has popped up from under his slime covered stone to pontificate grandly on the 'benefits' of compulsory medication. I was going to drag in an allusion to ancient troubles going back to the late 14^th century between Cottingham and Hull regarding the water supply and how the gentlemen of Cottingham would put carrion in the dyke that carried water funnily enough along this very street, Spring Bank, and how they could only be calmed by an edict from Pope John XXI ... I was going to do all this then I saw that the Council had put the plans on hold because they don't have the Do Re Mi as Woody Guthrie used to sing. So you see years of austerity have saved me the bother of writing all that and you the trouble of reading it.

I note that this nursery on Spring Bank is taking in babies aged six weeks! I mean six weeks old, at that age you could put them in your handbag (with handles or not) and go to work ...

Give me a sign ...

Salisbury Street again surprises with some really weird signs erected in front gardens. If you want to know the story behind them I suggest you make one up for yourself... me? I know nothing.

The one and only

I have posted before of George Gilbert Scott Jr and his Queen Anne revival style residences on Salisbury Street. However I overlooked this odd thing that I can only assume was one of a pair of gateposts. Now a twelve or fourteen foot high multi-layered obelisk topped gatepost may seem a tad over the top these days but if you were going to get into the full Queen Anne revival style this must have been de rigueur. To me it would more fitting in a cemetery than at the end of a drive way but to each their own ... Thankfully there is only one, well, that I could find.

One of ten

I was on my way to the doctors surgery (nothing serious, just some paper work) yesterday when I spotted this new addition to the University. Naturally I didn't have a camera but Margot had fortunately brought along the old Fuji. Then I remembered reading about some ten statues being added to the campus all by Icelandic sculptor Steinunn Thorarinsdottir she of the leaning figure Voyage down by the river (1 2 3 4 and 5). So I made a mental note to pop back and seek out the others at a later date. If you can't wait the local rag has kindly made a short film (with obligatory irritating music) about them here if nothing else it shows you the University campus in all its glory ...

Big Blue Beastie

It seems Dope Burger have got a bigger van and it's hungry. Colourful though it may be it's parked on a double yellow on Anlaby Road during the rush hour and that's just wrong on so many levels.

I took this as well from the same place so why not post it ...

Mad Dogs and Englishmen

...In Rangoon the heat of noon
Is just what the natives shun ...

I write this as snow and hail are gently falling like a flensing knife on bare flesh to the merry accompaniment of thunder and lightning. It must therefore be April and springtime.

This crazy muttkin took a fancy to me and jumped in my bag some time so long ago in the warm hazy days of winter.

Comin soo

They are building lots of hotels (at least two) in the C of C to meet demand; seems you couldn't get a bed in the whole of Hull last weekend. I'm sure this one will be much better than I'm making it out to be ... or maybe not.

Hurrah for Bluebells and Kopparberg!

To celebrate St George, the patron saint of England, Englishness and all that goes with it, what could be more fitting, I thought, than some nice Spanish bluebells and an empty bottle of Swedish cider (mixed fruit, of course!) ... there are always those who see this day as a chance to sit in the pub and drink ale, how very un-English!

Margot took the bluebell photo; she has a knack for finding litter lying around, well she found me....

Questions, questions

By the harbour side and no doubt as part of some tourist trail or other these two figures appear demanding answers. I'll start with the guy in the Arab head dress, T E Lawrence (of Arabia). It seems that after ruining the Middle East in WW1 he served in the RAF near Bridlington supervising the armour plating of power boats for target practice. I guess he was tired of all the heat and the camels. The other guy, well, that is Captain John Paul Jones of the Continental Navy. During what would nowadays be called 'hard Amexit' or some such aka the American War of Independence he took a small fleet across the pond and proceeded to cause a bit of mayhem in British waters. The Battle of Flamborough Head of 1779 rarely gets a mention these days especially now that the UK and US have a 'special relationship' and more especially since the British Royal Navy lost to a bunch of colonials so least said soonest mended.

A tale of two towers

I'm keeping out of the city of culture for a few days; they have taken to dancing in an old graveyard while stuffing their faces all the name of culture and it's not a pretty sight. So I return to Bridlington Priory and its two odd towers. It's looks on the face of it like it's the real deal; an old Gothic building with a perpendicular tower. Well partly. The church as it stands is the vestige of Bridlington monastery which would have looked a bit like this in the early 16th century. As you all know if you were still awake in history classes the monasteries in England were dissolved by HenryVIII. Now the Prior of this place decided to take part in the Pilgrimage of Grace, a rising in Yorkshire against Henry VIII which did not end well. The monastery quickly lost all its valuables and gradually fell into disrepair until only the nave remained standing and that in no good condition.  The pictures below show it in 1786 and 1842. Note there are no towers by the front entrance. So enter our old friend and saviour of fallen churches Sir Gilbert Scott and his passion for the Gothic revival and up rises one perpendicular Gothic tower in the 1870's and one stump of a tower as a permanent reminder not to trust planners ...

