Now for something completely different

This striking sign is outside a little shop in Hepworth's Arcade that sells all things occult,  tchotchkes and similar stuff to clutter the home.

Everything is black and white, isn't it?

This month's light and shadow theme has come in handy for those days when I've not got anything to post or I'm utterly depressed by, among other things, the current climate of polarised numptiness that has possessed this pathetic little pimple on the arse of Europe. Still by this time next week it all be over bar the shooting ...

The weekend in black and white is here.

Anania hortulata

Identifying butterflies in the UK is a bit of a doddle as there's only fifty or so of them; moths however are a pain with over 2,500 to choose from. So this little darling, photographed while we waited for the bus into town the other day, is,  I think after half an hour of google faffing,  apparently a small magpie moth, Anania hortulata. A mothy website describes it as "One of the most distinctive and easily recognised British species of micro-moth". Well hmmph.

Res per industriam prosperae ... don't make me laugh

To no-one's great surprise BHS is to close after years of having money syphoned out of the company by its previous two owners. So there's yet another empty store in the heart of town... looking good for the you know what next year. Res per industriam prosperae is the ironic motto running across the store's impressive mural.

Light and shade

Trying something different with the Spurn lightship.

Dangerous Waters

Hull's marina sparing no expense on health and safety ...

When you're in a hole ...

Jameson Street is really under the knife as the makeover makes over.

The guys who are doing all this wonderful work have made a little video of the full extent of their efforts. It appeared in the local paper recently; I'm sure they wont mind too much if I share it here. If the video doesn't work here's a direct link.

Media morte in vita sumus

This old tree, I think it's a lime tree, is huge, not tall particularly but wide; some of its branches must be forty or fifty foot long. And by all that is right and proper it should be dead. Quite apart from this massive gash where a branch has fallen off, three quarters of its branches  are clearly dead and bare. The saprophytic fungi have moved in already. And yet ... and yet there are still leaves sprouting from  a few branches. Clearly not going to gentle into that goodnight.

The weekend in black and white is here.

Hazy with buttercups

I made a brief sojourn to Beverley Westwood on a hazy June day. I don't think I've ever seen so many buttercups. The cattle that roam about this place must have read that buttercups are poisonous and are carefully avoiding them ...

Sailing By

This odd little installation in Bridlington features a transparency of an oil painting, the Great Gale of 1871 by local artist J T Allerston. If you are not from these parts you may not recognise the names surrounding and underneath the picture. These are the shipping forecast areas and to anyone who has listened to BBC Radio 4 as it closes down for the night they will be only too familiar. The forecast was (probably still is, I haven't listened for a while) usually preceded by a piece of light music entitled 'Sailing By'. That tune and the almost poetic recitation of the forecast following was enough to send most people off to sleep; a kind of national lullaby. Some, however, found the shipping forecast altogether more invigorating ... 

Front & Back

Kenworthy House on George Street is a pretty no-nonsense kind of building. If form follows function then you wouldn't expect many thrills and spills from this place and you'd be right. That's because it happens to be Hull City Council offices. I remember it used to be the housing department but now it's children and young people's services. The staircase at the back makes it slightly the more interesting view to me, but only slightly.

Kingston Square

I was going to use these for the 'light & shade' theme at the start of the month but used something else instead. So here's this little offering; better late than never. Kingston Square is a pleasant enough place to while away a bit of time; at least it was before the demolition and building started just recently.

Lexington Avenue is no more

On this cleared site sometime in the late fifties or sixties was built the Mecca Ballroom known rather romantically as the Locarno, a place for stately ballroom dancing. I'm told the Kinks once played there and looked totally out of place. As times moved on it became Tiffany's, a nightclub, a place to go after the pubs had closed to 'dance' (in reality to keep on drinking). I recall nightclubs of the seventies with their glitter balls and extra loud disco noise and groups of young women standing or jiffling around their handbags on the dance floor. Ye gods! What dreadful places! As the seventies slid ecstatically into the Thatcher years Tiffany's became Lexington Avenue (LA's to the cognoscenti), and I'm afraid by then I was too old to be allowed in (I think I've been too old for most things in this life but we pass along on that). Reports of drug taking (No, really?), drunkenness (who ever would have thought?) and antisocial behaviour (well those were the days) drifted past my eyes in those days but I didn't care and I guess neither did anyone else. The place used to be absolutely heaving on weekends ... and then well, autre temps as they say. It closed several years ago and stood empty as is the well known style in this town. Now with la culture approaching and an alleged shortage of hotel rooms in steps Hilton Inc. to pop in a 167 bed hotel. They'd better get a move on.

