Finkle Streets

There are lots of Finkle Streets scattered among towns in the north of England. No-one is quite sure what 'finkle' means but the current best guess is a corner, bend or elbow; Finkle Streets tending to have an bend in them at some point. I know it sounds a bit tenuous but I don't make the rules. There's always an exception and Finkle Street in Cottingham is as straight as a Roman road. This Finkle Street runs or rather ran from old Mytongate (now the Castle Street/A63 dual carriageway) to Blanket Row and beyond where it bent round to the Humber. It's now nothing at all really and you wouldn't know it was there; there's no street sign or buildings or anything to let you know it existed. I only stumbled upon it and its history by reading an excellent little article by a local historian.

Common Gulls

Well the first dusting of snow in two years thankfully melted away before I could get any pictures. Here's one I took earlier, much earlier, these are Common Gulls (Larus canus, the grey gull!)  in Pearson Park where they gather en masse to steal the bread out of the beaks of the ducks. Snow is just snow; you've seen one load of it you've seen the lot. I can live without thank you.

The Wellington Assembly Rooms as was

The Welly Club, Beverley Road, Hull

It's come to this, I'm taking advice from a cartoon rabbit: "If you can't say something nice, don't say nothing at all"  ... 

Council Waste

In days of yore when town councils could raise their own taxes without interference from a very fat man in Whitehall it was considered essential that every last detail of the council's main building, the Guildhall, should reflect the greater glory of the city of Hull. So it came about that even the very drain pipes had a cast iron triple crowned putto to show the world what a true city of culture it once thought it was. 

The weekend in black and white is here.

158860

Just the other day I was on my way to Cottingham along Snuff Mill Lane when the Hull train sped past, knowing the trains around here there had to be one coming the other way so I waited and duly took the above picture. I guess the driver was a bit surprised to see anyone taking his photo at this point but better that than yet another suicide on the tracks. Yes unfortunately the crossing here has seen two deaths in recent years, the Samaritans even put up a notice which was, of course, stolen. Anyhow best not dwell on that. Being the conscientious type I googled the number of the train and found that there is a whole page, nay two, devoted to photos of this particular train, here. Ha! I thought who would want to take pics of the same train like that, train spotters .... that was until later in the evening going through some old pics I found this taken in 2010 at Bridlington station. I'll fetch my anorak ....

Money Hole

Today there's news of an extra £250,000 top up for this place, on top of its annual increased grants from the Arts Council. That's £1.75 million in hand outs in the last four years. In February 2011 I wrote "No doubt there will be appeals for more public money to be spent on this place and no doubt more will be spent." Well I told you so ... Seems there's no-one with the balls to shut this place down, (it should never have been built in the first place!) especially not now there's the city of culture creeping closer.

Is it Tuesday today?

I'm not exactly sure, no, really I haven't a clue. Or what goes on here or even who runs this place. It's in buildings that are or were part of the Hull College of Further Education but I can't find anything about a "Centre for Business and Enterprise" on the usual internet sources. I clearly lack the enterprise to find a fuller account and frankly I don't care much either. Whatever it is they do here they've given themselves a nice big sans serif sign to hide behind. Oh it is Tuesday after all, hmmm.