A penny for the Old Guy

 

In November 1605 a plot to blow up Parliament and the king was thwarted due to the incompetence of the conspirators, betrayal and plain bad luck. Anyhow the guys involved were not champions of individual freedom and liberty, far from it, they wanted to restore the Catholic Church, domination by mainland Europe (France or Spain, I forget which but it matters little at this distance), Popery and all that crap. If it sounds familiar well maybe there are only so many stories in the world and indeed the EU is uncannily like the Holy Roman Empire and it took Napoleon to end that farce. Anyhow every year, in England, celebrations mark the narrow escape from Papish rule with bonfires and fireworks, but things ain't what they used to be ...

Up until around the turn of the century all of October would resound to fireworks going off, bangers and rockets. I recall in the 60s and 70s kids would make Guys, life size dolls in  the costume of Guy Fawkes, stuffed with paper and go begging for a "Penny for the Guy" in order to buy fireworks. The Guy would end up on a garden bonfire, it was all very pagan. I haven't seen a Guy for so long I've forgotten when it was. Now as for fireworks, you were I think, supposed to be sixteen to buy them, but we all knew shops, little shops, like the one above, where the mister would sell you a packet of bangers or jumping jacks for a bob, no questions asked. Then, well then along came the Great Interference, the we know better than you brigade, the soi-dissant "caring" children-shouldn't-be-out-enjoying-themselves-they-might-get-hurt-battalions, smothered all of this in a suffocating blanket of puritanical cant ... ironically these neo-puritans killed off the very celebrations of their escape from Catholic conformity. 

It was the Blair years that led to the rise of these busy-bodying nosey-parkers that has led inexorably to the present farce-fascism of locking us all up for our own good. All done, as I indicated, under the ruse of health measures, so no smoking in pubs (killed off the pubs), banning the sale of strong beers (affected small off-licences and shops), a sugar tax on fizzy drinks pushed vile artificial sweeteners onto the poor and as somebody said only fat people drink diet coke. I won't go on about the same mindset that "cares" about the "climate" and wants to tax meat and make us all to eat nuts and raisins and grass and I mention only in passing that wonder of wonders, straight out of the Inquisition ... the "hate crime" ... I cannot, in the space allowed, pour enough contempt upon these manipulative, mendacious, maliciously evil, yes, evil, people. If you are one of them or have fallen for this switched morality where everything weak is praised and all that was good is now evil, I despise you with a passion. You negate life, you would drag us down because you are in decline, you are the opposite of human, you are death.

Lockdown v2.0 will kill off what is left of our pubs and take with it many cafés and restaurants and small businesses in their money-making run up to Christmas, only the big supermarkets and the online traders will be left ... that seems to be the plan, if, indeed, there is a plan. England has been deliberately dulled, made utterly compliant (where is the nascent populism of the Brexit years? that, too, may be part of the plan all along, to kill populism in Europe and the US ... it was never about a poxy virus, ever!) so much so that one almost wishes for a modern day Guido to succeed and bring back Popery, incense, idolatry and jumping-jacks ...

Regeln om sex

Her most excellent Britannic Majesty's Government regularly astounds us all with its sagacity and fleetness of foot in reacting to changing circumstances. Once again when faced with a death rate of near zero from its very own Covid19 epidemic it cleverly instituted a system of testing. It would do 100,000 tests a day, it boasted, and sure enough it took 100,000 snotty samples a day. (Hoorah and God save the Queen!) Then noticing that these some of these tests came back positive (as they would even if there was no virus left in the world) it claimed, no, stated as fact, there was an increase in the infection rate and certain towns would have to be put back into lockdown (Boo, Hiss and why don't fules obey the guidelines?).
Then seeing that the restaurant trade was as near to dead as can be it brought in a 50% off voucher scheme to get folk to eat out then moaned when folk went out and enjoyed the discount... (Hoorah! no, no sorry not Hoorrah!  hush with the Hoorahs...) There were other clever moves but you want get to the sex.
So of course the testing goes on, relentlessly on. (Today I heard that vast numbers of samples will never even make it to the "testing" stage and have simply been binned, the system is creaking, cracking and about to break under the strain) ...and the testing still tells a tale of increasing positives (OoooooH *scarey noise* but as I keep saying the hospitals are strangely empty ...hmmm.) So now there's to be instituted the brilliant Rule of Sex, a device so fantastic it defies criticism. From Monday (and not before) you cannot have sex with more than six people in a house or in any social gathering, I think that's how it goes, like all the guidelines this seems fair and reasonable to me and, speaking personally, won't be too much of a hardship to endure. I might, very easily be confused on this and have got the wrong end of the stick, my hearing's not what it used to be. Anyway ... Take that Sars-Cov-2, you dastardly fiend! Beep, beep now ... and keep a stiff upper something, lip , yeah lip.
And how will this be enforced, do I hear you ask, do you even care (frankly I've given up, gone home and am phoning this in) ...  because even Her most excellent Britannic whatsit  has noticed a slackening in enthusiasm (nay outright mockery, shame! will no-one take this seriously?) for its imposed ordinances. Answer came there: Covid Marshalls! Yup brilliant, garner a posse of neighbourhood Stasi wannabes (at £10/hour) to go round and check up that the Rule of Sex is being applied. I think I'll apply, I've always had a hankering for sticking my nose in other people's business and telling them that whatever they're doing they should stop. Yes I see a smart career change opening up before me... I just need to get myself a stab proof vest off eBay.