On Sunday, go to church ...

... I mean shopping, of course. Here's St Stephen's shopping mall, named after a nearby and long demolished church, a veritable cathedral of retail. Since the 1994 Sunday Trading Act  finally put the end to a thousand or more years of terminal weekend boredom this country has become almost civilised, with the Lord's Day Observance people free to observe the rest of us merrily going to Hell, sorry there I go again, I mean the shops.

Welcome to Dull

The above dull and uninspiring ticket office and waiting room at Paragon Station is to be removed to allow an even more dull and uninspiring set of buildings including shops and, wait for it, wait for it, ... a coffee bar! Yes, if permission is granted, all this blandness will be Hull's to enjoy by November in time for the you know what next year. I understand that the Edwardian wooden cafeteria below is a Grade 2 listed building (as is just about the whole station) but that won't stop anyone bolting on a "glass box" to it with the aim of making a fast buck out of 'culture' would it?

Here's a vision of the future brazenly stolen from the council's planning portal. It's just truly stunning and breathtaking isn't it? What a fantastic first and lasting impression of the mediocrity of Hull it will give visitors over the coming years. Where else can one see such sights and imbibe the thrilling ambience of commerce and coffee whilst rushing for the train or bus out of this place? "Just standing in the paradise that was Paragon Station concourse was enough for me" as no-one is ever likely to say ...

Black

The weekend in black and white is here.

Weekend reflections are here.

Soft, strong and unbearably long ...

OK I expect the odd advertisement for the C of C but this one in Hull station put me in mind of a giant toilet roll. Is it sending a subtle message about the dire nature of next year's 'events'?

Un-English Light

Having spent an hour in Cottingham church the other day I have a bagful of photos so I may as well use one or two for the City Daily Photo theme of 'shadow and highlight'. The stained glass in this church is mostly from a Belgian artist J B Capronnier a fact which someone, Nikolaus Pevsner no less, complained about saying he felt like he was in a French church and "It is all totally un-English; and how much truer to the medium English glass is!"  Mr Pevsner's claim to Englishness was somewhat strained being the a son of a Russian-Jew brought up in Leipzig but we'll let it pass, we're all communautaire these days, well at least until the end of the month. 

The church is kept almost completely unlit, so there's plenty of shadow and a good chance of tripping over a pew until your eyes adjust.

Photo by Margot K Juby

Sharkeys

I mentioned in yesterday's post a nightclub that closed sometime ago, well here it is: Sharkeys. Links nicely with yesterday's post is I do say so myself (sharks, bites, no? ... oh suit yourself!). Reports in newspapers say nightclubs are a closing at an "alarming rate" these days, can't say I'll miss them.

Bites...

This former café (or takeaway I'm not sure what it was) is under the grubby multi-storey car park on George Street. I can't honestly say that I ever saw the place open; those black shutters have always been down as far as I'm concerned. So if you're looking for an opportunity in the food retail industry this place, near to a soon to be demolished police station and next to a nightclub that closed down ages ago, could be your first step on the ladder to success (or bankruptcy).

The weekend in black and white is here.

Meet the Burtons

Richard Burton

Due to events that need not concern you I was forced yesterday afternoon to stay in Cottingham for three hours. Now Cottingham has a few attractions but not, even on a good day, three hours worth. And yesterday it was cold and raining heavily, yes I know it's May. So seeking shelter from the elements I ended up in St Mary's church, camera in hand and acres of time to fill. The place was, as usual empty with only the vicar's CCTV cameras keeping me company. Anyway enough of my troubles ..

Tucked away by the entrance are three large (ridiculously large) memorials to various Burtons the people who owned most of Cottignham in the 18th century and indeed lots of east Yorkshire as well. The most notable, if you are into military-history things that is, is the one above to Richard Burton a commander of the British army in North America. He was lieutenant governor of Quebec and then governor of Three Rivers Province back in 1760s or thereabouts. Below are two more memorials to William and Robert Burton who as far as I can tell did little other than have great wealth and do whatever it is wealthy people do. I did not notice any memorial to Napier Christie Burton who seemed to manage to live beyond even the Burton family's means and ended up selling the holdings in Cottingham, even at one stage going to debtors prison. Somehow I couldn't find anything to him, strange that...

