Rude Awakening

These guys rolled up at 7ish this morning; not quite what a peaceful neighbourhood wanted at that time of day, much crashings and bangings and digging up of the road and laying a new patch of tarmac. This was East Riding of Yorkshire Council come to fix the road. Only a good bit of road they fixed I happen to know belongs to Hull City Council (or at least they claim it does). The lorry above is parked over another bit that needs fixing so we can look forward yet another early morning call from these horny handed sons of toil or their Hull equivalent.

... had a great fall.

There's an old joke, usually involving an Oirish peasant farmer stereotype, whose punchline is along the lines of if I was going there sure I wouldn't start from here. It's not terribly funny but then things aren't right now. Like Humpty Dumpty civil society has had a great fall and is lying shattered and in pieces while the King's horses and men scratch their heads and trample on the debris. 

It's not that there's folks dying in their hundreds and thousands from the great panic. Nobody is dying of it or even with it, deaths from the dreaded lurgy are as close to zero as you can get. No, it's not even the rise in the number of 'cases'; these are just 'positives' from the much discredited, indeed derided RT-PCR test for Sars-Cov-2 (or what ever name they call their mysterious friend these days). These 'cases' are not even ill, not in hospital, not in Intensive Care Units, they're not bothered about this at all because it's not a problem healthwise. There is no problem with Covid-19. No really, there isn't, there never was; it was just another seasonal bug passing through and picking off the 'at risk' elderly and sick, compared to other seasons it wasn't even particularly severe...

The problem is the Government, the problem is the state of the State. It has taken powers that bear no relation to any problem faced by people in the United Kingdom. Having gone down this path it has found itself unwilling to let go, so it plays with our liberties like a bored cat with a  mouse, a little loosening here, a tightening there, a quid pro quo on your being able to go to the shops whilst muzzling your faces, pubs can open but you cannot have groups of more than six at home, children go to school but must be muzzled and so on. 

It goes without saying that none of the measures will prevent, or did prevent to the spread, rise, and fall of whatever it was that was killing off the old, sick folk back in March and April. The measures are not health measures but power grabs by the State. Indeed by distancing folk these measures may for the first time in human history have stopped or more likely delayed the development of mass immunity via normal transmission, irony comes back and bites you on your muzzled tush.  I assert once again that only an idiot would think that a flimsy rag over your face will stop a virus. However the world is not short of  idiots and they comply and, in compliance, they give the crazed loons of Whitehall yet more power. A You Gov poll showed a majority for 10pm curfews, please lock us up in our homes, cry the fools,  O hear us when we cry to thee, For those in peril on the streets! .

The absolute fools will applaud the absolute lunacy of the Fat Controller's dream of daily testing to show you are fit to mix in society (a test a day keeps the Covid away!). The absolute fools will queue, nay, fight each other tooth and nail to be first in line for the new, unlicensed, wonder 'vaccine' (which will be sold as the passport to normality, you can hear the crazed mob yelling....please, me please, me first, me first, I want it, I want it, I want it, please, please, pretty please .... ye Gods!)

There is, as the Fat Controller and his mad crew have shown, no limit to the depths of stupidity of fools and no lengths they will not go to exploit it. It's tyranny but for their own good, as ever.  

This is all beginning to get a bit lengthy, tedious and depressing so I'll end with wee, pathetic joke: if you were to ask me the route back to normality I would have to say sure I wouldn't start from here.

Who Ya Gonna Call?

I must say it's been an exceptionally good year for neuroses.

In other news

... and also with the passing of the years there comes a dropping off, a lack of interest, a failure to be aroused, I suppose it was inevitable and I'd heard that others have suffered similarly, it's nothing to be ashamed off I'm told and that there might be treatments for it, have I tried resting and maybe finding something to take my mind off it?  ... but really I'm not that bothered any more, free at last as someone once said. Nope after what seems like a lifetime of doing it regularly, everyday without fail,  sometimes two or three times a day especially on Sundays (the day of rest!) I really can't do it at all now ... well I suppose it's not the end of the world. I can live without reading newspapers or watching the news.

Otoño Porteño

In these revolutionary times I find I have practically given up watching TV. I watch one recorded episode a day (if that) of an old repeated detective series; Law and Order preferably with Jerry Orbach, I know they're far from real policing in New York ( & probably filmed in California) but they're comfortable like an old pair of slippers and a favourite jumper. And that's just about it save for a late night episode of Family Guy (Stewie Griffin is just a wonderful invention). Dabbling with the new technology I end up with You Tube; which, disturbingly, thinks that I am interested in watching beautiful, suicide blonde, young ladies playing classical guitar, it knows me far too well... OK must go now as Señor Piazolla's tangos cannot be put off any longer ...

