A little bit foggy

Our new super-dooper street lights were struggling to make any impression on the wonderful thick fog that rolled in the other night. I like a nice fog even though we no longer get those glorious mournful foghorns sounding out from the river and making for that complete film noir sensation.

You looking at me?

In town on Wednesady the weather was, well, good weather for ducks shall we say. I could see the front one was eyeing me up but then I noticed the back one was as well. All of which led Margot to give me my new word for the day:

Anatidaephobia:

The well based fear that somehow, no matter where you are or what you are doing, a duck is always watching you....

Have a nice day!

Big Lil

Lillian "Big Lil" Bilocca

The only memories that I have of Hull from my childhood back in the swinging sixties in the idyllic seaside town of Hartlepool is of dock strikes (seemingly every other week), trawlers being lost at sea and a large woman in a headscarf berating all and sundry up to and including the Prime Minister about safety for trawler men. That woman, whose trademark image of the headscarf and raincoat on the grainy black and white TV of the days was really unforgettable, was Lillian Bilocca, who, along with other equally formidable women from the Hessle Road fishing community, managed to get some modicum of safety on the fishing fleet. Trawlers had to have a radio operator, come to that, trawlers had to have a radio, quite a few didn't. Why did it take a group of women to achieve these things while the men were seemingly invisible? Well that's a story for someone else to tell.

So what's all this mural about then I hear you ask? Well someone's written a book, Headscarf Revolutionaries, about all these goings on and the film rights for the book have been sold so watch out for a Hollywood blockbuster. Then the BBC program, the One Show, got involved and commissioned two fellows from Belfast (where murals like this are two a penny) to come over and paint, well, what you see. It was unveiled, if that's the word, over last weekend. And I have to say I'm impressed and I don't impress easy.

Moving upmarket

Last weekend the 99p Store became a Poundland; clearly going for the more discerning customer.

Turn that frown upside down

This being Hull even our Smiley faces are bursting into tears. Still if you look behind there's a reason to be cheerful; the pier is now mended and open again and you could dance a polka if you so desired on the new boards, just don't wear high heels.

One in five

Oh he's not going to go on about empty shops again, is he?  Well yeah, he is. In 2015 21% of Hull town shops were vacant, a rise from the previous year of 0.5%. And this is before the Council started their excavations and closures and so on. Now nationally the number of vacancies fell to a rate of 11.5% in town centres. So you'd think there'd be some real concern instead we hear nothing but complacent platitudes from those the council and whoever chose to put forth as spokespeople ... here's one that stuck in my craw: "We're building a world class city centre for 2017!" Well hmmph won't be any shops left by then, matey.

Yes even Heaven has closed its doors ....

Guildhall ball dropping exercise

Peer closely at the top of the Guildhall tower and you might just make out  a ball with pole sticking out of it. Yup not an impressive sight I agree but this is, or rather was, a time signal for ships on the river and in the nearby docks. The ball would be raised up and then dropped at noon, much like the more famous Greenwich ball dropping thing down south. It hasn't worked for donkey's years and indeed I didn't even know it was there until an article in the local rag drew my attention to it. There's been a few attempts to get it going again but all have failed due no doubt to the fact that £50,000 to drop a ball at noon seems a bit of a waste of money given that there's no ships and no dock. But these are mere piffling details; with the City of Culture coming up balls will drop I have no doubt.