The rear view, those buttresses are all Victorian.

I came across this helpful little site on my travels

Bridlington Bayle's back door

Being too lazy to step back a bit in order to get the whole gateway in view I thought I'd just take half a dozen pictures and stitch them together with the rather skewed result you see. The bayle, as I mentioned ages ago, is the former gatehouse to Bridlington Priory. This is the back door, as it were, and it should look a bit like this.

A slight difference of opinion

I couldn't go to the seaside and not take a picture of seagulls, well actually Margot took this but that's just nit picking.

The parliament that England is the mother to has just voted for an election by 522 to 13. Now don't get me wrong I'm all in favour of elections, have one every year (a la Chartism) if you will. Vote early, vote often is my motto. No, what boils my renal filtrate is the continual news media banging on, speculating, asking the same old same old rubbish of the same old so-called experts and commentators over and over and over and over for six whole goddam weeks. (I know other places have it much, much worse but that's their problem) It should be the law that the news people announce the election and then STFU about it.

You might think that there is some subtle visual pun about the gullibility of the electorate in this picture, you might very well think that but I couldn't possibly comment.

Costa del Brid

You can achieve wonders by upping the saturation and artfully cropping out unwanted chip shop chimneys to give an almost Mediterranean look to a Bridlington snicket. 

There's going to be an election in June which apart from boring folk to death will return the present lot to government, destroy what's left of the Labour Party (not much), annoy the Scots and the Irish (no bad thing in itself) and solve no problem whatsoever. But then that's politics for you.

Renewables: the new blot on the landscape

Bridlington's south beach has a wonderful view of a wind farm which I suppose is a step up from the view from the beach near where I grew up, Hartlepool's very own nuclear power station (there were also steel works and petrochemical plants as well but they just seemed to blend in so well). That's progress for you.

Margot took this picture.

A host of godawful Lego bricks

I know, I know I promised never, ever to photograph them but there was no way I could stop Margot clicking away at these truly awful plastic daffs littering the street. And though Wordsworth saw ten thousand at a glance there are, thankfully, just a few hundred of these vile horrors clumped like dried green and yellow snot outside the closed down BHS store appealing to little brats to play chasing games around them. Just dreadful!

Crow

 A crow has taken to sitting on our neighbour's chimney as the evening sky grows dark.


The weekend in black and white is here.

Easter Traditions

The end of the forty days of Lent is in sight and to celebrate some trees on Newland Avenue have been adorned with white knitted rabbits (probably best not to ask what gibbeted rabbits have to do with anything...). Also there are small posters relating how Easter is celebrated in various parts of the world. So in Texas they set the place alight by building Easter fires. Hungarian boys splash girls with perfume so we are told. My favourite, though, was the Lithuanians who whip their relatives with palms to bring wealth. Strangely I could find nothing about the ancient Hull tradition of restoring potatoes to patties (which had been spudless for forty whole days! imagine that...) Ah those Easter patties so warm and filling! Oh and bringing out the chip spice from its sacred Lenten hiding place. Odd there's no mention of this.

Say Bienvenue to The Hull Venue

I took this picture a few weeks ago and would have posted it but for a lack of anything to say. This is the Hull Venue rising out of the rubble of last year's demolition. My problem was an earworm infection so all I could think of was "I'm a venue, how do you do?"... you see my formative years were ruined by Flanders and Swann, (worse, much worse than sex and drugs and rock and roll though obviously not as much fun).

A piddling little stream

If you like mud then Hull could be just the place for you. When the tide is out there's acres of  thick oozing alluvium silting up the old harbour. I believe there are plans to clear out the gloop and improve the flow but then there's always plans for something or other in this place. It's at these times like this that you can see just what a small insignificant little stream the river Hull really is. 

 

Swanky

I mentioned last year plans to build a new hotel on the site of a former dance hall/disco/nightclub/knocking shop on Ferensway. Well it's up and growing. This picture was taken at the end of March but it's going up so fast that it's probably open and taking its first visitors by now ... I'm told it will look like this when it really is finished. The local paper calls it "swanky"; I think that's sounds pretty close to what I would call it.