Walking the Walks

One of the tree lined walks in the Walks, King's Lynn.

In this brief interlude between two phases of non-existence it really seems otiose to have favourites that may, like us, be here today and disappoint tomorrow. Despite this City Daily Photo in what it assures us is its very last first day of the month thing has chosen 'favourite photo' for its theme. Is this a favourite photo? Meh! It'll do for now; until the next one.

Let us fade

This is St Nick's (chapel of ease) again, back in February and still in King's Lynn in case you were wondering. Quite why St N's is on St Anne's Street is probably something to do with there being a St Ann's fort at sometime just down the road though why name a fort after St Ann (with or without an e) is another question. It's my story, not much of a story I agree but it's all mine and I'll digress if I want to ... where was I? Oh yes all that end is now cleared away to become the subject of on-line forums filled with fading black and white photos and equally fading memories... and there's a museum, I think I mentioned, there's a museum. There's a car wash too, do you want to see the car wash? ... it's quite colourful ... at night.

Just some trees

Here we're back in King's Lynn in the Walks. Peeking out the background is that old Red Mount Chapel but the trees in their late winter finery are the stars here.

Summertime blues

Took Margot out for a check-up at a clinic out in the western wilds of Anlaby. I wasn't allowed in, something to do with them being afraid of the bogeyman, Charon or Karen or was it caronavirus? Anyway I ended up on the naughty step outside. Which might not have been so bad had it not been tipping it down and a temperature of slightly sub 13C, nearer 11C but we won't quibble. Summer's gone and all the flowers dying sprang to mind as bits of me slowly turned blue. This was the view from the bike shelter. The pimple in the far distance is the Humber bridge, the mucky brown stuff in the middle ground is somebody's ruined harvest. I've checked and it's definitely warming up now it's, let me see, oooh 14C! Balmy.

The Red Mount Chapel

This I've posted before (here and here) and well here it is again. If you don't like it you know what to do.

Nothing but the night

Oh never fear, man, nought's to dread,
  Look not to left nor right:
In all the endless road you tread
  There's nothing but the night.

                                      A.E. Houseman

A war memorial in a town is, unfortunately, no great surprise, every town I've been in has one. Hartlepool, no town of any great size, has a massive one in the heart of town, Hull has one (well several really if you start to add them up 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 ... though this is not exhaustive). This is King's Lynn's sad remembrance for fallen youth in a quite splendid setting next to the Greyfriars' tower. 

Dieu et mon droit

"In a revolution, as in a novel. the most difficult part to invent is the end."

                                                                                        Alexis de Tocqueville.

A monarchy is these days and indeed any days a ridiculous institution, the head of state chosen by who puts his squawky head first into the world from between the legs of the reigning monarch's consort. We live in unusual times in that the next one in line came direct from the monarch's crotch but no mind, it's bonkers, you know it, I know it and even they know it. 

But that is just the beginning, as it were, for once monarchised the individual has no point in life other than to be a dumb rubber stamp for the Government. There are, of course compensations, the pay is good, the lodgings palatial and the fawning lackeys infinite. And all you have to do is roll up once a year in a horse and cart, read a short speech, written for you (on goat skin parchment) declare Parliament open for business and then bugger orf for another year. 

But as someone once said no sane man can be anything but ashamed of the government he lives under so it is mightily demeaning for us to continue this constitutional failure of the English Revolution (1649 and all that ...) year after year. But what to replace it with? Hmm? An elected president, I hear you say. But what powers would such a person have? Queenie has been around now for over 60 years but she can't say boo to a goose without the Government telling her to. An elected person would clearly have some mandated power simply by being elected. This would, like the fabled gun on a West End stage, have to be used at some point and then comes constitutional mess. We would not want to end like our colonial cousins with their elected monarch and spend three out of every four years arraigning (Thank you Freud; I meant to write 'arranging' but we'll let it stand as it is) his successor clearly those founding fathers hadn't thought this through. But that is not our concern.

Well then let us have a president with only "meet and greet" functions, a puppet (or muppet) to call Head of State, someone to wheel out for special ...

So who would want the job and what qualifications are needed? Would a sane person be fit to appoint to such a meaningless and thankless position surely they would tire and want more, be bored, get diverted. The sort of person who might put themselves forward would be instantly suspect. No, much rather pick some slow witted person, someone who has shown no great intelligence, a person who has perhaps been the product of generations of breeding and selection, a special someone for the purpose (horses for courses, as they say). Where would we find such a fellow ... where indeed? I think I know just the man.

