Light and shade

KC ... Komplete Cr*p

 

KC HQ on Carr Lane, note the distinctive cream telephone booths. 

You really don't have to read the following.

Anyone wanting to use telecommunications in Hull has more or less got to deal with this blast from the past  KC or Kingston Communications. Hull council's very own phone company, privatised in 1999 has a de facto monopoly on landlines and internet connections in the city and neighbouring places. I recently changed the tariff I was on and have had, in the past fortnight, more disconnections, slow up/download speeds than I had in five years on the old one. I only changed because KC were going to charge 50% more for my old dependable system than the new on/off super-dooper speedy (I don't think so) ADSL+2.
Woke up today to find my speed was 15% of yesterday's, phoned up customer support and they said there might be a fault on the line. They'd send an engineer out to check but , get this, if there wasn't a fault I would have to pay them £70+!!! I will not distress you with the strength of my response to this. Anyhow after more hmming and twiddling by the KC guy someone will come and install a "new plate"(??) for no charge and make sure my connection is actually up to the job; this after all is what I'm paying them for, so they get no thanks for that. Even then this guy left me with no connection speed up or down; so yet another call just get any connection at all.
Every other town and city in the UK has a choice of phone and internet provider but not Hull. BT and the rest won't enter the Hull market apparently because it's too small. So we're stuck with this colossus; no use complaining to the regulator OFCOM recently gave KC a clean bill of health (I'm not saying palms were crossed with silver but it wouldn't exactly be a shock).Yes it's got cream phone boxes but its a very sour cream.

A chap from TimeOut magazine said Hull was the nicest city he'd visited; he wouldn't say that if he had to deal with KC.
I feel better for that .... normal service will resume tomorrow; KC permitting.

I want to look inside your head

I showed you a shot of this sculpture before. Here are some closer images.

Merchant Navy Day

During the two World Wars thousands of men were killed in service of the Merchant Navy bringing supplies to the UK and to our Soviet Allies in the Arctic convoys. Today is Merchant Navy Day when they are remembered; much good it may do them.

Common Cattle

Here are your Big Macs before the bread is put on. I'm lovin' it.

We had joy,

we had fun,

we had seasons in the sun

and when the Fall was over 

we were burgers in a bun.

(Apologies to  Jacques Brel  & Rod McKuen )

The Black Mill, Beverley Westwood

Her upset look says it is never over.

Here's an odd thing. An installation named "Truelove" (not, you note, "True Love" which should raise suspicions that there is more to this than a Mills and Boon romance) stuck in the tidal ooze of the River Hull. It's a strange story of married Eskimo couple Memiadluk and Uckaluk being brought to Hull on the whaling ship Truelove in 1847. They were then exhibited in native costume and with canoes and so on; supposedly to make people aware of the poor conditions of their homeland in towns and cities in North England. On their way home the next year Uckaluk died of measles on board ship, she was fifteen years old. The heads are copies of casts which are on display in the Maritime Museum along with posters of their "visit".

 The installation is sited at the mouth of the Hull where the old harbour was and where many whaling ships including the Truelove would have landed. The artist is Stefan Gec. 

 The title of the today's posting comes from a poem "The Esquimaux" by Caitríona O'Reilly.