Deep Piles

It's not all falling down in the old town. At the new C4DI site work is underway to put in the necessary supporting piles. It seems a company called Aarsleff have been given the task of ramming steel into the Humber's muddy shore. Pile driving is not something you can do quietly and the noise from the operation nicely echoes off the Deep's walls. I recorded it just for fun. It's really not pleasant but it took me back to when I was a youngster living in Hartlepool and they built an atomic power station across the way, the pile driving went on for what seemed like two whole years; now that was tiresome.

A little support

At the start of this month I posted the back of Humber Street and its somewhat tumbledown appearance. What I didn't mention at the time was how these buildings or what's left of them are still managing to defy gravity. The answer, as you can see, is scaffolding and lots of it and in some places brace that up with large tanks of water to keep it all in one place. Even so one of the buildings has had to be surgically removed leaving a nice little gap. It's easy see how how £4 million could just disappear down this street.

 The street is, of course, not passable to motors

Humber Street Art

I took these last year but never got round to posting them. These are some of the murals decorating the doors of old green grocers' warehouses on Humber Street. They were painted by schoolchildren as part of a project to raise awareness of marine habitat in the little darlngs (good luck with that!). I'm just posting them for historical record since things down this street are no longer quite so idyllic as I'll show tomorrow.

If a job's worth doing ...

... it's worth doing twice.

This picture of intense activity shows the resurfacing of Bricknell Avenue earlier this month. Tar dragons, as we used to call them when I was young, don't seem to be the impressive beasts of long ago. Anyhow when the job was finished it was found, to no-one's extreme surprise, that it was unsatisfactory and they'll have to do it all over again. If you look real close you can just make out that there's snow and ice on the pavement. Laying tar over wet surfaces that subsequently freeze overnight doesn't strike me as conducive to a fair outcome but what do I know ...

The Cecil

I can't believe I haven't posted this former cinema before now. It stands on the corner of Ferensway and Anlaby Road. The Cecil was opened in 1955 with a screening of the Seven Year Itch. It has a rather dull looking exterior perhaps because the architects, local firm Gelder & Kitchen, were more noted for designing flour mills than cinemas.  This was where I saw the last film I paid to go watch, (Splash, since you ask, with Daryl Hannah as a mermaid, yeah I know, pathetic!) and as I'm told it closed as a cinema in 1992 that just shows what an avid film buff I am. The building is now a Mecca bingo hall. The picture is a reflection in a window of Europa House which was built on the site of the original Cecil which stood on the opposite corner until May 8th 1941 when it was destroyed by the Germans dropping bombs on it as was the style in those days.

Weekend reflections are here.

A few trees and things

Here's a sample of some of  Cottingham's many splendid large old trees. These are all on or around Newgate Street/ Priory Road. I'd like to say they are well looked after and protected but I've noticed a few recently in a nearby street being removed to make space for a car to be parked or some such reason. 

Wicstun Express

Newland Avenue, Hull

Here's the bus from York stopping on Newland Avenue, but what all this Wicstun Express malarkey? Well Wicstun is the old name for Market Weighton, a small town somewhere between here and York. Oh verb sap 'Weighton' is pronounced something like 'wheaton' ...
The bus takes two hours to cover the 47 or so miles from York which hardly strikes me as galloping but then it does take the scenic route and stops along the way. As a marketing ploy they've adopted some stylized Viking complete with obligatory horned helmet. I'm not sure a Viking gives the impression of speed, they've more a reputation (thoroughly undeserved of course) for pillaging and general naughtiness. Vikings, of course, wouldn't have been seen dead in a poncey horned helmet and as roads were usually nonexistent or impassable they would have gone by boat up and down the Humber and been in York in a couple of hours with a full flood tide and no stopping at Wicstun or anywhere else for that matter.