The picture is the top of the old county court house which I would say was on London Road but I see is now officially on St James' Road but, never mind, both roads are in King's Lynn. That the English monarch should have a French motto comes as no surprise to us poor bloody English and if Les Français should tire of Monsieur le President I'm sure Lizzie would be only too glad to take over the reigns; I believe they still secretly lay claim to bits (if not the tout ensemble) of La Patrie. Bonkers!

The Long Pond

I'm going through some pictures that somehow failed to get in here when they should have. This is, as the title says, the Long Pond in King's Lynn. It was taken in February this year while the country was falling slowly into a nightmare from which it has failed to awaken.

Here's the other end of the other half, a road runs across it. Someone must have been through and taken out all the shopping trolleys, it looked spick and span as they used to say before they were muzzled.

Even before the new normal became the normal duffers needed telling how not to drown.

Raindrops on roses

The weekend in black and white is here.

A Twenty Twenty Vision

Remember back in the bad days, the days before the glorious Fat Controller took us all under his gross, adiposal care and smothered us with lock downs, useless, health threatening face muzzles and quarantines and testing (always with the testing) and , now, whisper it softly, a vaccine! Yeah Laissez les bons temps roulez as nobody ever said, ever. You'd have be a "nutter" not to take the vaccine and save lives (it's not about you it's about saving lives, don't be so selfish and wear your mask!) ... Remember when life was so evil that the country was rich with a booming economy, there were shops that sold stuff, bars where you could get a drink, restaurants where you could eat, transport you could use freely, go anywhere without a care, without the glare and the stare ... Do you even recall the simple Referendum to leave the European Union? (or even remember the EU? No, me neither, strange how quickly the memory fades... I had to check yes; it's still there and still falling apart, still wants to fish in UK waters and have the UK pay for its follies, plus ça change...) The madness back then inspired this monstrosity though it seems to be talking more and more of the divisive insanity that strides the land these days, with mass hysteria and ovine compliance with ridiculous politically inspired dictats from ministers who are drowning in their vain, incompetence. The UK is no longer a Parliamentary democracy, no, the land that was the Mother of Parliaments is now run by statutory notices, the rotten, stinking vestige of medieval Royal prerogative, supposedly vetted by MPs but in practice just pushed through without so much as a whisper of a debate, and Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition are just compliant ninnies in this coup d'état. It's dictatorship in all but name. Oh he's a bumbling, avuncular dictator, but that is what he is, have no doubt. I hear he's a classical buff, can recite the Iliad in the original ancient Greek, then no doubt he'll recall the words of Brutus as he shivved old Julius: "Sic semper evello mortem tyrannis". His turn will come, it always does.

The weekend in Black and White is here.

Scarlet Pimpernel

Events this year have meant the councils in these parts have not been doing their usual trick of spraying weed-killing glyphosate in each and every nook and cranny so a thousand flowers have bloomed, to quote old Mao, mostly in the gutters and pavements of the town and neighbourhood.  It's been one of the few benefits of the 'madness of 2020'. These little beauties are really tiny and a lifetime first for me, Anagallis arvensis or Scarlet Pimpernel in a gutter on Strathcona Avenue. I know they're orange; it seems they didn't have a word for that colour, cf pink , so scarlet they became for want of a better word. WikiP tells me they are considered a weed, hmmph, and also that the flowers only open in sunshine hence another name of Poor man's weather-glass and there's also a blue scarlet pimpernel go figure. 

Though there cannot be more than a light coating of dusty, wind-blown, useless soil in the gutter it is enough to support a surprising array of species which Authorities kill off in the name of tidiness. This is what we are missing by this stupidity.

Dear God,

Hi, how ya doing? Thought I'd drop you a line since it's been a while, well it's been a lifetime since they dipped me in that old holy Roman Catholic water and drove the devil and all his works from me ( we were having such fun) but in terms of the infinite less than just a tick. I know my mum (How's she doing, btw? I'm sure she's up there with the saints and all, what with all her faith, damned unbreakable faith) tried to point me in your direction dragging me off to church each Sunday and Holy Days of Obligation (nipping me when I was bored and naughty and sitting when I should have been kneeling) even sending me to a Catholic School ( no priest took a fancy to me sadly or I'd be much richer than I am today) but I got to six years old and it wasn't going to stick, sorry old chap, no hard feelings, eh?  ...
So I heard you were unwell, well I heard you'd died (was it really 'pity' that saw you off, was it? or something less serious? the nauseating Postmodern relativistic morality and the happy clappies and the apostasy of women priests would drive anyone off a cliff) I assume those reports were an exaggeration and you're just going about your merry, mysterious way; giving folk freedom will then punishing 'em for using it (teehee!)... 

