The shop formerly known as Terry's

There aren't as many corner shops as there used to be, not that that is a bad thing it's just the way things work out. This one on Coltman Street/Gee Street has been over the past 120 or so years a laundry, a grocers and after changing hands many times recently it's now an off licence/convenience store and possibly still known by those who know of past things as Terry's.

All new, all singing, all dancing

And speaking of buses, as I was a few days back ... The blue bus company has got some brand new buses with some rinky dink new technology. Well actually it's just the old GPS talking voice thingy adapted to a bus and it tells you out loud (and I mean loud) in a machine generated voice that no human could ever match just what stop is coming up next. Albany Street came out as Al-Banny Street, for example, there were others that made us cringe and with  a dozen or more stops on a shortish hop well the old  Luddite tendencies were bubbling forth ... I can see how it might help those who can't see so well or maybe those who don't know the town so well but it was horribly grating to the ear and intrusive to conversation. We both agreed that it wouldn't last long (the drivers won't stand for it we said) and indeed the next time we got on a new blue bus it had rather unsurprisingly been muted and the driver had a wicked smile on his face ...

Seemed like a good idea at the time

Sometimes a good idea gets just a little out of hand ... this magnificent silver birch adorns, nay, dominates majestically the delight that is Coltman Street.

The weekend in black and white is here.

The Golden Eagle

I've shown the Eagle on the corner of Coltman Street and Anlaby Road a couple of times before (here and here). The place has long ago given up on being a pub like it once was and had fallen on hard times as they say. Well now it has been converted into flats, though I did hear a story that a small pub (with micro brewery?) might open on the ground floor. Whatever happens the place now looks a million dollars, with new windows and all painted up with the eagle (that they really couldn't remove, now could they?) given a fresh golden coating. It all looks really good. 

Yankee Meal

Here we are on Hessle Road the noted culinary centre of the City of Culture. To tempt your palette with some fine American fare there are pizzas of various hues, Donner kebab, Hamburger (with or without a scrumptious cheese topping) and Frankfurter ... all with French Fries to go. If all that seems just a little too American they do sell a spiced chicken dish described as "Southern Fried", must be some novel Home Counties recipe ...  

Seriously though the place has great reviews and if this is the kind of stuff you like then this is the kind of place you should try.

Delights of Dovedale

There I was idly going through the curate's egg that is Twitter when I came upon the postcard from the past (@PastPostcard) titled Delights of Dovedale. Dovedale? The name rang a bell, where had I heard it before? Turns out Dovedale is a National Trust owned valley in Derbyshire noted for its Peak District scenery and the hundreds of  thousands of tourists who flock there each year.  But that wasn't where I 'd seen the name ... Our delightful Dovedale is a not so pretty large barge that spends a great deal of time just tied up, slowly rusting on the Hull mud. As far as I know it's not noted for anything much other than being posted in this blog a while back. Maybe if it stays there long enough the National Trust will take it over.

Le Chat Noir

This little black cat turned up a couple of years ago and looked just like another little black cat that also roamed these parts a few years earlier who was called Nipper because he would be all smiles and purring then give you a nasty nip if you weren't lively enough to get out of his reach. So this guy became Nipper for lack of imagination. Nipper I hasten to add is not our cat; all our cats have died so he's spotted a gap in the market hasn't he? Nipper just appears and makes himself at home in the garden, on the back of the sofa or on the bed if you let him. Nipper never seems to go home save when it's raining. He may look sweet but he can catch birds, well one goldfinch will sing no more that much I know, and mice. If Nipper is your cat and you haven't seen him for a while he's probably asleep out the back behind the pumpkins.

Nipper is appreciating Black Cat Appreciation Day even if no-body else is.

The Prudential Memorial

I must have seen this plaque close by Queen Victoria Square hundreds of times, seen it, walked over it, gone about my life and then the other day finally I stopped to read it. Such a small thing, such a terrible story and, to me, a better memorial than the gaudy thing just along the street.

