Shibboleths

I saw a vile thing in a charity in King's Lynn; a face mask pouch. Yes a wee bag to pop your lung excreta soaked rag into after signalling far and wide your belonging to the "good guys gang", your  virtue and how much your really care. Ew! Anyhow here we have the equivalent of the Build-a-bear idea, the entrepreneurial drive may have been biffed around the snotty noggin by the Fat Controller but it is far from dead and still knows no depths too deep to sink.

This desperate advert cum ripped up don't- quite-know-what is just plain barmy. 99.95% survived and most of those that didn't were not long for this world and almost none died of Covid-19 alone. They make it seem like some epic struggled, the only danger was and remains the crazed politicians. 

And on the subject of being political I was upbraided by someone for being too political; this is not the spirit, I was told, of City Daily Photo (all praise and hallelujah!). This was after the said person had posted about the Mayor of her town and the state governor, yes she was American; how could you tell? Hmm I wonder where the word politics comes from; could it be the ancient Greek word for city πόλις I think it could well be. Cities are political entities, politics is at their heart, the pretty buildings, the nice parks, the artful riverside walks all come about by political power.

By the Millfleet, King's Lynn

As I mentioned in yesterday's somewhat rambling post I have been in King's Lynn for a few days and naturally took several gigabytes of photos. More to come over the next few days.

Blame it on the Covid

In the ground, in the ground, in the ground

Oh bury me deep in the ground,

I died of the 'rona and double pneumonia

So bury me deep in the ground

City Daily Photo has, it seems, a theme of "Your response to Covid-19" for this month of October. Covid-19! ... I know, I know, the great yawn inducer of 2020 ... October already how time flies in lockdown with anti-social distancing. My response to this year's seasonal respiratory infection, which has for some reason been given a name (Covid-19) and the sort of mass media coverage normally reserved for world wars, has been not to catch it and to ignore all the rules, guidelines, social distancing, lockdowns, hey-downs, ho-downs, derry derry downs etc that have issued forth like so many shots in the dark from a drunken blind gunman... I know there's been a lot of it about (as doctors used to say when you could go to see them) earlier on but I haven't had a sniffle, indeed never been healthier thank you for asking (I know you care). 

...but then such in depth coverage of the many celebrity colds that have featured in what passes for news these days. I hear even The Orange Donald has a wee snotty nose, a fever and gone to bed early with a glass of honeyed tea; well he would wouldn't he; anyone who is anyone has had this danger bug ... including Alexander de Pfeffel aka the Fat Controller who had it earlier this year but you know the social media motto "pics or it never" ... all these colds, fevers and coughs like it had never, ever happened before.

But that was my response I've expressed before nothing new here but what am I to make of  yours? Well never have I seen so much mass hysterical overreaction to a winter sniffle; you lot have, it seems, been making boldly for the Kool Aid and fallen for the necro-hype. Fear is stalking your febrile minds. You seem to want to be ordered (or mandated as the Americans euphemistically put it) to cover your ugly faces with a magical piece of rag the which will stop you passing it on to others and others passing it on to you. (Yet when this measure was introduced here "cases" rose seemingly in defiance of the politicians and continue to "rise" as testing continues to rise... draw your own conclusions) Strangely you lot seem to live on through this mass slaughter as deaths remain stubbornly near to zero as can be, indeed ten times as many of you are passing away with flu right now and nothing, not a damn thing is being done about that... And what kind of a dumbass is it that takes health advice from  lying, no good, ignorant, bullshitting politicians drunk on control freakery??? ... seems the world is full of numptified hoopleheads.  Still as I have said many times here and elsewhere à chacun son goût and you push your own handcart to that warm inferno ...

This is a little late (it's just back-dated) as I've been away to Norfolk and left all my computing stuff behind me, bliss was it in that dawn to be alive ...

