One for sorrow, two for joy ...

Good morning Mr. Magpie. How is your lady wife today?

Seeing this collection of corvids in bushes just a few yards from home the other day set me to wondering what the collective noun for magpies might be. I knew about a murder and parliament of crows so a quick search came up with tidings, gulp, murder and charm of magpies. Seems you can also have a congregation and tittering of magpies as well. The well known counting song seems to stop at ten (for the devil's own self!) what you are supposed to say when there's fourteen or fifteen of the little beauties I don't know. Oh and did you know that three crows are a warning to sell your stocks and shares? You have been warned ...(Just been informed that, as I write, today, 29 October, is the anniversary of the Wall Street Crash!)

Now I quite like magpies but some people, who falsely call themselves conservationists, want to trap and kill them on the grounds that they eat song birds. It seems some birds are more equal than others to these perverted thinkers. These sick people use the hideous Larsen trap which involves a live magpie or crow being kept in a tiny cage as bait. It's a vile practice and really should be banned (you can sign a petition here much good it will do).

Short term view

The recent demolition of Wellington House and the clearances made for the new C4DI buildings have made a little space for a this view of the tidal barrier and the Millennium footbridge. Enjoy it (or not) while you can for new buildings will sprout up soon to block out this vista. The security fence around the site has images of what is planned, something new and definitely different.

Stench pipe

Earl de Grey, Castle Street

“Civilisation is the distance that man has placed between himself and his own excreta.” 

― Brian Aldiss 

There was a time, not so very long ago, when Hull was notorious for its distinctive stench. Not the all pervading pong of rotten fish that would drift across town from time to time, no this was something more down-to-earth. Sewage. Yup there was no denying that various points in town, notably Prospect Street, came with the odour of ordure. The drains it seems lacked gradient and we were, in the words of Churchill, unable to flush our own sewers. Step up, after much complaining, the water company and a big, and I do mean big, new drain and suddenly town smells as sweet as diesel fumes. Semper melior as they are wont to say round here.

Renovation

3-4 Pier Street

In the old town there's a spot of renovation going on or it could be demolition (these things can be synonymous around here). So they've wrapped the whole building in a green shroud lest some passer-by get hurt by a falling brick or plaster. You've seen this building before it's where it all goes.

...a green thing that stands in the way

“The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of others only a green thing that stands in the way. Some see Nature all ridicule and deformity, and some scarce see Nature at all. But to the eyes of the man of imagination, Nature is Imagination itself.”
- William Blake, 1799, The Letters

I suppose if you have a canal then having really large trees growing over a good third of the waterway is not such a good idea. So it shouldn't have come as such a surprise to see these remains on the banks of the Driffield Navigation. Below how it was a few years ago before the haircut ...

That old Weekend in Black and White is here.

It's that house again

Looking through the posts on this blog I find I have posted this house three times already. [ 1 2 3 ] Well here's the fourth. And if I go back to Drifield I'll no doubt take this shot again.

Weekend reflections are here.

Missing: 1 Tree

Somewhere in this one horse town lives a person who, a couple of weeks ago and in the early hours of the morning, took it upon themselves to remove a tree. Was the urge for a spot of surreptitious tree surgery keeping them awake at nights? Did the tree, a nine year old accacia (see below), offend some strange esthetic and so simply have to go ...? Were they cold and had no wood for their stove? I think we'll never know. 

When news of a second tree being removed at midnight surfaced a few days later the local rag began to speculate on a possible serial arboricide stalking the region, power saw in hand, "the Phantom Tree Chopper", that is until the local council fessed up to the second one. Anyhow the traders on Newland Avenue want the Council to put in another tree and there's a small reward for infomation but it's safe to say the police are stumped on this one.

Thank you Google Street View