Swordfish

Part of the Fish Trail, this rather unhappy looking life-sized swordfish is on Humber Dock Street close to the marina.

The weekend in black and white is here.

Heaping Pelion upon Ossa

“Ter sunt conati imponere Pelio Ossam”.
                                                          Virgil

The Greek myths tell of  giants waging a war on the gods and in an effort to destroy the home of the gods they pile one mountain on another. These days, of course, there are no giants and no gods either. Just the midgets and minnows of the Council who are seemingly waging an undeclared war, not on heaven but on Hull itself. The opening front of this stadtkrieg involves ripping all the pedestrianised areas up in order to lay new paving stones with fountains (they will no doubt squirt you for the sake of civic virtue). The supposed enemy, reeling from this blitz, are then faced with a flanking manoeuvre; the closure for refurbishment of Carr Lane. Ah yes the timing of this assault is exquisite, that is to say, exquisitely awful..
So there'll be four months (better make that five you know how things go round these parts) of upheaval, 32 buses per hour rerouted, pedestrians rerouted, shops made inaccessible in the usual Hull way of cacking things up. I'm looking forward to the inevitable epic gridlocks that will happen; it's bad enough at the best of times. My bus doesn't go down there but, things being the way they are, one little niggle in a road and the whole godforsaken place grinds to a halt. Oh it's going to be so much fun ... but when it's all done there'll be silver paving stones, the road will glisten with gold and people will dance gaily in the brave new world while minstrels will sing songs of praise to the glorious Council.
But as Virgil says three times they tried to pile Pelion on Ossa  ... ah yes the works already carried out in Jameson Street are having to be ripped up and reinstalled because there were "defective".

And while I'm here, and on a roll, I may as well mention the Ferens art gallery, on the left,  is also being done up to make it able to meet the demands of modern day art exhibitions (the Turner Prize for example), the bill for this just recently went up by a cool half mil to £2.8 million. Kerching!

"Quos Deus vult perdere, prius dementat" as no-body ever said.

Nautical gnome

You see some odd things in the marina from time to time ...

A developing picture

Yet another here's-how-it's coming-along image, this stitched together from about eight shots taken from the end of High Street. The second and third buildings are coming along nicely, all just tickety-pickety-boo!. 

Further good news, at least as far as I'm concerned, is that the multi-storey hotel planned for just behind where I took this is now definitely no longer going to be built; the planning consent has expired and the site is for sale. So if you want to buy about an acre of development land in the centre of the city of culture now's your chance; just watch out for the crows.

Crow Town

   Crow Town

   This is a crow town -

   there are no magpies round here.

   Solid black from beak to tailfeather.

   We don’t do your fancy

   piebald glad rags.

   We don’t talk your poncy language.

   We do your straight

   evisceration of live fledgelings

   while the mother squawks.

   No frills, no grace-notes.

   We don’t go for bright gewgaws

   or pinch girls’ earrings.

   We don’t mince about in tidings;

   when we gang up

   they call it a murder.

   We don’t bring bad luck

   or good either.

   Nobody bows and sucks up to us.

   Nobody jabbers silly rhymes.

   This is a crow town

   where crows live and do crow things.

   We want no magpies round here.

                             Margot K Juby

Today being the first of the month the theme for City Daily Photo is 'Where I belong'. Hah! Well I live in or near Hull but certainly have no sense of belonging here, so, well anyway crows are nice ... 

Margot's poem appeared in Old City, New Rumours - Edited by Ian Gregson and Carol Rubens which came out last year; and a strange thing it is too, an anthology celebrating an earlier anthology, wherever will it end this ‘most poetic city in England’. Click on that link to read Margot's review of this collection if you've nowt better to do.

Non-fluttering Non-dancing

It's that time of year when I usually post some harbinger of Spring, snowdrops or pussy willow or whatever. This year it's the little daffodils that the Council or somebody has planted under local street signs. As we've not really had any Winter to speak of (again) maybe the coming month will bring us something colder. As the old saying goes "February builds bridges, and March breaks them".

Carry on up the Khyber Pass

Details, details ... This little putto romping around with a sickle is according everything I can find an allegory of plenty or of Summer; take your pick. (I'm guessing that there are more similar putti in this series representing the other seasons but we only have the one that I know of.) It is situated in East Park's Khyber Pass where a bright stainless steel plaque close by informs us that "This "Folly" was originally the site of a copy of an Arab doorway from Zanzibar, used at the entrance to the East African Pavilion at the British Empire Exhibition held in 1928, and later erected in East Park in 1930." Which is all fine except the the British Empire Exhibition was held in 1924 but that's a mere detail compared to the claim that the folly was actually built in 1885-88 to commemorate the 'capture' (I use the word loosely) of the Khyber Pass by the British Army in the second Afghan War (see here for example). Now I have written in the past that the folly was built from bits of the old Tudor garrison that stood at the mouth of the river Hull. So what's going on? Well I think there's a pinch of truth in all these tales. Certainly a turret from the garrison was part of the folly but was moved to Victoria dock. The original Victorian folly must have been added to in the late 1920's as there was an Arab doorway in the past which has gone who knows where?

Anyhow here's what that East African Pavilion looked like back in 1924 in Wembley when the sun did not set on the British Folly, sorry Empire.

And here's the informative plaque

Ooopsy by Hull City Council

The weekend in black and white is here.