Well may the world go

 

Well may the world go
The world go, the world go
Well may the world go
When I'm far away

 

Was it Saturday? yes it looks like it was Saturday that the Government once again bought all the national papers (the free press, at our expense) and had them print a four page puff piece to get the sheep and camels of the UK to put upon their dumbass phones a device, an App, nay the sacred, long awaited saviour of humanity App, the App of Apps. This collection of machine code is going to lead them to the promised land, freedom, free at last, free at last, etc, etc ...

Only you know that war is peace and freedom is eternal surveillance and subjugation. This thing tracks you around (if  you let it), you'll need it to scan a code (QR? I wasn't paying too much attention)  to gain entry to restaurants and pubs and museums and art galleries and your granny's front door (but granny can't let you in oh no ...) and soon your own bathroom. It is supposed to allow you to scan your Covid-19 test ( yes do have one regularly (only £150 a pop and discretely sent your home in brown packaging ...) to save your loved ones and save the NHS! All praise the NHS!) but this is a farcical quasi-fascist regime and only tests from private outlets that is to say not the NHS (all praise!, and peace be upon it! ) can be entered... so the vast majority of users cannot show that they are negative but this is surely a mere technical glitch, an "innocent" oversight, that will be cleared by the Fat Controller as soon as he can.

By Sunday, that is within 48 hours of its release I read that 10 million and more had obeyed the Fat Controller and tied themselves into this comic prattery. There is, as they say, nowt so queer as folk.

The FC is finding that his bizarre controls and excessive testing are running against each other. More controls, more testing, more positives (80-90% false positives but he don't care he's too dumb to know what a false positive is or maybe he knows that the test is utterly meaningless it matters not ... ), each positive is, of course, a "case" and is a potential near-death experience and a place in intensive care , and so pressure on the NHS (sing its praises, hallelujah!), and so on ... well each "case" now will have to self-isolate for 7 or 14 days (again I'm not too attentive to the copious steaming farmyard stuff emanating from the FC and his crazy gauleiters ) on pain of fines AND they threaten to check up on you with policemen calling round (yeah right like that's going to happen). And the rule of six thingy is in force, and folk are ratting on their neighbours like it's East Germany in the 1950s and the Stasi have put Pentothal in the water supply. The place is gone to hell nicely, unemployment about to rise steeply, students locked in their halls of residence and forbidden to go home at weekends or Christmas (It was a three week lockdown back in March, three weeks to save the NHS! (all praise yada yada) now it's just repression for repression's sake each step further away from a "return to normality". Normality, like the  Nietszchean God is dead and we killed it, the first victim of this pestilence, there will not be, cannot be, a return to normal... stop dreaming about it, ain't gonna happen), companies facing closure are desperate that their employees leave their smart phones at home lest they be shut down if a staff member catches a sniffle and tests positive ... Let the good times roll!

 

...and all for a little biddy cold virus that's been and gone taken its crop of the frail and aged and sunk back into the viral underfroth like all previous seasonal respiratory infections. 

 

Well I'm off now you'll be glad to hear. There may be lockdowns ahead, pretty sure there will be more impositions and crass inanities, the only things that are growing exponentially are the Government's manic repressions and the desire of folk to be punished for their sins. As for me, I cannot be separated from my freedom while I still breathe so it's the old two finger salute to the lot of it. Catch you (and your colds) later, maybe.

 

Sweet may the breezes blow
Clear may the streams flow
Blue above, green below
When I'm far away

 

 

 

This is all your fault

You know the story of King Canute (or Cnut if you wish, maybe even Knut ), he that sat by the sea shore and told the tide not to rise and was soaked for his troubles. The story as was told to me in my childhood was that Cnut (I think I prefer that) was so proud that he thought he could stop the sea but had to be given a lesson. Later I learned that the story was that Knut (prefer Cnut) wanted to show his obsequious courtiers that he was not some divine majesty and only a mere mortal so he set himself up for a foot bath. Either way, the moral of the story, to labour it for those at back of the room not listening; time and tide wait for no man or so the story goes ...

