Life's little mysteries

So just what is this woman doing staring so intently at the ground in the newly townscaped Queen Victoria Square? I know but I'm not telling, the mystery to me is why she'd bother ...

The theme for the first day of February is Loving Life.

Hull says NO! So Trump Won't Go!

Here in the dark of a January evening a collection of banner wavers, delusional socialist wannabes, imps, pimps, banjo players and just plain old fashioned passers-by have collected in Queen Victoria Square to demand that SOMETHING MUST BE DONE about that awful Mr Trump and his evil acts.  There was lots talk of building a socialist alternative and fighting American Imperialism all drawing the appropriate Pavlovian applause response. I hear he keeps a close ear to the ground and worries so much about how well he's doing down on Hessle Road and the Avenues, so this grand demo will greatly irritate his ulcers and boil his piss I've no doubt.

Seriously though Mr Trump  the duly (and newly) elected head of state of a foreign country is getting up everyone's nose at the moment He might be doing something right then, but it's not my circus and not my monkey as they say these days. But it not just American noses, no sir, well it wouldn't be would it? The self-proclaimed liberal luvvies have got to show themselves as "doing" stuff so they hold these little demos sprouting up over the country, all utterly meaningless and just an excuse for the same old tired inane claptrap to be spouted forth. But the irrelevancy doesn't stop at few demos; oh no.  There's currently a petition to Parliament  (that's the UK Parliament by the way just in case, like me, you were wondering what the hell it has got to do with us) with over 1.5 million signatures saying Mr Trump should not be allowed to meet the Queen! Ye Gods! I would have thought that making him meet that wizened old brood mare was a suitable punishment for anyone but no, he must not shake hands (or anything else) with Queenie or the world will end or some such nonsense. Now as this pathetic little country is seeking a trade deal with the good old evil US of A what chance do you think that petition has, hmmm? I expect Brenda will be told to get her knee pads out, moisten her royal lips and grin and bear it.

The statement from our sponsors

The City of Culture thing is under way as I may have mentioned. The year is being financed by 'partners' or sponsors in common parlance. The old saying "he who pays the piper calls the tune" mostly definitely applies to what you see before you. Siemens manufacture wind turbines in an old dock out in the badlands of east Hull and being a major sponsor, sorry partner, they get to plonk, sorry (again) tastefully place their produce in the town square. Oh to be sure it's officially a sculpture or an installation or whatever by the name of "The Blade" but anyone can see this is just product placement gone barmy. I won't bore you with statistics of size and weight and so on since I know you won't be impressed, let's just say it's big and intrusive and leave it at that. And you certainly don't want to know how it got here, let's just say the fairies left it overnight. The natives, however, seem mightily pleased with their gift from the gods and go up to it and touch it as if it wasn't real, all very odd, still if it keeps them happy I suppose it does no harm.

Somewhere there's a team of engineers who must be very pleased with their work.

Did I mention it was bloody big?

It may not be art but it makes a good place for birds to keep an eye on the insanity of this place.

The weekend in black and white is here.

Orange men

Queen Victoria Square was veritable hive of activity as the finishing touches are applied to the multi-million pound make over. We are absolutely assured that it will all be completed this month all that is except the new water features which won't be activated until Winter is over. I toyed with using this for the 'transitions' theme yesterday but I realised that actually nothing much has changed just the size of the brick paving. 

 

The barriers of course remain and if anything the maze has become even more complicated to pass through. In this picture you can see some of the old paving bricks that somehow have survived. They weren't pretty. Below the new paving which is more varied but hardly eye-catching and certainly not worth the months of disruption and loss of trade and business.

"A Rumoured City"

Today is National Poetry Day. Yeah, my reaction was 'so what' as well. A whole day of poetry really? ...wake me when it's over. Hull lays claim to being a city of poetry so I thought I'd post Margot's poem about Hull written a few years ago when she used to be a "Hull Poet"; she's given up on all the tomfoolery of poetry, as she calls it, these days. Anyway here goes; it's one of her more cheerful poems, there's hardly any blood in it all ...

 "A Rumoured City"

This is where the poets come to die;
like elephants in their legendary graveyard
they leave their bones, their teeth, but nothing
so rare as ivory.

You know all the stories...
Two of them shared one wife:
one tried to sell his gold tooth, being thirsty:
another drowned in marriage and normality:
a few fled in panic and never dared look back.

You think of it as human, this city.
You think of it as a woman -
decked with flowers, crannied with docks
whose waters have a female, secret smell.

At first she seems to beckon,
to offer you the freedom of her byways,
to twine her streets around you
in a mistletoe embrace.
But her hosts are dependant on her;
they cannot escape, they forget to try,
they learn to love her as she drains them.