But, seriously, anyone wishing to have their say on the Covid19  and issues pertaining should take half an hour out of their busy lives to look at this brilliant video and consider that the epidemic was a normal event, was not particularly severe, is well and truly over and we are being pushed around by a despotic bunch of thugs using a 'casedemic' as an excuse. The insane rule of six is just a device to stop political action, to prevent gatherings of discontent. We should fly up and teach them manners.

... and the crane? is just a crane in Cottingham, a device to lure you into lurid tales of depravity. The Swedish title is a hat tip to a country that did not follow the madness, suffered the same as everyone, but is now moving on or so we are told ... nah scrub that it was silly ruse to get sex in the headline.

Rude Awakening

These guys rolled up at 7ish this morning; not quite what a peaceful neighbourhood wanted at that time of day, much crashings and bangings and digging up of the road and laying a new patch of tarmac. This was East Riding of Yorkshire Council come to fix the road. Only a good bit of road they fixed I happen to know belongs to Hull City Council (or at least they claim it does). The lorry above is parked over another bit that needs fixing so we can look forward yet another early morning call from these horny handed sons of toil or their Hull equivalent.

Scarlet Pimpernel

Events this year have meant the councils in these parts have not been doing their usual trick of spraying weed-killing glyphosate in each and every nook and cranny so a thousand flowers have bloomed, to quote old Mao, mostly in the gutters and pavements of the town and neighbourhood.  It's been one of the few benefits of the 'madness of 2020'. These little beauties are really tiny and a lifetime first for me, Anagallis arvensis or Scarlet Pimpernel in a gutter on Strathcona Avenue. I know they're orange; it seems they didn't have a word for that colour, cf pink , so scarlet they became for want of a better word. WikiP tells me they are considered a weed, hmmph, and also that the flowers only open in sunshine hence another name of Poor man's weather-glass and there's also a blue scarlet pimpernel go figure. 

Though there cannot be more than a light coating of dusty, wind-blown, useless soil in the gutter it is enough to support a surprising array of species which Authorities kill off in the name of tidiness. This is what we are missing by this stupidity.

Bus Stop Blues

Imagine running a business where the Government recommend your customers not use your services and then compensates you for your losses... this is the neo-normative fantasy world we live in now. These double-deckers can take over seventy passengers sitting and standing (at a warm fuggy squeeze) but are limited to no more than twenty face-masked and fear filled voyagers. I say twenty but the bus I was on into east Hull the other day had many more than that thankfully or folk would have been left behind. Even the worst laid schemes o' mice and men gang agley it seems.

The picture is Cottingham Green bus stop but in nearby Hull the bus lane scheme has been extended to run all daylight hours not to help buses, no, no, buses are bad, bad I tells you ... no it's to help cyclists who are supposed to take advantage of this benefice and fill the gap made by mad bucking of the market (let me check yes I did write bucking glad I got that right). Now of course cyclists won't suddenly appear; Hull is after all one the most obese, cigarette smoking places in the country (part of its lasting charm I suppose) ... instead the extra cars on the road carrying disgruntled bus passengers (now lost forever I assume) will be squeezed into even less space and Hull's familiar gridlock problem will no doubt return should the economy ever get back out of the deep hole it's in. 

The flowers that bloom in the spring, tra la ...

 

...Breathe promise of merry sunshine

Saturday all shiny and bright and temperatures climbing nicely to a decent 21°C, not too hot (for me) and not too cold, shirt-sleeved Goldilocks temperatures. Sunday and Monday 8°C with a nithering North Easter  off the North Sea and back to winter togs. This is springtime in dear old England; teasing temptation followed by shivering disappointment. Still the May blossom  is out and filling the locked down land or at least my street with a snow like covering which might be actual snow if it gets any damn colder.

