No iron bars, no cage, no worries

Have I mentioned how they'll nick anything in this one horse town? Even if it's cemented into the ground. Here's the old Mankind Under Threat feature of  Queen's Gardens under threat once again. Most of the iron bars, as you can see, have been stolen for want of a better word. The Council are now said to be preparing to move the whole thing to a site nearer the City Treasury where they can keep an eye on it (ha ha). That's if they can scrape up enough pennies from the back of their collective sofa. It's present site acts as a down-to-earth (literally) counterpoint to the outrageous, grandiose memorial to Wilberforce directly across the road; a stark reminder that the work started by Wilberforce et al is by no means complete. To move it would lose that poignancy and rob it of  meaning.

A story for another day

You'll be aware from a casual reading of this blog that the town is undergoing a make-over, a renovation , a transformation from ugly duckling to, well, we'd better wait and see. A large wodge of cash has been found to pay for all this. Included in the first stage plans was a facelift for Queen's Gardens which involved taking the place back to its 1950's redesign (down come those trees), a central performance stage (for what?), a removable stage over the above pond (again why two stages?) and more space to play 'sport' (just plain why?) and a memorial to some guitarist, Mick Ronson (who he?), from the 1970's whose appeal was and remains limited in the extreme. All of these bizarre ideas are, thankfully, now on hold, and officially won't start until 2018; that is to say after the year of the City of Culture (if ever). I don't know the reason for the delay but the suspicion that the Council bit off more than it could chew seems a reasonable one.

In the meanwhile, this place, which on a pleasant day should be an enjoyable peaceful haven in the centre of town, is suffering from neglect and decay by contractual cock-up. Being a park you'd think it would be looked after by the park services company, wouldn't you? Well the contract with that company mysteriously does not cover Queen's Gardens, so it is left to the overstretched street cleaners (or possibly the Council secretaries, dog wardens or whoever is free that day) to maintain this place and that is failing. The paths are cracked, litter is accumulating and anti-social elements, drunks and druggies, roam the place making it not as welcoming as it should be. The Council continues with its unrealistic, unnecessary pipe-dreams while the place is falling apart around it; nothing new there then.

More tales of woe from this lovely place tomorrow.

Weekend reflections are here.

Wilberforce Monument

I have shown this monument to William Wilberforce before but not, I think, from close up and personal. There were rumours of a move back to its original position on Monument Bridge but that is now considered unlikely. Lots of things that were proposed last year are now considered unlikely but that is a story for another day.

The weekend in black and white is here.

Two men in a boat

Here the little coble Harlequin is putting out into relatively calm North Sea to check lobster or crab pots or maybe just for a trip round the bay. If you click on this picture and peer a bit at the horizon you can just about make out some wind generators, these are part of what is going to be the world's largest offshore wind farm. This will keep the lights on in a million homes just so long as the wind blows.

The theme for City Daily Photo this month is the 'beauty of simplicity'.

Deep Blue

Here's a close-up of the nose-cone of the fish tank cum penguin prison known as the Deep. It's still pulling in the hoopleheads and last Monday, the bank holidays, queues were over an hour long, despite (or maybe because of) the vile weather. As you can see the weather has cleared up a bit since then.

Highway Maintenance

Those familiar with the current state of the town's highways may appreciate this unsubtle attempt at visual irony ...

Ice cream castles in the air

I've taken dozens of these shots down the Humber from this point or nearby. I post this one just because I liked that cloud and for no other reason.

Ice Cream Time?

As the remnants of Storm Katie wander off into the North Sea taking with them the gales, horizontal rain and hail that make a traditional Easter Bank Holiday such a fun day out it's surely time to enjoy a double whippy ice cream. No? Well, perhaps a hot cup of tea with a little something added to thaw out your bones would be more appropriate.

The perennial gull problem

Or rather the perennial stupid human being problem.... There are several signs by the harbour claiming that gulls are aggressive and so should, on no account, be fed. What a calumny! Gulls are no more aggressive than any other bird. You build a town on their territory, eat your meals outside and wave food about in front of their beaks, quite naturally they think you're an idiot and swoop down to take a free meal. That's hardly aggression that's just taking advantage of human numptiness. And so every Summer there's outrage at seagulls taking ice-cream out of a tourist's hands or whatever and just as surely some opportunist politician will pipe up about culling these magnificent, intelligent beasts. (The answer to all our wildlife 'problems' it seems is to slaughter the animals. Our badgers are to be culled because our farmers cannot be bothered to immunise their stock against TB or practice good husbandry. There's no scientific evidence to blame badgers but they're going to be killed anyway, that's the weight of the farming lobby on this vile government. But that's another story) The whingeing ninnies, who go to the seaside maybe once or twice a year, won't be happy till every last gull is safely in a bin bag, the coast silent and dead, and they can stuff their stupid faces in peace.