Her choice of iconography betrays her.
Here at the place where her heart beats hardest
two copper statues, corroded green -
one a bare-breasted Amazon
threatening with a lethal trident;
the other sexless, nameless, hooded
and draped like death's unbearable face.

You penetrate the vampire streets;
twilight coils you in its caress.
You think of giving it another year
since the city seems to fit you like a glove
and the docks possess your imagination
when sunset shows them brimming with blood.

                                                       Margot K Juby

A Rumoured City was an anthology brought out some thirty five or so years ago; a collection of stuff (some duff some not so duff) by the then "new poets from Hull", a few of them are dead now or left Hull years ago. A Hull poet, it seems, does not have to live in the place. You can get a copy from here but it'll cost you at least £82! Ouch!

Now that's really useful

*sigh*

Having another dig

If you've got a few visitors coming round you might tidy up a bit, run a hoover over the carpets maybe sort out those convenient piles of stuff that you like to have to hand. You wouldn't throw out all the furniture and decorate every room all at one go, would you? Well maybe you would if you work for Hull City Council. So it comes about that, with less than a year to the City of Culture thingy, a mad panic has taken over and every street in the centre of town has "works" going on. Well I say "works" but it's hardly a hive of industry, less Ford Maddox Brown more Jerome K Jerome.  And will it all be worth the inconvenience, the loss of customers, the closed businesses, the mess and the hassle? Silly me, of course it will ...

Death by a thousand bricks

In the late 80's or was it the early 90's Hull betook itself of a scheme to pedestrianise parts of the city centre. Whitefriargate's pedestrianisation in the 70's having been deemed a success it was thought that a goodly dose of the same medicine would improve the place. Accordingly Jameson Street, King Edward Street and Queen Victoria Square were closed to traffic and paved over. Then later bricked over, as you see. The idea, no doubt, was to improve the 'shopping experience' and indeed no-one now gets hastled by a bus on King Edward Street but then they never did if they stuck to the pavement. As for the shops they have for the most part gone; I doubt there's single business that was running from before still going now. Instead there's, well as I've said before numerous coffee shops, charity shops, shops selling telephones and discount stores. There's also the inescapable fact that the place looks (I'll be polite here) ugly and drab. I'm told that after about 6pm the whole place is deserted which accounts for the closure of so many restaurants, pubs and so on. Today's paper brings a  tale of a restaurant being opened with the forlorn hope to "revive the evening economy", well good luck with that.

Now  instead of drawing the logical conclusion that bricking the place up was a big mistake the Council is going to polish the turd, as they say in certain parts, and fling millions at 'improvements' for the City of Culture. It won't work, no amount of pavement fountains, arty farty works and so on will bring in the shoppers. (The shops by the way are all in the new shopping mall St Stephens or out of town (people are going to Leeds and Sheffield for their shopping!), we'll skip over the absence of joined up thinking here, shall we?)  

Well here's my view for it's worth: Admit that the planners were barmy (and quite possibly corrupt, Hull is far from alone in having failed pedestrian schemes all put in in the glorious 90's), rip out the bricks, put in some tarmac and bring back the buses and cars, restore the status quo ante; in short bring back the life that was sucked out by this idiotic scheme.  But I suspect it's too late, there's a definite stench of decay but that could just be the drains....

A little OTT? Perhaps not ...

I have noticed that Hull University's graduation days have become something of an annual bean feast, with town criers and chamber music and so on. All those well dressed ladies in high heels that obviously were hurting like hell. What could they do this year to top the last? Well an over sized CCT screen showing the ceremony from City Hall live in Queen Vic Square was not the most obvious answer but here it is nevertheless. Next year a fly pass by the RAF perhaps? I suppose if you are going to put yourself in debt for twenty five years buying a degree (sorry that's paying for tuition, what was I thinking?) then a little celebration is in order. Good luck to all those newly qualified clever so and sos. I really don't envy you, well not much.

Hanging around

This poor girl has been hanging around with the blood going to her head for over a year now and by rights I should have posted this last year with all the others from the day given over to celebrate Hull's selection as the City of Culture (here). But I didn't and so luckily for me (and for you, my joyful reader!) I can post it for this month's collection of all things upside down by the people at City Daily Photo.

Turner Prize

I suppose I must mention that the Turner prize will be hosted by the Ferens in 2017. The announcement yesterday came with full reporting from the BBC arts and farts correspondent as well as national press coverage. As the head honcho of the upcoming Culture fest says; if you want to see it you must come to Hull. That's if ...

Meanwhile a story in the local rag the other day said that the Council intend to put a glass atrium over the entrance to this building. All part of the many million pounds of sprucing up that is going on. (Where is this money coming from?) It's incomprehensible vandalism; there's absolutely no need for an atrium of any sort on this building. It is symptomatic of the crass inanity of Hull City Council. I'll have more on this stupid organisation's activities in the near future.

