Big Boy

We have a pair of crows nesting nearby and every year at this time of the year they go just a little crazy. Nothing and I do mean nothing is allowed to fly anywhere near their nest. Chief object of their passion is a herring gull that has given up the nautical life for one of municipal scrounging. His poor life is hell just at the moment; no rest even if he's a couple of hundred yards from the nest and I wouldn't fancy being pecked by that beak. It'll all be calm again once the fledglings appear in a few weeks

Woodbine Cottages

This little terrace of houses is on Endyke Lane in Cottingham. Endyke Lane (with a y) is not to be confused with Endike Lane (with an i) in Hull though the latter is an extension of the former. Looking at old maps it seems that the old name was Endike Lane and the Cottingham end only became Endyke after Hull built the North Hull Estate in the late 1920's. I wonder if this was not some desire on Cottingham's part to distinguish itself from the council house plebs down the road. So now you know the y of it...

Old Chestnuts

It's that time of year when the Horse Chestnut trees send forth their floral delights. These contrasting specimens are on the corner of Newland Avenue and Cottingham Road but you can find them spread all over town. Only the white ones produce conkers of any usable size. For some unfathomable reason these are sometimes known as Buckeyes in America ... there's even a fetid buckeye which sounds truly delightful.

Margot took this.

L'homme d'hier

I freely admit my ignorance of Antoine Marie Jean-Baptiste Roger, comte de Saint-Exupéry. You can't know about everyone, nor should you be expected to. I gather, after a quick look see on Google, he was of some import. Still I don't see why the uiniversity took so much against him that it removed a rather large version of the above inscription from the courtyard behind the library and replaced it with this piddling thing that seems to be covering up some utility port in a flower bed that you would quite easily miss. Below is how the old feature looked taken from the 2008 University report it's been replaced by a giant comma. Clearly pauvre Antoine is no longer flavour of the month.

I Want To Ride My Bicycle

They've got all the Lycra gear, helmets, obligatory sunglasses... and I'm guessing those bikes don't come cheap, so serious biking then ... well maybe not so serious.

Tell me the old, old story

Tell me the old, old story,
  Of unseen things above,
Of Jeremy and His glory,
  Of Labour and Its love

Tell me the story simply,
  As to a little child,
For I am weak and weary,
  And helpless and defiled.

Tell me the same old story,
Sell me the same old view,
Tell me the stale old story,
 For the many not the few.

Over in east Hull the Labour Party treats its constituents like infants who should always keep a-hold of Nurse, for fear of finding something worse. And yet in east Hull and some other Labour places they seem to lap it up. I went to see Jeremy Corbyn at a meeting in town on Monday evening in Zebedee's yard. I say I went but I did not stay and did not get to see the would be Prime Minister and hero of the working man. Zeb's Yard is a horrible cramped place, totally unsuitable for a meeting. The goofy bearded loon or Great Leader of The Most Advanced & Unified Labour Party turned up half an hour late according the paper and still the large mass of deluded fools, sorry that should read devoted believers, comrades and acolytes, hung around for yet another thirty minutes before no doubt he incanted the ritual benediction: "For the many not the few". Verily J C makes them whole.

Mrs May ("strong and stable") in the poster is shown with Mrs Thatcher's hair style. That's just so original, so subtle! She is being a total mean bitch; taking dinners from hungry school kids and telling pensioners they'll have to pay for their care out of the forced sale of their homes (neatly and rightly labelled a dementia tax) and wants to bring back fox hunting, in short saying the kind of nasty things you only say if you know you can't lose and she won't. When pressed she crumbles and stutters and seems to back track; she and the rest of this government are clearly not up to the job of leading anything but nevertheless she'll win by a country mile. You see for the rest of the country the idea of Jeremy Corbyn as PM brings out that old fear of finding something worse...

My apologies to Katherine Hankey.  

Wacked

Well that didn't last long, did it? A year ago I posted about it opening and now it's gone. Too wacky even for east Hull.