OK, Let's Play

Here's the newly paved over junction of Jameson Street and King Edward Street taken a few weeks ago when the the orange lurgy was still hanging about. I believe this dull, windswept stretch of reclaimed land goes by the equally dull, tediously sycophantic and boring old name of King Edward Square. Now really was there no body else they could honour? Somebody who actually did something more useful than screwing several dozen mistresses and siring a bunch of inbred twerps. Even Wilberforce Square would have been better, though not much. Anyhow as is the way of things in this place no empty space can be left unfilled and so the local rag has a tale of daffodils, fluttering and dancing in the breeze no doubt, filling this godforsaken wasteland with springtime icky yellowyness only (now you knew there had be an 'only' coming along)  these are made of Lego. Fake flowers ffs! But then that's culture for you, all phoney baloney from the get-go. And no I won't be taking pictures, not now ... not ever.

Orange, White and Green

The willow trees on Paragon Street are getting new surrounding walls and some fresh soil by the look of things. I hope the new walls are as comfortable to sit on as the old ones.

Trees at night

The new trees and seats on Jameson Street have ground level lighting so you don't bump into them in the dark... did you know that some trees at night let themselves droop by up to four inches? And furthermore there are people being paid a good salary to find out more about this valuable titbit of information.

The ever fascinating and never drooping Weekend in Black and White is here.

Building Tomorrow's Bridlington

You might think that having suffered two years of orange barriers in Hull you would be safe to take a day out and not come across any of these damn things. But no, it seems Bridlington is being regenerated as well which seems to mean knocking down a street of Victorian houses and digging up Bridge Street above. Maybe they'll get some culture too, we've got lots to spare.

A Seaside Terrace

Hard now to imagine the thousands who came to Bridlington for their annual holiday but the evidence of their visitations lies in these typical seaside lodging houses and hotels. This one has six storeys and all were no doubt priced accordingly. I'll take a wild guess that it was built in 1878. In those days holidays were unpaid and in the north of England whole towns would take a week off at one time, the Wakes Week,  and all would descend by train on the seaside; there was nowhere else to go. Nowadays everyone goes off on their own little adventure to the Med or Bali or California or where ever a plane can fetch up and these old places have become rented apartments not necessarily to the highest calibre of clientèle. Some seaside towns, not Bridlington especially,  have attracted the unemployed, and possibly unemployable, the homeless, folks with mental health problems, former prisoners and so on. I say 'attracted' some might say these people have been deliberately dumped on these places, cheap and out of the way. Naturally this is  bringing attendant social, drug and criminal problems. So though the sky is still blue and sea and the sand are just the same we've come a long way from the days of the bucket and spade holiday makers with their kiss-me-quick hats and sticks of rock.

It's like déjà vu, all over again

In those optimistic years of 2007/08 a Ferris wheel stood large and proud on Bridlington's north shore fun fair. It styled itself as the Bridlington Eye after the much (~3x) bigger London Eye. Well we all know what happened in 2008 but that had little to do with the demise of the Brid Eye that was due to poor weather and lack of visitors. So down it came but not before someone stole the engine or so I'm told. All that is so much history because now the same people are putting up yet another Ferris wheel slightly larger than the first and it's hoped to be running by Easter. Unlike the first one this one will have open gondolas so I expect they are really, really hoping for warm weather; those North Sea breezes can be very unforgiving even in Summer.

Anyhow as the Bridlington Eye v1.0 was up and down and gone before I started this blog I never posted about it. So here's an ancient pic taken in 2007 when I was still a young man with no grey hairs and had money in the bank ...

Big Blue Octopus

We set off to Bridlington under cold grey skies with showers of rain but arrived to clear blue skies and sunshine and quite warm really for April. I was looking around for something new to show and this kind of grabbed my attention. The legs wave about in a manner that would be menacing if it wasn't twenty foot off the ground.  It's part of pirate themed amusement arcade; well they call it amusement.

Culture Vulture

OK it's just a pigeon and you've got to use your imagination but that shouldn't be too difficult if you can cope with Hull: City of Culture.

A tree on Ferensway

The weekend in black and white is here.

C'est un cygne

Pour faire la paix avec nos amis européens, la ville de la culture a décidé de ne parler que le français. Je sais que c'est très étrange mais, malheureusement, c'est officiel. On pense qu'il aidera le Brexit ...

Alors, le thème du 1er avril est «humide». Allez voir ce que d'autres poissons ont fait de cela ...

Salut! À demain mis amigos ...oops!