The turtle does not cook the snake

Well here we are in Hull and that's the river Hull and that old barge has a hull ... so the title obviously had to have hull in it somewhere ... so I'll let you make up your own. Mine is inspired by  completing 21 days of a Duolingo Italian course ...it's full of useful phrases like  la marmaletta non ha un gusto dolce  and "the dog eats an ant" or  "il cuoco cucina un serpente"!. It is all very repetitive and has addled the brain somewhat and that combined with some warm weather ... lo squalo legge i giornali ... Ciao! a domani!

Some like it hot

I've said before how much hot weather and me are not good buddies. So when the forecast for this week came along with promises (or threats) of a heatwave (with record breaking temperatures possible) moving up from what's left of the smoky cinders of continental Europe I was not best pleased. Let's just say that if I were a steak I'd prefer to be rare and bloody rather than dried out and well cooked. And folk who prattle through the nice cool times about how cold it is and how they put on the central heating when the mercury dips slightly below 21C ... now they moan about how it's hot and they can't sleep at night because the mercury stays at 21C ... Still there's no accounting for folk and the warm stuff is an excuse, if one were ever needed, to have lots of ice cream though not this ersatz American muck obviously ... 

Margot took this picture.

O Tessa, Tessa May ...

... They have taken her away 

and she'll never walk down Whitehall any more,

she was a bold deceiver

and lied to all the Leavers,

that scheming, lying, no good Tessa May!  ...

By the time I finish this we should know who is going to pretend to be in charge of this fine and noble country by donning the mantle of First Lord of the Treasury, Her Majesty's (very own) Prime Minister. The unloved Mrs May was swept into office, sine suffragio, by virtue of her opponent declining to stand; the thinking being that the premiership and Brexit was a poisoned chalice and so it turned out. In these days of acronyms, Mrs May's best offering was a conspiracy with the the EU, known as Brino; Brexit in name only: which achieved the difficult task of being utterly unacceptable to Leavers and Remainers alike. Her deal, thrice despised by Parliament, is well known but since saying she was quitting she has gone a bit demob happy and signed the UK up to becoming a net zero emitter of carbon by 2050. That is something that will no doubt disappear, quietly ... So the Conservative and Unionist Party has been involved in a interminable campaign to find someone, anyone, daft enough to want to be PM and it seems they have quite a deep seam of stupidity to choose from but narrowed it down to a Jeremy and a Boris (the bookies' favourite) ... a choice between a shrivelled dried dog turd and a steaming heap of fresh bullshit ...  Plus ça change, that famous 17^th century song of the Glorious Revolution, Lillibullero has it ... "Once an old prophecy found in a bog, we shall be ruled by an ass and a dog!"

The picture is a graffiti by someone who tags himself Preg; dozens of his tedious scribblings with a  somewhat obvious didactic lefty leaning are to be found all over the so-called Old Town. I might do a post of them if nowt else is going on.

The Coffee Pod

In the twelve or so years that St Stephens has been dominating the retail trade in this town it has had this bizarre wooden contraption (apparently known as the Pod, this is news to me) somewhat akin to a piece of gut suspended above the heads of customers. This has been home to a certain seller of diluted coffee extract. So, anyhow, the news is that this place will close soon. (indeed sooner than soon as I've just read it closed yesterday) ...and, if plans and rumours can be believed, the place will be disembowelled as t'were and St Steve's given a new look. Quite how they'll manage this while folk are wandering around underneath remains to be seen. Coffee aficionados will rightly be unconcerned but those who like this place's sloppy offerings (and there must be some) can be reassured that it is said to be moving to another unit in the shopping centre or they could wander over to the station where another of these places has recently opened.