Whole trees in motion

For the past three or four days they've been at it again. Barely had one little storm faded away than they issue warning of impending doom with another approaching Atlantic depression. They've called this one Dennis and it promises the usual big blow and a whole ocean of wet stuff. Maybe a month's worth of rain in a day, there'll be flooding, there will be recriminations ... But as of now it's just a fresh breeze stirring up my neighbour's birch trees and a little drizzle, time to walk the dogs and get the shopping done or just put your feet up and forget about it.

The weekend in black and white is here.

A Darkness at Noon

A storm in February used to pass by unnoticed, it was the kind of thing you expect, happened every year, through out autumn and winter we'd have storm after storm. A few dustbins would get blown over, maybe a tree or two, a power outage ( to use the American term) was not unknown. But it was winter, you expected it and got on with stuff. Nowadays everything has to have some malign anthropogenic cause and we'd better beat ourselves with birches until we come to our senses and/or die and leave the planet to all those cuddly animals and nice trees and flowers and grasses ... The chiliastic numpties gather in their covens and murmur misanthropic millennial doom and say we must expect these "extreme weather events" even more frequently now that there's so many people on the earth all making nasty carbon dioxide. They are, as I've said before, quite mad and completely wrong: we have fewer storms these days ... but mere facts never faze a craze.

Also crazy is giving these passing Atlantic depressions names: today's puny effort has the name Ciara which means "dark haired"; apt given that it was getting quite pitchy at just gone noon when I took my photo coming back from Tesco.

My bin blew over (almost!) , we must expect more events like this ... We shall rebuild! I don't know if the trauma will ever  leave me.

Puddle Reflections

Between the western edge of Hull and the village of Cottingham there's a no-man's land of so-called green belt, rough unwanted grazing pasture, land really not fit for crops, land that regularly floods, a land fit for gulls, horses, dog walkers, grey-bearded loons and youngsters up to no-good, a land that is a site of special scientific interest. In short just the sort of land developers salivate over; they would love to drain the place and cover with as many units as they can. To add a layer of complication the land is in the East Riding of Yorkshire Council (ERYC) but much of it is owned by Hull City Council (don't ask how). So you can see how conflict between the neighbouring authorities might arise. Hull has filled its boundaries and has no more room, it would love to take over Cottingham, Anlaby, Willerby and the outlying villages and fill in the gaps in between and then spread out to Beverley. The good people of these villages voted overwhelmingly to tell Hull to get stuffed in a referendum a while back ... Thankfully ERYC usually denies permission for development, as it did for the creation of Hull's Cottingham cemetery, to get that built Hull had to go to a public inquiry (at ERYC's expense) ... I hear that the graves of Hull's dead still fill up with flood water and new drainage is being planned (at Hull's expense). 

The latest attempt is a desire by a charity to build a mini-village of 48 dwellings, huts, a cafe, parking, poly tunnels (?) with associated landscaping and infrastructure... you get the picture ... all for ex-army personnel, they call it a veterans village,  on land off Priory Road, close by this puddle. Quite whether Cottingham village and ERYC social services are up to dealing with the expense of dozens of so-called "heroes" has not been mentioned but it is obviously the thin end of a developer's wedge, cynically using a supposed "good cause" to create a precedent so more permissions will have to be granted. Then all our messy puddles will be gone and the incurable, suppurating pestilence that is Hull will be upon the land that no-man wants.

Streetscape

I go along this street, Strathcona Avenue¹, every day to pick up the newspapers, a pint of milk and a loaf of bread. The street dates from the early 1930s and was built on the fields of the old West Bulls farm around what is now Bricknell Avenue. It is very typical of the housing built at that time, boring three bedroom bay-windowed terraces with small gardens front and rear. Most of the outer western edge of the town is filled with stuff like this, not exactly made of ticky-tacky but they all look just the same.
Over the fifteen or so years I've been around here what has changed most markedly is the disappearance of front gardens and their conversion into parking spaces. The street on a weekend is packed with parked cars as many houses have two or more vehicles each so off-road parking is considered a must-have... This means less space for blackbirds, dunnocks and thrushes to rummage around and their numbers have declined, though house sparrows seem to have made a bit of a come back in the past two years. The street is one of those that has it's feet in Hull and its head in Cottingham meaning two councils run the place.

Streetscape is the theme for the first day of the glorious month of February. Go see other much more interesting streets from much more interesting places here.