Robert Burton

William Burton

2 High Sttreet

I don't why it has two doors maybe the first wasn't wide enough. Anyhow not so very long ago this place looked like this; so it's scrubbed up nicely hasn't it.

Nonexistent walls

If you look at old pictures of Hull (there's one at the top of this page ↑↑↑) you'll see there's a wall runs right around the place. This was to stop the spread of Hull-culturitis, a fatal delusion, during the middle ages. Anyhow today's post, in case you hadn't guessed, was where the north walls stood until President Reagan told them to pull them down in about the middle of the 18th century or so. City walls have a habit of getting in the way of progress ...

Tomorrow I'll show you a house with two doors! Does it get more exciting?

Curbing Desire

I posted this scruffy patch of land before with its desire path crafted over the years by countless feet not wanting to take the long way round. It is well known that government, especially local government, is here to protect us from ourselves and so, in an effort to bring about ultimate happiness, the 'desire' to take a short cut must be thwarted.  Bring forth therefore an elaborate plan involving a knee high fence and surely we are one step nearer nirvana but a few hundred steps further from the shops.

Grave offerings

It seems are the days of just leaving a bunch of flowers by the gravestone are long gone ...

Weeping Ash

Fraxinus excelsior (Pendula)

Coming up to June and every other tree and bush has been busy getting out the greenery whilst the ash seems to be still asleep with barely a bud showing. This fine specimen is on the corner of Spring Bank west and Chanterlands Avenue, in the cemetery as you can see.

The weekend in black and white is here.

Don't be crackers ...

Had a little trip out to Holderness Road the other day and found that the once neglected and most despised of buildings that was the Elephant & Castle pub has become a fish and chip restaurant. All very good; but "Wackers"?

Three fountains and a thingy

I've shown this installation outside Britannia House (the dole office) on Spring Bank before but that was taken from a bus and you don't really get the full sheer tackiness of it from that post. The three hemispheres are little trickling fountains; so far so meh. But what is that naff blue and white column? What is it supposed to be?

When new the idea of adding washing up liquid to the fountains appealed to certain elements but even that minor act of rebellion seems to have died away. Maybe it's so stupid no-one can be bothered to vandalise it.

Do as the Doukhobors Do ...

If you wanted to take off all your clothes, paint yourself tourquoise and strut around Queen's Gardens in the name of 'culture' then you should have gotten your applications in by yesterday. Mr Tunick may be an "internationally renowned New York based artist" (many dispute this) but his repetitious displays of flesh are tedious in the extreme. (Oh look there's another pile of boobs and bottoms neatly arranged on the sidewalk, bridge, city hall, park, mountainside, glacier ... you name it, he's done it) Thankfully I'm not in charge of the Ferens Trust and I don't have to justify spending (no doubt large) sums of money on commissioning this kind of non-Art sensationalist event that is otherwise known as boring crap.

Milky Way

You can just picture the scene in the Council's road naming department after a new bit of road has been opened up ... at a loss for ideas, scratching their heads (and other bits) for hours until some bright spark pipes up with "Didn't there used to be a dairy nearby?". And so it came to pass.

The weekend in black and creamy white is over here.

Hanse Day

Hull likes to have a little party every now and again in and around High Street celebrating its past whether Georgian or in this case its links with the Hanseatic League back in the middle ages. Whatever is celebrated the result is folk dressing up in period costumes and lots of stalls selling mediaeval pancakes and so on. The guy above was telling a story, a fairy story about a girl spinning straw into gold who marries a king but who must guess the name of the imp who helped her else he'll take her first born child away....but you know how it is some people just can't keep their big mouths shut: "tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow, I'll go to the king's house, nobody knows my name, I'm called 'Rumpelstiltskin'" (and yes, we all what that means, thank you)

He was good at telling his tale but I guess the kiddies already knew the ending; they looked terribly bored ...

The apothecary's hat kept coming off in the wind.

A small replica of a trading boat.

Some Hanseatic high fashion.

Riverside rubble

I think we can say the old Clarence Mill is now gone, well it ain't coming back. But where did those nice trees spring from ...

Hung with bloom along the bough

Yes it's the annual A E Housman memorial post ...