That place once again

I think they sell Apple computers ("More power behind every pixel" ??!!!) in this shop  but that doesn't stop there being a good reflection of the Maritime Museum.

Weekend Reflections are here.

Looks like the back end of a bus

This is not just any bus parked up outside City Hall, no this is a Beat the Street bus, a luxury coach for the entertainment industry complete with bunks, kitchens, every conceivable mod-con for the comfort and ease of the hard worked artistes. I think the artistes in question were a band known as Texas who come not from the USA but from Glasgow in the newly independent state of Bonnie Scotland.

Devil's Music

On Saturday in town there was a choice between evangelical rap (or was it hip-hop? my ignorance of pop genres is vast) renditions of bible verses or the good old devil's music; rock 'n' roll. Hmmm. No choice really. This trio were not too bad; that is to say they kept in time with the drummer which is unusual even for professionals. They drew a small appreciative foot-tapping crowd and applause (again almost unheard of for buskers) One thing I did notice is that every song they did began with "Well ...." I think that must be a fifties thang.

and so it begins

Having been selected as the cultural omphalos for 2017 why not go the whole nine yards and spruce up the town as well with a £25 million rearrangement of the deck chairs? First for  'improvement' is Queen Victoria Square which is to get fountains in the pavement so your trousers get wet as you walk by. Still anything that gets rid of the acres of boring red brick paving can't be all bad. As in all campaigns you must first fortify your redoubt or the thieving natives will be off with your JCB before you can say City of Culture.

Hull Rickshaw

Seems to be the year for novel ways of  getting around the city and seeing the sights. I told you about the land train a few weeks back now we have a rickshaw to carry you about by foot power. The guy in the shades, Neil Worner, is in charge of this little project, he used to drive a white van now he pedals passengers around town and the Avenues area. It sounds like a nice idea but I expect if you're stuck in the tailback behind him you might have other ideas. I've seen a promo video he made and can only say that shy and introverted are not words that spring to mind. You wanna see? It's here.

Just noticed the England flag, must have taken this during the World Cup, you remember the World Cup? Me neither.

Laura Norder

With crime rising in Humberside for the first time in ten years and the police aiming to make £30 million savings over the next few years with the loss of 800 jobs it is, perhaps, little wonder that public confidence in Humberside Police is the lowest in the country. You may think there are five police officers in this picture but in fact there is only one. Police community support officers dress like coppers and stroll around like coppers but no-one takes 'em seriously. 

Oh what a lovely war

The Government's announcement in 2012 that it was to spend millions on celebrating, oh sorry, commemorating, the centenary of the slaughter of the First World War must have brought tears of joy to meeja types. With just over a week till the start date no doubt they'll be gearing themselves up for a feeding frenzy. All rather sickening really.  Bookshops' shelves groan with the latest WW1 tasteful tomes as publishers seek to cash in. Not to be outdone, in fact, way out in the vanguard as would be of keeper of the nations memories, the BBC is touting this little touring circus designed to "reflect on the dramatic impact the war had on families and communities", nice work if you can get it. And when this bean feast is over we will, to paraphrase Lloyd George, have to go through it again in 25 years and at three times the cost.

That big old "Thank You, Hull" party

They seemed to be packing a whole year's worth of 'culture' into one afternoon in Hull yesterday. The day started with the Lord mayor's parade complete with a fly past of some WW2 planes which I saw from two miles away while getting my newspapers, those three planes made one hell of a racket, no stealth bombers back then.

I wouldn't normally attend things like this but I had to go into town for stuff anyway so I had a little look-see. I only stayed for an hour and missed most of the goodies on offer including a "Larkin Toads performance" (I bet that was fun). Here in no particular order are some of the goings-on that I witnessed. 

Synchronised Lindy Hopping!

Where's the next act gone?

A robot that prints on the pavement

If you're wondering what the "thank you" is for it's a  City of Culture thing and if you're still wondering what a City of Culture thing is I suggest lying down in a cool dark room with soothing music. If these images aren't sufficient the local rag has more pictures here.

Thou shalt have a fishy on a little dishy ...

You turn your back for a moment and strange things pop up all over the place. I'd not been in town for a couple of weeks (yes it's possible to live without the delights of Hull) so it was a bit of surprise to find kitted fishes adorning the buildings and what can only be called woollen condoms for the Maritime Museum's guns. The reason for all this madness: 'Follow the Herring' celebrating the old east coast herring fishing industry. A major feature is the knitting of a 'coat for a boat' which you can see below, as I say they get up to all sorts when you're not looking ...

14th century font full of fish

Coat for a boat