The owner of this car, parked by the harbour, will have a hefty cleaning bill but that's not my problem. Should have known better!

Utter claptrap!

Weekend reflections are here.

The Gansey Girl

On the north pier sits this recently installed (October last year) statue, the Gansey Girl, depicting a young woman knitting a traditional jumper or gansey for her fisherman sweetheart. It's part of the maritime trail which is apparently ten years old; how time flies. The sculptor was Steve Carvill.

I have since found out that the little fishes on the base carry the names of fishing families from Bridlington and nearby. If I'd known I'd have taken a close up but if you zoom in on this picture you might just be able to make out some names.

The weekend in black and white is here.

A movable feast

This Sunday being the first Sunday after the first full moon after the Spring equinox means that it is Easter Sunday, a day for eating chocolate eggs and chocolate rabbits and, well, chocolate basically. (I know it has some other significance but we'll leave the increasingly irrelevant, not to say bizarre, Christian sects and crazed neo-pagans to their own private grief. ) This, of course, means that today is Good Friday; a day for eating hot cross buns, traditionally just lightly toasted and eaten with a smidgeon of melting butter, very yummy. But what's all this then? Here, from a distant antipodean place (where no doubt be dragons), comes this meaty, cholesterol laden concoction; the hot cross burger! I love it! It offends on so many levels that I'm almost tempted to wander down the road and try one.

A footnote in history

Somewhere in Bridlington

By the harbour side on a bollard, one of dozens of such bollards, hides this little plaque to a fairly big event in the English civil war between king and parliament. Queen Henrietta Maria liked to be addressed as Her She-Majesty Generalissima, and why not, you'd need a fancy title being married to an idiot and long-time loser like Charles Stuart. The guns and ammo, however, did no good, as we all know, her husband's side lost. I don't know whether whoever put this up didn't want any one to see it or whatever but if Margot hadn't pointed it out I would certainly never have seen it. I had to kneel down to read it.  I nominate this for the "possibly the most inconspicuous plaque in the world" award.

Don't you know there's a war on ...

And so to Bridlington, and what is all this then? The High Street was chosen to be the location for filming a rehash of Dad's Army, a late 60'-early 70's BBC sitcom about the Home Guard in WW2 (sounds dire but was actually very good, and still is, a bit of classic). The filming was in 2014 but the film itself has only just been released (some say it should be recaptured and never see the light of day). A review in the Times called the venture "cultural necrophilia", the Guardian said (more or less) it wasn't as bad as it could have been while others politely called it a "bad idea". As the original show is repeated constantly on TV I really can't understand why a second rate repro would get off the ground. Anyhow shops on the High Street are brazenly cashing in while they can with windows taped up against air raids, vintage posters and a general attempt to recreate 1940's Walmington on Sea; and who can blame them?

The Black Lion pub was renamed the Royal Oak in the film and no-body seems to have taken down the sign.

Arts and Science

Last Summer I posted a statue of Minerva that stands in the museum gardens; I mentioned at the time that there were two other statues that I had failed to find. Well I must have been walking around in blinkers to miss these two standing by the exit gate, not exactly hidden are they? The near one represents Art and the other, fittingly headless, one, Science. Neither are in particularly good condition but then high explosives will do that to you.

A 1962 Red Morris

As I know very little (and care even less) about cars I looked up about the Morris Minor in our old friend Wikipedia. According to this impeccable resource the Morris Minor is "considered a classic example of automotive design, as well as typifying "Englishness". Well hmmm. I don't get this Englishness thing; it is a pretty meaningless word especially relating to a motorised box on wheels but let's not start the week off with quibbling. This particular car is a little bit younger than me, was once orange and is now standing in a place that renovates clapped-out old bangers. Speaking of clapped-out old bangers I could do with a bit of renovation as well.

The Sign of the Dancing Goat

This oddly named coffee house is on Beverley Road between Dinos pizza and burger place( "a Healthier alternative" yeah right) and the Newland Christian Centre (doubtless a holier alternative). It is an excellent establishment, so I've read, but as you know I don't touch coffee.