Now if you're thinking your hearing has gone a bit dickey recently and that it's gone a bit quiet down here, no it's not you it's (who else?) the Government (you don't like 'em either? They think they are your gift to humanity, please tell them it isn't so, go on do a bit of smiting you know you want to. Do they tax you too and put you in a gag when you go shopping? I know, I know, where's it all going to end? Now don't pretend you don't know ... I can feel you smirking even behind that face muzzle) Anyhow they only went and closed the churches, first time in centuries even the old Black Death (thanks for that by the way) didn't close 'em. Yersinia sends her regards, I hear she's out in Colorado living with some squirrels but she always was a wild one.  So, yeah erm things are a little quiet down here atm, folk wary of each other, scared to admit that they really don't think this little flu thing (was that one of yours or have you outsourced plagues and pestilence to China?) is a big thing and they'd love to get on with their lives but the schools are closed ('til September, teachers can't miss their summer holidays can they?) so someone's got to stay home and look after the brats, and the shops are going to be a test if you turn up bare faced, as you intended, and the nauseated worriers play up and start moaning, I swear I'll take a stick to anyone who bugs me (I am, as you know, without sin so they'd better watch out) ... but you got your troubles I got mine, it's been good to talk, catch you again sometime, don't be a stranger.

Your old mate ,
                          Bill

Deserts of vast eternity

The cunning plan to make Hull's tenure of the title of UK City of Culture as miserable as possible seems to be working ever so well. Above is what used to be called Holy Trinity Square but no doubt due to changes in the political climate is possibly called Perfidious Albion Plaza or Mea Culpa Square or some such. Those of an age can maybe recall the neutron bomb and how it was to take away the people and leave the buildings (a wonderful device) ... Anyhow thousands were spent clearing it up, installing mirror pools, plans made for food festivals and so on and they had to go and invent a plague just out of spite. They need not have bothered I wasn't going to go anyway.

The statue of Andy Marvell still stands, though really the viral iconoclastic nonsense of pulling down statues seems to have peaked and died away here much like an English summer. I read that this MP for Hull during interesting times (civil war, regicide, restoration and what have you; OK not of interest to everybody I know...) was a master of self-preservation. I wonder what the man who wrote this:

Now let us sport us while we may,

And now, like amorous birds of prey,
Rather at once our time devour
Than languish in his slow-chapped power...

would make of the servile, bedwetting, safety-first, neurotic, mask devouring cowards that want to impose their fear upon us all. But then maybe he too would mask-up, rub in the alcohol gel and conform; self-preservation, dear boy, self-preservation. Gah!

Viяuƨ Scriblings

 

Sometime next week, I think maybe Friday I haven't been taking notes, folk will be under a legal obligation to wear a face muzzle when doing their shopping. This novelty will not apply to the staff who work in shops all day only to those who pop in for a few minutes to pick up a newspaper, a pint of milk, and a loaf of bread. Shop staff seem not to catch whatever it is that is supposed to be going around. 

If the store is large enough to have a cafe or restaurant attached then those eating do not need a mask, however they will need to wear one between the front door of the shop and the cafe and, of course, upon leaving they will need to cover their ugly gobs on the way out; should they need to use the rest room then it's masks on but not while actually in the rest room. If you want to sit all day in a pub getting sozzled you can do so without encumbrance. I did a brief survey whilst out and about and saw no-one wearing a mask at all, not one; usually there's been one or two but today nobody. Why folk would suddenly choose to obey this stupid decree I can't imagine.  Many stores say they will not police this (it not being their job to annoy their customers) and the actual police (or rather the London Metropolitan Police) have said they do not have the resources to police it either (meaning they have better things to do) so we'll see ... Anyhow, I do not intend to participate in this pointless, infantile parlour game.

I should note that we are some four or five months into this Government inspired fear-driven fiasco, and even in Hull no-body is bothering to die with this alleged virus any more though, of course, testing is picking up some cases (the tests however are utter rubbish), the current situation clearly does not come close to an epidemic. 

It has been noted that the death figures are wrong, that is to say folk are counted as dying of this thing even if they got over it months ago, in England you can never be free of Covid-19 and no matter how gruesome or mundane your death it will still be a viral demise should you ever have tested positive for this wee sleekit cowerin' timorous beastie, much as I foretold for Poor Sam. So Public Health England ("We exist to protect and improve the nation’s health and wellbeing (sic), and reduce health inequalities.") have been overstating the mortality figures (why ever would they do that, do you  think? what could possibly be their game?) which means that this thing (whatever it is and that is far from clear) is even less of a risk than previously thought and previous thought had it as a mild flu/bad cold sort of event that happens most years and nobody notices ...