Why am I prattling like this? Well the modern Cnuts have set themselves up by the tide of Humber to raise once again the barriers to watery ingress and we can no longer pass or indeed repass along this Queen's highway as there's barriers erected and piles of what can only be called stuff heaped up on Nelson Street.

I think the plan is to extend the waterfront by a few yards and raise the tout ensemble to prevent tidal flooding to thousands of properties. There's a poster thingy to explain the plan but I think I'll wait until it's all done and the concrete set and we've had a surge tide or three before commenting.

Now I'm not one to guilt trip anyone but all this is because it is thought that sea levels will rise because you turned on your computer and read this drivel (it's all your fault didn't you know, everything is your damn fault, racism, Covid-19, inflation, deflation, ageing population (how dare you live so long?), rising birth rate, falling birth rate, STDs, white supremacy, alleged global warming, the next ice age, pedophilia and pornography, Donald Trump, face masks, unemployment, world war, famine & Brexit, pestilence, you name it ... all down to you and you alone). How could you let this happen?

Progress Report

Do you remember May? In particular Sunday, May 3, just this year? No, me neither but it seems I posted about the sudden, to me, appearance of a construction site on what had been flower filled waste ground. If you compare the barebones structure of that post to this wonderful glassy prospect (ouch nearly bit my tongue, there) then clearly some progress has been made at least with this delightful building.

As for the other matter mentioned back then some five months down the line things seem to be going backwards if anything. Stupid folk will do stupid things and be afraid of their own shadow if you tell them often enough that it will bite them. 

A little rusty

One thing we don't get in England is tumbleweed but perhaps a ball or two wistfully drifting across this scene might be appropriate here and maybe a plangent steel guitar blues riff to go with.

The rumour mill is saying a second lockdown is just what the country needs as the first one worked so splendidly well. I, of course, will ignore it like the first; I have no time for conneries as the French have it. The world and his wife can go play at medieval doctors and nurses; frankly I don't care, it's true I do not care. You can all go to hell and take your handcart with you.

Let's take a pew

Sometimes, don't you think,  it's nice to just sit and reminisce and get away from the stupidity of the day... Now let me see ...the one on the left resembles a former Labour MP who, whilst elected and sitting in the Commons, had part-time jobs as correspondent for the Guardian and the Spectator, a weekly column of gossip and tales in what he no doubt considered a humorous vein, all with that nauseating patronising flat Yorkshire working class "common sense" voicing. The guy as I recall went to Hull University, his dog, notoriously, chased and caught and killed a goose in a park. Anyhow this fine example of how grammar schools elevate folk spent his whole political life in a party that wanted to abolish grammar schools. (For the record and to show my bias I too went to a grammar school which was abolished, abolishing grammar schools ruined the education of thousands, improved the education of none and sank our standards down to medieval times, there; is that clear enough for you? To be fair though it was Mrs Thatcher and not Labour who abolished Grammar schools perhaps history should be spelled IRONY, you do know that Labour PM Wilson closed more coal mines than Thatcher but that's old irony and water under the bridge...). where was I? Yes back to our cherub cheeked friend, I recall he had a tendency to dribble as elderly folk sometimes do (or did, since no dribbler would be allowed on the media these days). I suppose he imagined he was doing good works, they always do, his sort. He was Old Labour, a schemer in the days of smoke filled rooms and deals done behind people's back between over powerful and undemocratic (dare I say corrupt?) Trades Unions and scared Governments. In his days he was considered right wing by those who considered themselves on the left; in reality the chicken had no wings and couldn't fly, was plucked and heading for the oven. When Blair came along he moaned from the left as Blair, well Blair was in different playground altogether (and playing a different game) ... He also said that he would never take a peerage (that, for those from foreign parts, is appointment to our unelected second legislative chamber, the Lords) but you know how the tide turns and inevitably he took the ermine and became a baron (Don't you love how progressive this country is: from snotty kid in Sheffield to a baron of somewhere in Birmingham, you see the system works!) I just can't remember his name what was it now ? Let me look him up ... Oh Yes, I remember now; Roy Hattersley (Lord Roy of Sparkbrook, that's it) and Buster was his dog. Strange how the memory brings up a complete nobody from the past ... is that the smell of madeleines? Time for some tea and cake I think, shall I pour dear, one lump or two? Do you think it will rain?

