The Cottingham Cock

It was Cottingham Day not last Sunday but the one before and I've only just seen the few photos I took on the day, this being the most interesting of a dull batch. Cottingham Day used to be held on Saturdays but it got too popular (it was hellish!) so those who run it moved it to the Sunday to keep it reasonably crowded ... This fine upstanding specimen has put me in mind of a very earthy song by the late Jake Thackray I'll see if I can find it ...

Tide has transfigured them into Untruth.

.... What will survive of us is mud.
 

(With apologies to Mr Larkin)

Chutzpah and a bit more

Chutzpah, I think that's the word to describe taking your money then giving you some of it back and saying that it's being spent for your own good. No doubt there will still be recalcitrant remain minders, keepers of the dying flame (meeting in darkened rooms and secretly drinking to the bureaucratic kings over the water) who will point to this, wag the compulsory finger at us and say "look what you will be missing" come October 31st, Big Boris Day, le grand jour de départ (should it ever happen). But the EU simply gives us back some of our own money and, what's more, tells us how to spend it ... why any self-respecting people would put up with this crap I cannot imagine ... plus it's proposed new leaders (like the old lot before them) are  unelected, unaccountable failed despicable politicians and crooks. 

But ... taking your money and spending on projects that are supposed to be for your benefit is the nature of all government, I suppose. So you'll see a wee sign for "Northern Powerhouse". This is a quango more spoken of than existing in actuality. It seems to have mythic qualities in that it will regenerate the whole north of England without being a real entity. By merely repeating it three times it comes into being and renovates those parts that generations of neglect and disinvestment have ruined.

The Humberside Local Enterprise Partnership, another quango,  was recently criticised for failing to deliver any jobs boost despite receiving millions of central government (ie taxpayers') money.

Hull City Council we have met many times over the years; it is led by simple folk with simple ideas, as in simply ridiculous ideas. One of the latest is to take over empty shops in Whitefriargate and give them to young entrepreneurs to start up businesses. This is so self-evidently bonkers it could only come from folk with no business sense: so, off the top of my head, for example, what about the existing shops that will have to compete with non-rent paying businesses? Hardly fair, is it? I'm sure the EU would have something to say about it (see, I can do irony ...) But then fairness is not something HCC is noted for. So then let us ask who gets the money, why it'll be the greedy landlords who would otherwise be sitting on empty units demanding too high rents for the market until the simpletons of HCC come along with an open cheque book and an account filled with taxpayers' money ... the party of labour subsidising the landlords is an irony seemingly too rich for the simple folk of city hall ... and why help only young entrepreneurs? why can't grey bearded loons drink at the deep well of municipal benefice? 

Time limitations and good manners preclude me from expanding on the Environment Agency ... and Bmmjv are the recipients of all our money in case you wondered where it all went.

You don't need a weatherman...

I came across this weather vane the other day; it's on top of the old dock offices on High Street. It's new to me but looks as though it could have been there for years in which case how did I miss it when I posted the building a few years back. This little ship must be one of the few that can sail close to the wind without coming about and all that tacking nonsense beloved of nautical folk. (I admit I get all my sailing jargon from a childhood spent reading Swallows and Amazons ... 'Better drowned than duffers, if not duffers won't drown.' is still the soundest piece of dereliction of paternal  responsibility I've come across).

Mr Wilberforce's Mulberries

I made clear my views on Mr Wilberforce political choices the other day, so putting that to one side here's a look at his choice of garden plants. You know how it is you have a small town house with a busy bustling river out the back and little space for a garden but you just have to  put a bit of green out there to lighten the mood, in modern parlance you want to create "an outdoor room" away from the hurly burly of getting filthy rich ... I suspect that Mr Wilberforce did not plant this or anything hereabouts since he lived in London for most of his adult life but let us, like good little tourists,  pretend, shall we? So a couple of small mulberries would be just dandy, hmmm  only now they're not small and, despite nursery rhymes, were never bushes. Whoever planted them Wilberforce House has two fine mulberry trees front and back that really fill the place and are quite spectacular. I wonder what the fruit tastes like, maybe go back later in the summer and find out ... if the birds and silkworms don't get them first.

The little brown sign warns the unwary visitor that the fruits from the tree may make the pavement slippy on a cold and frosty morning.

Mr Venn's Intersection with Hull

Here's the Drypool Bridge once more. Last time I posted about it I mentioned it was being redecorated in tasteful lime green and diarrhoea brown quasi camouflage colours which I'll spare you by posting a monochrome picture. As I mentioned (and as you can see) it was to be dedicated in some way to John Venn who left Hull before he was two and never came back ...but never mind that makes him or at the very least his meconium (which was quite possibly the inspiration for the colour scheme) and his delightful soiled nappies part of Hull and isn't it just great to breathe the very air of the place ... I'll stop now before I get carried away again (by the men in white coats). So anyhow, near this fine bridge, where {East Hull} ∩ {West Hull}, some crazy fools have made a nice blue plaque that I'm sure you'll all appreciate ...

Inevitable Alignment

Let me see now the church, St Mary's on Lowgate has been there since the 15^th century, Holy Trinity which is just peeking out from behind there has been bothering the almighty since the 13^th century; the domed law courts I'm guessing sometime in the 1990s, the entrance to the old Queen's Dock since 1775 or thereabouts and that crane (or scotch derrick crane) is hardly new. And I've been in or around Hull some 37 or so years ... so  sooner or later this alignment was bound to happen, wasn't it? The odd thing is that it didn't happen earlier when I posted this.


The weekend in black and white will align itself here at some time in the near future.