I note the following also because it needs to be noted. The reason for the lock down was to "Save the NHS": now that slogan was quietly dropped some time back in April (I think) when it was apparent that the outbreak had peaked and the NHS was not (and never came close to being) in any danger of collapse. So is the NHS back  up and running? What do you think! A visit to the dentist involves more rigmarole than open heart surgery, GP appointments are now triaged over the phone, GPs have made millions fewer requests for medical tests and assessments, cancer patients are dying in their thousands with many thousands still undiagnosed and heading for an early grave. If you break your arm or have an accident that requires an X-ray you now have to make an appointment before approaching the A&E department of your local hospital before you simply turned up and pointed at your dangling limb and got an X-ray. There's more going on, no doubt, but this is enough for me. I do not for one minute think these restrictions will ever be lifted. The relationship between the people and the NHS has switched from it serving them to them serving it and this cannot be good.

But, finally it is not all gloom and doom; the Fat Controller says he hopes it will all be over by Christmas and since he started it he can finish it any time he likes; I suppose getting him to say he was wrong and was all a big mistake is too much to ask.

The somewhat scruffy mail box is on Park Avenue and has been there for a century or so and is merely decoration for this rambling post.

Look, Duck and ...

The Avenues area, described by some wag as the Muesli Belt of Hull, is currently plagued by feathery fiends who cause untold harm to the economy, health, education and safety of the neighbourhood. Residents are wary of venturing forth lest they should come across a malicious mallard, the very sight of which is sure to cause respiratory failure, diarrhoea, apoplexy and general malaise not to mention corporal decay. Urgent research into a cure, a possible vaccine ( a quackzine? no seriously...) has shown adverse effects with patients reporting  webbing on the extremities and an irresistible desire to go paddling in Pearson Park. The Government assures us that the problem will be over by Christmas and is introducing legislation making duck pate compulsory festive fare. 

It's a Cutlure thing

The streets of the toon were all kivvered aroon

Wi' stuff that was colourful, gowden and broon,

It was put there, of course, by a big Clydesdale horse!

And they called it manyura, manyura manyah!

                                                                                                        Matt McGinn

Readers of this delightful and informative journal will recall that the streets of Hull town centre were, at great expense both of money and inconvenience, recently changed from small paving bricks to slightly larger paving slabs. How proud those who consider such things were to have such a wonderful and attractive pavement for folk to walk about and browse the shopping "offer" of the town.  This however is the City of Cutlure (extended due to force majeure until May next year, Coventry due to be the next victim of this stupidity is scared the Covey will put folk off visiting, can't think why that might the case... Cutlure is staying) so it came as no great surprise to find the streets of the town had developed a nasty case of white-spot disease with Jameson Street, King Edward Street and good old Queen Vicky Square affected by a plague of painted dots. I guess that the council imagined that vast hordes would descend upon the place and, with the then Government policy of 2m distancing being the rule (sorry, guideline), folk would need help in judging how far apart to stand. How this was supposed to work I can't imagine: was there to be synchronised hopping from dot to dot? Would you wait until the next spot was clear or just proceed until you came up against an occupied place and stand, possibly on one leg and whistling Dixie, until you could go about your business. It was, of course, absurd, panic from the pretendy powers-that-be. No-one took a blind bit of notice of them and tell the truth there's hardly enough folk to make a crowd (two's company ...)  wandering around the  mainly closed shopping areas.

The fad for surgical masks and gloves, I believe the collective term for this is PPE, means that there is a novel (and completely unexpected, who'da thought ... tsk, tsk) litter problem. 

Salisbury and Park

Here's the intersection of Salisbury Street and Park Avenue showing the somewhat quaint Queen Anne style fronts designed by George Gilbert Scott. Did the Council really have to put that road sign just there; I mean it wasn't there a few years back. Are drivers really so thick they need to be told to go round a roundabout? (Don't answer that.) There are mermaids too but doesn't every street have mermaids?

I had to change the title of this post as I had the avenue  before the street and that is a big no-no with our American friends who tell us how to live, who we should get our technology from, who our friends should be, who should be our Prime Minister, how we should write our own language, and which way we should pee in the morning (For this relief much thanks ...) We're touched by your presence, no really, we are, touched.