A Good Wall Spoiled

There's a craze to paint murals in this donkey's ass of a town. You've got a few square feet of blank  Victorian or Edwardian brickwork doing no harm to anyone and it just can't be left in peace; it has to be coated in some "artwork". We've seen it on Hessle Road and other places and it's creeping all over the place. There's even a plan to paint houses on Spring Bank in gaudy colours just because some layabouts want a grant from the Art Council or the stupid Council and they have nothing to offer the world but vandalism dressed as "community art". The themes in this case we are told were suggested by primary school children because, as is clear to any fool that has ever breathed, uneducated, uninformed 5 to 11 year old youngsters are a positive fountain of inspiration and objectivity. So the four corners of this unfortunate bridge on Chanterlands Avenue have the above garbage (Aim high, never give up, pshaw! How often young children come out with such phrases ...), a sporty theme featuring two unknown sporty people celebrating  sporty events from before many of the children born, a badly drawn collage of Hull images (including Larkin's Toad an image familiar to all Year One intake children at all primary schools) and a long "Eco" thing involving a whale, an octopus, a shark, a large green turtle, some penguins and a polar bear oh and some floating plastic bags to remind us all what sinners we are. (It seems youngsters have a very depressed view of the world and quite possibly think it is all doomed) Quite what all this has to do with Chants Avenue I haven't a clue. It's just plain old fashioned prattery. Worse though; it is condoned vandalism, a good wall spoiled.

This squat little building was once a gents' urinal now closed because of Council cuts ... which leads me to ask  who will pay to maintain this tosh because in a couple of years they'll all fade and date and you can never go back to the nice, cool red Victorian bricks that just did their job and harmed no-one.

And you can imagine the whimpers of condemnation when someone came along and put up their own shitty little "artwork"; without permission (shocking!) not at all in keeping with the theme (The horror, The horror!). I do not recall this bridge ever being 'tagged' like this before they decorated it with their murals ... Well, as ye sow, so ye shall reap

Everything comes to him who waits.

Have I mentioned that in this one-horse town there are two bus companies? Well the other day we had all-day-tickets-to-ride from one company, let's call them the red company. So  we sat down and waited the arrival of one of their nice red buses. After fifteen or more minutes I'd taken the above picture, we'd talked about the drunks and drop-outs that used to hang around this bus stop and the church opposite, about the guy who jumped off the roof of the building on the right and then we twiddled our thumbs and peered up the road to see where our bus could be ... but  nothing but blue buses arrived. I mean five blue buses arrived, like they were having some kind of blue bus joke. I was all for giving up and walking. We weren't going far, just four stops down the road but we had tickets, it was the principle of the thing ... So, anyway, we set off to walk and, well you know what comes next .... not fifty yards on a big red bus goes sailing by. 

The weekend in black and white will come if you wait long enough.

Talking of Michelangelo

Which is it: is man one of God's blunders, or is God one of man's blunders?

                                                                                                 Friedrich Nietzsche

Anglican God Services Inc., have let it be known that they will be putting on a display of high definition photographs of the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in their local office in town (whether they have paid for the rights to Papist God Inc. has not been disclosed.) It will, of course, feature this famous scene where Man creates God in his own image (if only he hadn't all would be well and all manner of things would be well). They haven't said whether Heston and Harrison will be on hand to sign autographs and maybe sing a duet or two, I know they're both dead but death shall have no dominion as we all know.

Entrance to the peep show is free but you will need to get a ticket ...

When I paint my masterpiece

But someday, everything is gonna be different
When I paint that masterpiece.

                                                                                             Bob Dylan

In clearing the site to make resting room for tired automobiles they finally tore down the tired weathered old boards that had lined the perimeter for as long as I can recall. This fencing was home to a mural of Mandela and more recently this little collection by the guy who styles himself as Preg ( I almost wrote prig can't think why ...) appeared.

These were on the High Street side of the site. The river side attracted a somewhat less figurative scrawler.

... and finally a simple message is often more effective. All gone now and not missed at all.

Billboard

This site that was to have had an eighteen or twenty-two storey hotel on it at one time, the plan described so accurately by a councillor as looking like a packet of cigarettes, has been cleared and rolled flat to be a car park. You wanna see the other side of this, I know you do ... here then in glorious technicolour.

The Weekend in Black and White is here.

Yum!