¹The street takes its name from Donald Smith, 1st Baron Strathcona, a Scottish-born Canadian businessman who made his millions from other people's work and then gave some of it away so becoming a philanthropist and not just a common bum. I think I mentioned a while back the tale I heard of how he wanted to be known as Lord Glencoe but the murderous connotations of that place (a bloody massacre in case you've forgotten) meant a change and the invention of the Strathcona name. I admit I'd never heard of him until I moved here; I guess he's better known in Canada as he ran the Hudson Bay Company for seventy five years and many institutions and places are named in honour of his big beard and gratitude to his bounteousness.

Blue skies and trees

Snuff Mill Lane

The anticyclonic gloom of the past week has been briskly blown away by a cold front, well, I say cold it's down to a comfortable 6°C so really just a tad below average for late January. Here's some trees from Snuff Mill Lane, Priory Road and thereabouts I took on my morning walk.

Priory Road

Priory Drive

Near Hotham Road North

Near Hotham Road North

Golf Links Road

Feather-footed through the plashy fen ...

This guy came prepared for the Snuff Mill Lane seasonal puddles. He had a dog, some sort of Spaniel as I recall, a happy, mucky old thing that somehow ran round the edge without so much as getting its paws damp ... his human had a less than dainty approach.

Since September rain fall in these parts has been abundant topping up what an old TV weather presenter once called "the angst filled aquifers" ... and we've still got "February Fill the Dyke" to come.

February fill the dyke, 
Be it black or be it white; 
But if it be white, 
It's the better to like.

To lose two looks like carelessness

On our way to Cottingham via Snuff Mill Lane we came across an amusing sight ... a pair of artfully arranged riding hats possibly by the same guy who brought us the "spectacles on a bench" installation that was such a success the other year.

Winter Trees

In this bleak midwinter rain has fallen, rain on rain ... and so Snuff Mill Lane fields are nicely awash and home to a few wary gulls and it's all a bit otherworldly.

I know it's hard to believe but I have seen a farmer try to grow a crop in these fields a few years ago. Every now and then it gets ploughed, harrowed and sown with barley or some such; I'm not qualified to say what sort of yields comes out of here but it can't be good since it's been fallow for a few years now. I think this is protected land, as in the Council's 'local plan' does not have in its sights, and it's also a site of scientific interest (but that means diddly-squat if developer wants it).

I've mentioned before that it's a great place for seeing the things of nature with birds, roe deer, weasels and so on. Best thing I saw this year was a buzzard being attacked by some crows. I took a not very good picture ...

Among the leaves so green, O

I could tell you this road is named after John Wymersley who in the early 16th century ran the well nigh bankrupt Haltemprice Priory close by and came into conflict with Hull City Council as then was in the guise of the Sheriff of Hull who ran neighbouring villages. The dispute I read came to a "battle or skirmish" in 1516 ... I could but Wikipedia has it all written down so neatly that it would waste my time so I'll just copy it here ...

"the Prior claimed that though the priory was within the Shire of Hull it was not part of it, and was within the Lordship of Cottingham, and had taken the issue to the Star Chamber; the case was referred to the Abbott of Meaux; Bryan Palmes; and Sir William Constable who had decided in the Prior's favour. Despite this decision on 6 October the Sheriff of Hull together with 200 people of the town began to approach Wolfreton; the Prior, who had been informed of the Sheriff's intentions roused his tenants, and armed the monks of the Priory, who then blocked the roads, and hurled abuse on the Sheriff and his people. The Sheriff's party returned the insults in turn using foul language. Subsequently, the altercation came to blows and a quarrel with arrows ensued. The battle continued until the monks, many being old or fat, gave way, and fled to their priory, followed by the Sheriff's group. The situation was prevented from becoming more inflamed by the arrival of the Lord Mayor of Hull, who having learned of what was happening hastened to the scene with 60 horsemen. Subsequently, the Prior sought redress in the Star Chamber, with the Sheriff accused of riot and other crimes – the legal proceedings continued for three years at much expense, leading to the settlement that the Prior was given Willerby and Newton within his authority, whilst Hull obtained free right to the fresh water springs of Anlaby"

...

Ah that was so far in the past and they don't do stuff like that these days except ... well my own little patch of this green and pleasant isle is in Cottingham but Hull City Council claims it owns the road outside my house and is trying to tell me how to keep my hedge in trim. We've been through the hurling abuse at the Sheriff's men stage and I have my complaint before the Star Chamber as I write ... all I need now is 60 horsemen since old and fat monks are pretty useless and scarce on the ground these days. 