Deep and dangerous

Here's the good old Barmston Drain passing under Clough Road. That yellow thing in the water is a sign from the nearby fitness centre that you can see in the background. It had clearly not read the warning below.

Weekend reflections are here.

A room with a view

Sneaking through the new Zebedee's Yard car park the other day I came across this odd thing. It's some kind of observation platform stuck on top of a building behind the old Neptune Hotel aka Boots the chemist on Whitefriargate. I'll tempt fate and say it wouldn't be sticking my neck out too far to say that, as the building was part of the Customs and Excise extortion racket until 1912, it has some nautical connection since from up there you would have been able to see all the comings and goings on Hull's docks and the river traffic as well. A low tech version of Big Brother is watching you ... the 'security' camera is the modern version.

The weekend in black and white has crept up on us again and it's here.

On yer bike mate ...

So I hung around this sign waiting to see what might happen given cyclists' propensity to be a law unto themselves. Just my luck to find the one cyclist in this town who obeys traffic signs. Mind you cyclists really shouldn't be riding on the pavement now should they?

Labyrinthine mess

The closure of Carr Lane has extended the feeling that the town centre is really becoming a labyrinth at the heart of which lies not some half-man half bull but just some crazed substance abusing town planner who is full of the brown smelly stuff.

Below the magnificent workforce are holding a prayer meeting before carrying out the sacred work of civic destruction, or maybe it was just a pep talk in how to drag the job out for as long as possible.

Of course you can't make omelettes without breaking eggs or it seems brave new worlds without cutting down half a dozen perfectly healthy alders to make way for the addled dreams of the town planner.

Barrow boys get van

The guy with his strawberries "Punnets, two for a pound" has got himself a richly decorated van.

Yet another sad tale

Four years ago to the day I  posted about a young man drowning in the river, well last December it seems it may have happened again. Another young man has disappeared after a night out. As his phone, clothes and shoes were found on the bank of the river it's thought he's somehow gotten into the water. So now there's a petition to erect railings on watersides near bars and pubs. As you see below there's nothing at all to stop someone falling in and those boards can get slippy in the rain. I can see no good reason not to fence off this particular area and with the City of Culture looming shortly there's likely to be an influx of unwary strangers staggering out of the nearby hostelries who might be wondering why their feet are wet ...

On the fence

I've shown bits of this sculptural fence before (here and here) so it's time for a full reveal as it were. It belongs to a warehouse-turned-apartment block that sits alongside the river. The little adornments represent trades and things related to Hull and hereabouts.

I had a root around in my old pictures as I knew I had more from this place and put together this little collection. So that's enough of that, I think, time to get off the fence and move on.

The weekend in black and white is here.

A little bit foggy

Our new super-dooper street lights were struggling to make any impression on the wonderful thick fog that rolled in the other night. I like a nice fog even though we no longer get those glorious mournful foghorns sounding out from the river and making for that complete film noir sensation.

You looking at me?

In town on Wednesady the weather was, well, good weather for ducks shall we say. I could see the front one was eyeing me up but then I noticed the back one was as well. All of which led Margot to give me my new word for the day:

Anatidaephobia:

The well based fear that somehow, no matter where you are or what you are doing, a duck is always watching you....

Have a nice day!

Big Lil

Lillian "Big Lil" Bilocca

The only memories that I have of Hull from my childhood back in the swinging sixties in the idyllic seaside town of Hartlepool is of dock strikes (seemingly every other week), trawlers being lost at sea and a large woman in a headscarf berating all and sundry up to and including the Prime Minister about safety for trawler men. That woman, whose trademark image of the headscarf and raincoat on the grainy black and white TV of the days was really unforgettable, was Lillian Bilocca, who, along with other equally formidable women from the Hessle Road fishing community, managed to get some modicum of safety on the fishing fleet. Trawlers had to have a radio operator, come to that, trawlers had to have a radio, quite a few didn't. Why did it take a group of women to achieve these things while the men were seemingly invisible? Well that's a story for someone else to tell.

So what's all this mural about then I hear you ask? Well someone's written a book, Headscarf Revolutionaries, about all these goings on and the film rights for the book have been sold so watch out for a Hollywood blockbuster. Then the BBC program, the One Show, got involved and commissioned two fellows from Belfast (where murals like this are two a penny) to come over and paint, well, what you see. It was unveiled, if that's the word, over last weekend. And I have to say I'm impressed and I don't impress easy.

Moving upmarket

Last weekend the 99p Store became a Poundland; clearly going for the more discerning customer.