On a very breezy, overcast but not especially cool day that threatened much forecast heavy rain but turned out dry I took me walk around town and was led by the faintly unpleasant smell of burnt onions and sausages to Queen's Gardens where a "Festival of Food and Drink" was ongoing. There were plenty of stalls and plenty of customers stuffing their faces with produce from around the world. I didn't have much of an appetite so I just passed through.

Smithy's

Next door to the Bull on Beverley Road this supplier of deep fried battered savoury mashed potato  is apparently the Best in Hull and that, I suppose, is something to be. Hullophiles often claim Hull to be the home of this greasy carbohydrate rich delicacy but I can tell you patties were on sale in my home town Hartlepool and I suspect many other places have a similar concoction.  Pattie and chips is apparently a thing in these parts; the poor man's fish and chips ... I had them as a kid and quite honestly they're nowt special.

Plug in, turn on and leave alone ...

... blank ecstasy unbounded by the mortal physics.

                                                                                                         Sean O'Brien
Or maybe just someone waiting for the bus.

Refreshes the parks that other beers cannot reach

Pearson Park is the unlikely recipient of a large dollop of money (is £3.8 million a large dollop or a goodly sum? what is the convention on money matters?) to restore, repair and otherwise faff with those bits that remain of the original Victorian gift to the town from property speculator and gun runner Zacc Pearson. The works includes taking away the gates and making them as good as new though why that should mean that entrance is closed for approximatly (sic) six weeks is beyond me. (And why good money should be spent on gates that are never, but never, closed is also beyond me, but it's not my money so I don't care.) There's rumours of a new bandstand for the drunks and takers of spice to stay dry on rainy days so they will be happy. The conservatory will be replaced  and there's to be a wee bridge across the lake just like there was when Prince Albert had his memorial made. For a few thousand more they could have had a crossing sweeper named Jo ... but tough decisions have to made.

The park has a bit of a reputation  for being a place  where people of a certain disposition indulge their pleasures (both carnal and narcotic). But after all this turning back of the clock by the friends of Pearson Park they will no doubt be so in awe that they will move on elsewhere and not spoil it for respectable people (same goes for the rats that abound there in).

The Hollyhocks Hang Harmlessly

Some nice people have not only planted cardoons in Newland Avenue but supplemented the fine small trees with hollyhocks some of which have gone a bit mad in the recent heat growing to ten foot or more.

Big Phil Woz 'Ere

Grove Street

I suspect there aren't many streets which can boast it has a quote from a Philip Larkin poem just daubed as graffiti on a wall at the end of a ten foot, but this is the city of culture and we would expect nothing less. However the other offerings with  the usual clichéd priapic sketch (no doubt compensating for the "artists" own inadequacies), a fading silver sprayed FUCK (likewise) and a direction to consume the rich confirm that old saying: omnia mutantur, nhil interit.

Cardoon Time

Out and about on Newland Avenue this afternoon and came across this splendid beast growing in a raised bed. It's a cardoon or globe artichoke and most definitely not your standard Council plant. I'm told they are edible or rather the inner bits of the stalk can be stewed up and consumed au gratin should you choose. Anyhow bees love them.

Margot took this picture

A Painted Lady

I've been reading stories in the press of this year being a good year for Painted Ladies (Vanessa cardui); how it's a once-in-a-decade event where zillions of these butterflies arrive on these shores from Africa for their summer vacation. Normally I ignore this kind of stuff but I have to admit there are a fair few around in the garden but then there often are at this time of year along with the large and small whites, the peacocks, the holly blues and the common blues, the territorial almost aggressive speckled wood, orange tips, gatekeepers, brimstones and,  new to me this year, a meadow brown .. I think that's all oh and hundreds of moths but then I don't do moths ....  So here's  a Painted Lady from the other day on the Butterfly Bush.

Golf, anyone?

Picture by Margot K Juby

Back in the 1920s or so before all these here houses were built all this land was a golf course, run by Hull Corporation I believe though I wouldn't put my life savings on that being the case. The clubhouse was where the now closed Lloyds bank is on the corner of Cottingham Road and Hall Road. Anyhow all that's long gone and the only trace or reminder is this little road which goes by the name of Golf Links Road.