Here's two figures carved onto the seating of Holy Trinity in Hull, their appearance, though somewhat grotesque, is nowhere near as twisted as today's reality or indeed the fading memory of our youth.

Regeln om sex

Her most excellent Britannic Majesty's Government regularly astounds us all with its sagacity and fleetness of foot in reacting to changing circumstances. Once again when faced with a death rate of near zero from its very own Covid19 epidemic it cleverly instituted a system of testing. It would do 100,000 tests a day, it boasted, and sure enough it took 100,000 snotty samples a day. (Hoorah and God save the Queen!) Then noticing that these some of these tests came back positive (as they would even if there was no virus left in the world) it claimed, no, stated as fact, there was an increase in the infection rate and certain towns would have to be put back into lockdown (Boo, Hiss and why don't fules obey the guidelines?).
Then seeing that the restaurant trade was as near to dead as can be it brought in a 50% off voucher scheme to get folk to eat out then moaned when folk went out and enjoyed the discount... (Hoorah! no, no sorry not Hoorrah!  hush with the Hoorahs...) There were other clever moves but you want get to the sex.
So of course the testing goes on, relentlessly on. (Today I heard that vast numbers of samples will never even make it to the "testing" stage and have simply been binned, the system is creaking, cracking and about to break under the strain) ...and the testing still tells a tale of increasing positives (OoooooH *scarey noise* but as I keep saying the hospitals are strangely empty ...hmmm.) So now there's to be instituted the brilliant Rule of Sex, a device so fantastic it defies criticism. From Monday (and not before) you cannot have sex with more than six people in a house or in any social gathering, I think that's how it goes, like all the guidelines this seems fair and reasonable to me and, speaking personally, won't be too much of a hardship to endure. I might, very easily be confused on this and have got the wrong end of the stick, my hearing's not what it used to be. Anyway ... Take that Sars-Cov-2, you dastardly fiend! Beep, beep now ... and keep a stiff upper something, lip , yeah lip.
And how will this be enforced, do I hear you ask, do you even care (frankly I've given up, gone home and am phoning this in) ...  because even Her most excellent Britannic whatsit  has noticed a slackening in enthusiasm (nay outright mockery, shame! will no-one take this seriously?) for its imposed ordinances. Answer came there: Covid Marshalls! Yup brilliant, garner a posse of neighbourhood Stasi wannabes (at £10/hour) to go round and check up that the Rule of Sex is being applied. I think I'll apply, I've always had a hankering for sticking my nose in other people's business and telling them that whatever they're doing they should stop. Yes I see a smart career change opening up before me... I just need to get myself a stab proof vest off eBay.

But, seriously, anyone wishing to have their say on the Covid19  and issues pertaining should take half an hour out of their busy lives to look at this brilliant video and consider that the epidemic was a normal event, was not particularly severe, is well and truly over and we are being pushed around by a despotic bunch of thugs using a 'casedemic' as an excuse. The insane rule of six is just a device to stop political action, to prevent gatherings of discontent. We should fly up and teach them manners.

... and the crane? is just a crane in Cottingham, a device to lure you into lurid tales of depravity. The Swedish title is a hat tip to a country that did not follow the madness, suffered the same as everyone, but is now moving on or so we are told ... nah scrub that it was silly ruse to get sex in the headline.

Moments in time

Paragon station clock seemed to be offering a couple of options, it's always nice to have a choice even if neither one was right.

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.