Under Threat

 

Ah so there's our old friend Mankind Under Threat squatting in the belated May sunshine all safe and sound now betwixt the City Treasury and the Guildhall. I wondered where he'd gone to. I suppose, technically, he's on public display but so far off any beaten track no visitor to Hull would come across him by accident. Unlike the old place in Queen's Gardens this site is hardly conducive to the contemplation of mankind being under threat. The threat to our friend here is clear: pointlessness and obscurity. He has already become a mere decoration. There are plans to secure this area with gates (the slim to non-existent terrorist threat to Councillors and council staff must be taken seriously ... and a quarter million pounds is the serious money that must be spent to take it seriously). Anyhow once the gates are built our caged friend will be even more secure and even more out of reach.

Bring back the birch

The birch is a pioneering tree, so I'm told, spreading rapidly and colonising clearings and waste lands. It is short lived (if 80-100 years can be called short lived) and makes way for longer lived species such as oak and pine. I don't expect to be around for that development but we plant trees for future generations to enjoy or so they say. There are signs around town telling us "Change is happening"; how true that is.

So to the building itself, well, what can I say? It's a bit fancy and somewhat overdressed for the surroundings the now closed M&S to one side and a hideous brick thing (also, as is the style on Whitefriargate, unoccupied) to the other. Nowadays it's a butcher's shop, or rather a purveyor of meats since I doubt any actual butchery takes place there and everything is wrapped in sealed plastic and looks like it came out of a box rather than a grazing animal... A minute's research reveals the place was originally a public house (yes, yet another ornate Victorian boozer) built in 1884 (the boom years for Hull) with alterations to the ground floor which are so dull they need not detain us.

Mea maxima culpa

                 
                           "The Philistines were Wrong: Culture can bring a city back to life"
                                                                                       Richard Morrison, The Times

I noticed how vibrant Whitefriargate had become as I wandered down there on a rainy day last week. It was like the old times, only seen in those black and white films of smiling folk in fifties coats and suits all wearing hats trying not to look at the camera but somehow failing ... and the sun always shining. The sound of thousands of happy shoppers thronging the revitalised stores and small shops near deafened me and I had to struggle through the milling crowds as they ambled slowly along to the rattle of filling tills ... I was wrong, I thought, I lacked faith, with a little bit of imagination, Culture really can bring a city back to life.

And this, this is just fake news, I wouldn't pay it any mind.

The Larkin Spectacle

... and speaking of old Pip Larkin, as we were, his statue in Paragon Station has caught the attention of those who would reshape the world they see before them. Maybe he should have gone to Specsavers ...

The large cool store is closed ...

Last Saturday (May 4^th) Marks and Spencer on Whitefriargate closed after nearly ninety years of selling "cheap clothes/ Set out in simple sizes plainly/ (Knitwear, Summer Casuals, Hose,/ In Browns and greys, maroons and navy)". Truth is that M&S has been on its way out since well before old Larkin went to the inevitable. There were rumours that the store was somehow bribed not to leave Whitefriargate when St Stephens was built a decade ago. Whatever the truth the customers no longer "leave at dawn low terraced houses/ Timed for factory, yard and site" and haven't done so for generations. I haven't bought anything from M&S this century, certainly no clothing ever. Their food store became pretentious and much parodied (This is not just tosh; this is M&S  tosh ...)

 

Perhaps, though, it's not too late for a blue plaque commemorating Larkin buying his kecks at Markies ...oh,  and writing "a silly poem about nighties" .

The building with its classical columns and bronzed shop front was designed by Jones & Rigby in 1931~ish when M&S were in competition with Woolworths not only for sales but in shop design. Woolies (always a much cheaper store in price and attitude than M&S) went to that great administrator in the sky eleven years ago during the 2008 evenements. There's a wee Viking boat on the top which I've shown before but a second look won't kill you.

Those who seek more about the architectural history of Marks and Spencer's  stores could do worse than take a peek at this link.

SOMETHING must be done ... but what?

This collection of 15000 plastic bottles (Tilly the Turtle, the happiest turtle in the world) was on display at the University last year, (Septemberish if I recall rightly and to go with the British Science conference). The message was simple, the seas, beaches and all open spaces are being filled with plastic garbage and, it goes without saying these days, SOMETHING must be done about it. So there's a sweet little "Plastic Pledge" (redolent of the days of temperance when the evil drink was going to ruin civilisation) where folk forswear to use plastic anything (cups, drinking straws (haven't used a straw since I could hold a bottle and drink out of it), shopping bags... well, you get the picture) and if they must then they will reuse it until it turns to dust and then they will recycle (or quite possibly eat) the dust... (Recycling plastic produces microbeads which are quite possibly even more insidious but we don't want to spoil the flow...) You have to admire young folk, so full of enthusiasm, so easily led to despair over their own futures.

The other day the Scottish Government (that is what it calls itself)  introduced plans for a 20p a bottle refund scheme and it can only be a matter of time before the UK Government does likewise. They have after all to be seen to be doing SOMETHING even if that SOMETHING is horribly expensive and quite insignificant compared to local council's own bin collection and recycling schemes. A scheme to reduce single use plastic bags by charging did reduce them considerably but now so-called "bags-for-life" which cost more and are supposed to be re-used are becoming as big as problem as before as folk, being folk, just forget to re-use them. 

So, then, I think everyone is agreed we must do SOMETHING ... now, moving onto the next item on the agenda ...

Déjà vu in black and white

Surely, says meself to meself, I've shown a barge going up the river before and to be sure this very selfsame little boat, sorry ship, Swinderby, was posted way back when life was all so simple. And as is the way of things when you poke at them I find yet another barge doing the upstream adventure. In my defence I like the clouds and the mud in this picture ... and it was taken sometime back and if I don't post it now I never will.

I know it's only Wednesday but The Weekend in Black and White is here.