To finish I thought I'd include this little video of a song which has been earworm of mine lately. The song goes on and on but this is a short and sweet version and, much like this post, quite mad.

The Biggest Game

Some seats are marginal and some are so safe they weigh the vote instead of counting it. Such is the condition of the constituency I find myself in today as the country douches itself in cold water puts on a mac and a warm, woolly hat and toddles down to the Polling Station to exercise its democratic right to kick out its MP. Here in Howden and Haltemprice (or is it Haltemprice and Howden? you know I think it might be) there has been a Conservative MP since the Reform Act of 1832, it's considered the second safest seat in the country. So why bother voting? It's just a big game where one side always wins. In this election though I said wouldn't bother I shall be voting and voting for the sitting Tory MP. I want him and his party to have a nice big majority. Why? The hung Parliament of the past two years or so has been a stinking insult to the majority who voted to leave the EU and for all the faults of the Conservative Party (and I could write a book) the other lot both Labour (a party now devoid of meaning, led by an untrustworthy dunderhead, who promise even more delay and dithering on their path to ultimate betrayal) and the Liberal Democrats (who it has to be said are neither liberal nor democratic and have already sold the pass on Brexit) are utterly execrable and incapable of pushing water downhill.

The Lib Dems ... well I post this here because they will be washed out just like this photo.

When I first came to this place elections were held in the school hall across the road at the back. This was deemed to be interfering with the running of the school (how? don't ask me) so now the Council has to pay out for a containerised Polling Station in a pub car park which appears as if by magic the day before and vanishes the day after every election. Is there a big storage space for resting Polling Stations?

Cottingham

"No one left and no one came

On the bare platform..."

The good ship Wikipedia informs me that Cottingham station was opened in the mid 1840s like so many stations, little and large, in this country. I learn that the place was actually designed by a real person, an architect no less (who knew?), George Andrews, I had thought these places just grew by themselves, organically, they all look the same, and that would be, I suppose, because the Boy George designed most of them ... I read that there were "two platforms, a stationmaster's house, and waiting rooms. In addition to the passenger facilities there was a goods shed, and coal depot to the west of the line, reached by points to the north of the station. Goods transit into Cottingham included coal and building materials, whilst goods outwards from Cottingham included large amounts of agricultural produce as well as livestock." 

Must have been quite a busy little place back then. Now it's more Adlestrop than King's Cross ...

Well there are still two platforms, the stationmaster's house is a listed building now though I wouldn't want to live there as there's no floor. The coal depot is no more, I think it's a builders' merchant store or it was, there were plans for a supermarket there (whatever happened to that I now wonder.) There are waiting rooms, that much is true and recently renovated too, but only on one platform and I've never seen anyone use them. The signal box is now a museum piece and goods traffic all goes by road these days and has done for decades. The footbridge remains as do a few dozen passengers each day who want to go to Bridlington or Scarborough or Hull and Sheffield, I believe there's a through train to London once a day but that might just be a myth. There's no ticket office, never has been while I've been here. A modern, somewhat intrusive, innovation is a fancy interactive ticket machine ignored by all; I always buy my ticket on the train ... 'cos sometimes the conductor doesn't turn up and a free ride is always fun.

The weekend in black and white is here.

Honey Fungus (I think)

On Snuff Mill Lane the other day large numbers of these pretty brown critters had sprung up alongside a blackthorn and ivy hedge. I think it's honey fungus (Armillaria mellea) a destroyer of broadleaf trees, particularly fruit trees. I'm told they are edible but somehow I don't think I'll try. I recall the saying that everything is edible at least once. Did I mention there were large numbers of them?

Old Warty

Avid followers of my dreary tales will know of my pumpkin cultivation (if that is the word, they just romped along all by themselves) and will, no doubt, love to know that the only one that grew anything like a pumpkin ended up as all good gourds do: top sliced off, gutted and crudely hacked about in some really messy ritual. (I don't like Hallowe'en but making a mess still appeals) But then what do you do with the damn thing? Being a novice at this game I put old warty face on the garden gates' spikes  for any passing wildlife to enjoy; plus I'm sure he'll annoy the neighbours (who do things neat and tidy in the garden). He sits there still, a girning, toothy memorial to the sunshine of the summer of '19.

The Railway

This pub  in Cottingham has been closed since January and was only open for a few weeks over Xmas before that, the seasonal decorations are still up... Basically it's on its uppers and whoever owns it has decided enough is enough and has put in plans to erect "10 dwellings with associated access, parking, landscaping and infrastructure following demolition of hotel". You last saw this place way back in 2012 when it was positively blooming.