A tired old tart

I've told before how gun-running local entrepreneur cum property developer Zaccharia Pearson 'donated' a piece of land to the west of the then expanding Victorian city of Hull so that the local council could have a public park (around which desirable space Zacc built and sold many large town villas). Anyhow past speculations and malfeasance aside the place was a Victorian promenading success with a bandstand and a lake and a little bridge and a glass conservatory. But we no longer live in the era of middle class well-to-dos taking the air in a town park and so  over the years the bandstand went, the bridge went and the conservatory became shabby and run down. The park in recent years has a reputation for not being at all pleasant or indeed safe. Still, undaunted by the flow of history, the Pearson Park fan club and the council and (I think) lottery funding of nearly £4 million have put back a little bridge and a bandstand and rebuilt a conservatory. Oh and repaired the ornate gateway as I mentioned some months back. (Must get a picture of that delight some time)

As you know I'm a great believer that bandstands are quite possibly the most stupid invention even more than face masks in public spaces. Here's a little beauty, already the haunt of local youth and destined to feature in so many stories of vandalism, drug abuse and violence in the local rag. If there were awards for pointless constructions well this is surely a contender. The only reason I can find for it being here is that there used to be one so there has to be one now, stands to reason.

I did like the weather vane on the conservatory though the building itself looks hideous and out-of-place. I believe it has already been vandalised several times in the short time it has been built; with any luck they'll destroy it completely.

So there you go, several million pounds in the pockets of the renovators and we have a park that has a pointless bandstand, a reinstalled but unnecessary bridge and a crappy glasshouse and a repainted cast iron gate posts for a gate that is never closed. I think this was a massive wasted opportunity to spend money wisely on something new, innovative and imaginative. This is supposed, somehow, to make Pearson Park attractive, "like new". It fails. It might have worked a hundred and fifty years ago but not now. Now it looks like a tired old tart with way too much make-up and hideous lippy hiding the cracks and pretending she can still pull the punters, not quite ugly but giving off a stench of desperation.

The bloom of death

¡No te dejes morir lentamente!

¡No te impidas de ser feliz!

Last year we bought a couple of pots of House Leeks or Sempervivum as you may know them. I just  left them to do their thing didn't even pot them on; you can still see the price £3.99 ...  and so as the year slowly spun into summer a majestic phallic obscenity arose with these blooms on top. I can't (and don't) claim any credit for this, I'm very hands off and let things die of their own free will as I'm told they will after blooming, an orgy of monocarpic delight.

The weekend in black and white (like death and taxes) will be with us sooner or later here.

Bus Stop Blues

Imagine running a business where the Government recommend your customers not use your services and then compensates you for your losses... this is the neo-normative fantasy world we live in now. These double-deckers can take over seventy passengers sitting and standing (at a warm fuggy squeeze) but are limited to no more than twenty face-masked and fear filled voyagers. I say twenty but the bus I was on into east Hull the other day had many more than that thankfully or folk would have been left behind. Even the worst laid schemes o' mice and men gang agley it seems.

The picture is Cottingham Green bus stop but in nearby Hull the bus lane scheme has been extended to run all daylight hours not to help buses, no, no, buses are bad, bad I tells you ... no it's to help cyclists who are supposed to take advantage of this benefice and fill the gap made by mad bucking of the market (let me check yes I did write bucking glad I got that right). Now of course cyclists won't suddenly appear; Hull is after all one the most obese, cigarette smoking places in the country (part of its lasting charm I suppose) ... instead the extra cars on the road carrying disgruntled bus passengers (now lost forever I assume) will be squeezed into even less space and Hull's familiar gridlock problem will no doubt return should the economy ever get back out of the deep hole it's in. 

A Movable Feast

The Christian festival of Easter was cancelled this year; that quasi-pagan celebration of Christ's victory over Death was put to one side because ... well no real good reason at all; Government fear of collapse of health services (that didn't happen) led to panic, scaremongering, a return to medieval thinking, mass hysteria, media bullshit reporting, misuse and abuse of statistics, you name it  and it happened this crazy year and to get out of the grave dug for us by stupid, vain politicians (who seem at least to have stopped digging) we linger in this not free transition with illiberal regulations for anti-social spacing, reservations for the pub (for Chrissake!) ... and (useless) face mask virtue signalling social tyranny. It's the control freaks' wet dream ... 

PS the church sign has been removed after so many weeks and there's talk of the place reopening with every soul isolated lest they should spread this 'germ' ... I won't ask who made this 'germ' since, well, we don't want to go down the rabbit hole of theodicy on a  cold, damp Thursday in July.