A Bit Black over Bill's Mum's

After a few hot days last week (no records broken, barely reached 30C but still not nice for the likes of me) we had a perfect little area of low pressure sneak in from the south west, so nicely circular a met office bloke was in raptures. Anyhow it did what cyclonic stuff does: sunshine and rain, sometimes downpours and the occasional bit of thunder and lightning to spice things up. In other words a typical British summer all told ... it is, as someone once described it, three fine days and a thunderstorm.

Apart from being the rather silly Yorkshire Day the first day of August is  the theme day for City Daily Photo and continuing their trawl through colours they have hit upon black which, as any fule kno, is no colour at all.

An old stick-in-the-mud

I posted quite recently about the removal of this old trawler, the Arctic Corsair, from this site to a place upstream. I told a sorry tale of delays and inactivity. Well a new firm date has been announced for the departure, Sunday August 4. This picture was taken three weeks ago and I can see (even if you can't)  that some of the silty gunge has been shifted from the rear end (or stern for those like to go messing about on the river). I'm told this vessel has no engines so two tugs will pull it away and off to Alexandra Dock while the old dry docks where it is to be put on display are cleared and renovated for the return. As it has been sitting in the mud here for twenty years or so it is to be hoped all goes well. It will leave a bit of gap that the river will no doubt fill with glorious mud.

The weekend in black and white is here.

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.

Pile them high

Somehow in the rush to build new housing around Queen Street/Humber Street area the squat little building on the corner of Blanket Row has acquired three storeys of  new places to call home. The whole of Blanket Row, for so long just waste ground,  is now a big building site with execrable or is that executive (I tend to confuse the two) apartments springing up for folk to work off their mortgages on (or for property companies to buy up wholesale and rent out) and as the sign says this is city living at its best.

Scott's Square was once somewhere down there, a speculative venture (aka a slum) packing in as many properties as the law and the Council would allow. Plus ça change as they say in the city of culture.

Don't muck about with the moon

I love my dear Redeemer,
My Creator, too, as well,
And, oh, that filthy Devil
Should stay below in Hell.
I cry to Mr. Eisenhower,
Please grant me this great boon:
Don't muck about, don't muck about,
Don't muck about with the moon.

                                                 Brendan Behan

They have been gassing on in the media about how it's fifty years ago today since the USA spent its pocket money on sending two chaps to step out on the moon. It has reminded me of how boring and pointless it all was, the seemingly endless speculation before it happened, the endless repeats of that tedious phrase ("One small step for an space-suited American ...") the grainy images of the US flag gently fluttering in the breeze ... and how we, mankind that is, were supposed to have taken a giant leap ... It was all bollocks really, serving no purpose, an expensive wheeze, a diversion from the war in Vietnam that was dragging on and on and killing thousands of people, a gigantic middle finger to the Soviets ... as Kennedy said  "We choose to go the moon not because it is easy but because those commie bastards might get there first ..." 

Here's the auld quare fellow himself; enjoy.

The weekend in Black and White is here.

Somebody loves me, I wonder who ...

Maybe it's you ...

Makin' Pumpkins

I'm new to pumpkins, a bit of a pumpkin virgin, as it were  ... it was Margot's idea to grow some this year, it'll be a fun, she said, a bit of a laugh ... anyway through the cold of May nothing grew then in June a few leaves then turn July and  whoosh they filled the little plastic green house ... then tendrils? nobody told me about tendrils, nor the hairy almost spiky stems. Then the flower buds which were numerous but just sat there until yesterday when they turned a weird yellow then this morning I go down to find these ridiculous beauties ... but I read these are male flowers and these big bad boys need a female flower in order that things can progress, the technical term is 'fruit set' although you may call it something else ...  I'm told that the female flowers will definitely be along later but they only open early morning and close in the afternoon (bit like some shops I know) ... and hand pollination may be needed if the insects can't manage an early morning rendezvous ... and there, as it were, will go my pumpkin virginity.

Algal Pride

The Rosebowl fountain in Queens Gardens I've shown before. The recent weather being averagely warm and sunny meant it was spouting forth a stream of smelly green algal broth the other day, a sight that might turn a many queasy stomach. The sunlight caught the nauseating spray and created this little spectrum ... making it a colourful vile thing.