It's a Hull thing

Patty: a concoction of mashed potato and sage covered in batter and deep fried; sometimes served with chips which are potatoes also deep fried and scraps which are bits of deep fried batter. Often served in a Patty Butty which means the patty comes in a breadcake with butter (the health conscious leave out the butter).

Breadcake: a small round piece of bread  sometimes known as a bap or barm cake or stottie or bun or  fadge or whatever other dialect term meets your fancy.

Obesity Table: one of the few leagues that Hull tops [ 1 ].

This toad, known for some reason as the "Hull Poem Toad" was part of the Larkin Toads thing from a couple of years back. It's not on food shop, oh no, it's on a shop selling doors on Anlaby Road.

Stanley Street: a place of miracles

In this innocuous looking building a privately owned French company (Atos) is carrying out one the most repulsive programs of this government, one that is leading to misery and even death for thousands of the most vulnerable. This is the Department for Work and Pensions medical centre on Stanley Street where the sick and disabled must come to jump or crawl through hoops to show they are unfit enough to receive a pittance of benefit. The inspiration behind places like this is the novel Catch 22; so merely turning up for an interview shows you are well enough to work and not turning up means benefits are stopped. Needless to say the system does not work and there are literally hundreds of thousands of people waiting to appeal decisions based on the the rigid computerised questionnaire used by Atos. These appeals can take over a year to reach a tribunal and when they do up to 70% are successful, clear evidence that Atos are not doing proper assessments (they get paid whatever, needless to say). The human cost is measured in the suicides of mental health patients forced to apply for work, filling in the forms is too daunting for some, cancer patients denied benefits on their death beds and others simply dropping dead days after they've been told they are fit for work. The gallows humour has it that this place works miracles: so many infirm and disabled suddenly able to live an active economic life after a short visit.

The Eagle, Coltman Street and a Cautionary Tale

There has been a pub called the Eagle on or around this site since 1840 [ 1 ]. Now, along with many other pubs, it's closed and up for sale and looking a bit forlorn. It stands on the corner of Anlaby Road and Coltman Street. Now Coltman Street and thereabouts have long had a well deserved reputation for criminality and even murder. A particularly brutal one in the early nineties when a man was shot dead on his doorstep is still controversial. A favourite of mine, if that is the word to use about these things, happened in the early 80's. A man strangled his wife and left her body in the bedroom over Winter, with the windows wide open of course, so the smell would dissipate. The victim in this case was described as being odd because she was quiet ("she wouldn't gossip") and read books, and thus was clearly asking for trouble! The killer was convicted of manslaughter the following Summer, spent a few months in prison and was out before the year was over, no doubt to have a drink in this very pub. That's 1980's by the way not 1880's.

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I hear there are attempts to do up the street and bring it back to its former glory. I'm not so sure that's such a good idea. 

The Building

Higher than the handsomest hotel

The lucent comb shows up for miles, but see,

All round it close-ribbed streets rise and fall

Like a great sigh out of the last century.

After 46 years Hull Royal Infirmary is beginning to show its age. Chunks of cladding have been coming adrift for a few years and so finally money has been found to repair and rebuild, there's even enough for a new Accident & Emergency Department, so as you can imagine the site is bit chaotic with more builders than doctors. I fear it is going to take more than a few million and a crowd of builders to save our NHS from the predations of this Government but this is not the place for that discussion.

The quote is from that beacon of joy Philip Larkin, (who else?), it ends:

That is what it means,

This clean-sliced cliff; a struggle to transcend

The thought of dying, for unless its powers

Outbuild cathedrals nothing contravenes

The coming dark, though crowds each evening try

With wasteful, weak, propitiatory flowers.

Until tomorrow then, if I'm still here ...

N ♥ L 09

A declaration of love made four years ago, I wonder if the passion is still as strong now and would they carve their names again on an old churchyard tree?

For those who like numbers and so on, Blogger informs me that this is the 1,000^th post. I suppose a modest celebration is in order,

Going to waste

This is the back of Humber Street taken from what would at one time have been Scott's Square. The cleared land was once made up to be a car park but now it's sealed off as even that can't turn a buck and besides those falling bricks might damage the chrome work. 

The Weekend in Black & White is here.

Was it Bill or was it Ben?

Readers who do not understand the title of today's post might like to Google 'Flower Pot Men' though on the whole I wouldn't recommend it (see below). This potty character adorns a café on Chanterlands Avenue.

OK for those of you who like to suffer or simply regress back to a long lost childhood here's a whole episode of the Flower Pot Men. I used to watch this during my formative years; it may explain a lot! Are you sitting comfortably? Then I'll begin ....