Derelict Doodles

At some time in the down days of this year someone with way too much time on their hands found a way to brighten up the walls of this empty old bank on Beverley Road. Well done them.

A cooling dollop of scepticism

But I'm near the end and I just ain't got the time

And I'm wasted and I can't find my way home ...

Long, long ago when that was but little tiny lad I started a course in biochemistry, at Liverpool University if you're interested which I'm sure you're not, anyhow the course involved much practical work in laboratories doing protein assays, carbohydrate assays, lipid assays, mineral assays. Measuring stuff, in short, answering that perennial question how much of what you claim to be there is actually there. Common to all these assays was preparing a calibration curve using purified protein or glucose, vitamin C, starch, NADH or whatever was on the mind of the lecturer that week. We always started with a bottle of known and measured our sample of unknown against that. It became ingrained, dinned into us: start with what you know and compare that against what you have in your hot little hand.
I relate this because it seems to me that a lot of so-called science, as reported today, skips that part of dealing with what is real and known and reaches for the computer model of how it is supposed to be, dogma has replaced experiment. This might not have been so important, reality will eventually catch up and bite these dreamers, except they have immunised themselves against reality by a wall of self-righteous indignation that reaches all the way up to and including the top levels of political and business power. The model is now emperor of all he surveys (not actually surveys since that would entail taking measurements and stuff, facts and data only get in the way)  and his clothes are a glorious array of flim-flammery and untested theory.
So with so-called man made climate change (seemingly now a way of browbeating folk into accepting expensive, windy, sunny, watery, willowy woody power generating schemes when nuclear is clearly the way to go and there's centuries' worth of nice coal under our feet) and so, more to the point with coronavirus testing.
When I read the protocol for this test back in March first thing I asked myself was where is the metaphorical bottle of purified virus that they are using for comparison, well it didn't exist then and, you know, it still doesn't these months and several million tests later. You might think that something as important as this test would at least have a so-called gold standard behind it. You'd be wrong. It has less behind it than the Wizard of Oz, it's basically an act of faith, believe in the dogma behind all this, believe in the method, in short believe in the very existence of Sars-Cov-2 or what? What is there left to believe in? It simply has to be true. This is the 'truth', the only possible 'truth' and nothing but the 'truth'.
Belief is, of course, basic to science but it has to be based on evidence, on repeatable demonstrable experience that can be refuted by experiment. In short it is based on a "bottle of known stuff" not on fanciful dogmatic delusion as seems to be the style these days.
So if you see me wandering around, too close for comfort, breaking that anti-social distancing claptrap, not wearing a silly face-nappy and laughing at poor saps who worry that their world is being ruined by alleged nanoscopic pieces of lipo-protein wrapped RNA ("that come all the way from China") that may or may not exist well now you know why. Three years of scientific training and three more years of postgraduate research (or paid fun as I recall) and years of watching that old handcart roll on down the path to who knows where have left me deeply scarred with what are now old man's doubts. 

...the buzzing of the bees in the cigarette trees

Those who decide these things have made May 20 World Bee Day. I'm sure the little busy buzzing pollinators are right chuffed to have a whole day to themselves to put all their feet up, have a long lie in bed and let the world serve them scones with jam and cream ... 

Margot took this.

The flowers that bloom in the spring, tra la ...

 

...Breathe promise of merry sunshine

Saturday all shiny and bright and temperatures climbing nicely to a decent 21°C, not too hot (for me) and not too cold, shirt-sleeved Goldilocks temperatures. Sunday and Monday 8°C with a nithering North Easter  off the North Sea and back to winter togs. This is springtime in dear old England; teasing temptation followed by shivering disappointment. Still the May blossom  is out and filling the locked down land or at least my street with a snow like covering which might be actual snow if it gets any damn colder.

Not quite their finest hour

I wonder what future generations will think of the folk who, just the other day, celebrated the bravery and sacrifice of those who defeated Hitler's vision of Aryan supremacy by cowering under house arrest, socially distanced and clamouring for more repression (Keep the lockdown until there's a vaccine!) while, no doubt, playing Vera Lynn with the sound turned up to 11. I'm told there was a toast to the nation at some time in the afternoon and Queenie spreading the Love, perhaps it's not so odd that I missed it.

A little bit special

Whenever I see this tree on my way back from the shop I say to myself I must take a picture of it in its springtime glory. Finally I had my phone in my pocket and so here it is. I think it's a maple of some sort but don't trust me on trees, certainly stands out from all the green stuff round here.

Post hoc ergo propter hoc

"It's easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled."     

                                                                                                      Mark Twain

We are told that the Fat Controller will be making an announcement on Sunday that might be the beginning of the end (or as he will no doubt phrase it the end of the beginning) of the house arrest phase of the great economic crash of 2020. The narrative all along has been to lock folk up to protect the NHS (and save lives as well it's just that that didn't work out so well, nor could it as we'll see). You can see how proud some folk are, nay not just proud but utterly convinced that their weeks of home confinement have somehow saved the NHS. But as any first grader could tell them this is delusion. There is no evidence to prove this nor can there be. There is no evidence that weeks of watching Netflix or whatever has saved a single life. No evidence for that but plenty that the whole thing has been a colossal wrecking job on the economy and the health and wealth of millions. The figures show that deaths linked to Covid-19 peaked on April 8 which means given accepted incubation periods that infections peaked before the lockdown came into force. Other evidence has demonstrated that the infection rate, the infamous R₀ had fallen below 1 before the lockdown. It appears that the campaign of hand washing and mild social distancing had done the job of killing off whatever was causing the infections but I couldn't say that for sure since I'm not going to ascribe effects to causes; that's not my job. 
No that silly mistake will be left to ministers, politicians, and the media who all should know better, and the vast majority of people who can know no better. They will claim that their sacrifice has paid off, that though thousands have died the totals were nowhere near those of the model produced by the now utterly discredited lockdown lothario Professor Ferguson of Imperial College, London. (I've read that other models elsewhere were equally stupid and subject to constant revision as the figures failed to rise but the Imperial College model was the one used here and it has been found to be a school boy joke riddled with amateur errors and produces utter rubbish, garbage.). They will gloss over the rise in excess deaths that cannot be ascribed to Covid-19 even with directives from Government to be as widespread and liberal as possible in ascribing cause of death to Covid-19. People are dying with Covid-19 who have never been tested, any old person dying with pneumonia has Covid-19 tacked onto the death certificate nolens volens. Which of course means the figures are unreliable and exaggerated.
As to the actual test, what can anyone say, that is anyone with a modicum of scientific knowledge of how things should be done. In the absence of any purified virus to compare assays against a huge leap of faith has been made that the results obtained after complicated manipulation of the sample of snot obtained by ramming a cotton bud up the patients nose (RNA extraction and reverse transcriptase, and multiple though variable amounts of DNA multiplication treatments) actually represent a link to the alleged culprit virus Covid-19. Though thousands of tests have been carried out no-one can say for sure they have measured anything real at all. It's all as I say reliant on believing the method to be infallible despite numerous reports of 80% false positives and almost as many false negatives. A reasonable person, never mind one with a PhD in Biotechnology (OK that's me, you can call me Dr Bill from now on ...), might be led to say the test was not fit for purpose.
So dear reader the shore is in sight... we will be told that all our suffering was worth it but we must not let down our guard (against what? The wizard of Oz? surely not Covid-19 which has peaked, is very uninfectious and has a mortality roughly that of flu, which we annually ignore though thousands die with it), that the Government's actions have been effective (post hoc ergo propter hoc gets 'em every time), that the Fat Controller walks on water (but keeps his distance). We will in short be lied to again and do you know what the lie will be swallowed (yum, yum it's just what they long to hear) and folk will go out tonight and applaud themselves like performing seals but there's more than a faint aroma of foul treachery in the air.

This post is a pile of pants

I admit this was not what I expected to find while out and about the other day.  I don't know who did it, what it's about or any of that stuff that usually follows a photo in this blog. It's on the wall of the dinosaur museum now, like so much these days, temporarily closed.

There was a time in the mid-90s when the phrase "this is a pile of pants" became what they nowadays term viral, common  jargon amongst a certain class of individual, mainly young and hip (showing my age). I don't know if this was just a UK thing (where pants, of course, mean underpants, why would you call your trousers pants? makes no sense but I digress...) or whether it spread across to other English speaking parts of this rocky planet in a obscure solar system. Like many other fads it arrived (from radio DJs as I recall), became ever so common (and annoying), and then faded away just as quickly as it arrived. Does anyone use this phrase any more? Apart from me just now.

Family Fun

On my way back from the shops I stopped to take a picture of the setting sun and the trees on Cottingham Road and this family of cyclists came from out of nowhere and were gone before I could thank them for making the scene just a little bit more interesting.

I've posted from roughly this spot before; it's five minutes from home.

Jaz Cafe Bar, Lowgate, Hull

You might look at this and think that looks like bit like an old fashioned bank and you'd right it was once a bank but now it's a temporarily closed coffee bar. A quick check on the old Google shows that, as I thought, it's a listed building, the details are all here if you want 'em.