Red Tops

Marks and Sparks'  "The Art of Christmas"! pshaw!

Barriers to trade

In a chrysophobics nightmare half of Whitefriargate has been barricaded off to allow for work. Each shop has a little bridge to the entrance but it's hardly welcoming. When it's all done we are promised that street will be repaved (I should hope so!), the trees removed (that's already happened!) to allow for an improved view of the architecture, oh and oooooh! wooden seats to admire the view. So nowt much then. Fancy an ice-cream?

Business as usual

 

If orange is not your colour then I suggest staying away from Hull centre for the duration of the ongoing 'upgrade'. Just about every public space is lined with thousands of these barriers to protect us from the predations of JCBs and dumper trucks. Above Trinity Square looks like some sort of industrialised archaeological dig or perhaps a post-nuclear clear up that's gone badly wrong.

A sign nearby informs the passers-by (that would be me as I saw no other souls around) that the nearby cafés were open as usual. Well no! Below is 'usual'; above is how a Council puts businesses out of business in the name of 'progress' which could be what they meant by business as usual.

This damn thing nearly ran me over

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More Larkin about

Another sign on the via dolorosa that is the Larkin Trail, this on the doorway of the Royal Station Hotel. 

You are dying to read the poem he composed to the Royal Station Hotel aren't you? Oh yes you are ...

Friday Night At The Royal Station Hotel

Light spreads darkly downwards from the high

Clusters of lights over empty chairs

That face each other, coloured differently.

Through open doors, the dining-room declares

A larger loneliness of knives and glass

And silence laid like carpet. A porter reads

An unsold evening paper. Hours pass,

And all the salesmen have gone back to Leeds,

Leaving full ashtrays in the Conference Room.

In shoeless corridors, the lights burn. How

Isolated, like a fort, it is -

The headed paper, made for writing home

(If home existed) letters of exile: Now

Night comes on. Waves fold behind villages.

Lamplight

Near St Mary's, Cottingham

Got a ticket to my destination

At stations there are signs that politely inform the intending passenger that it is illegal to board a train without a ticket if you get on at a station with a ticket office that is manned, or words to that effect. Which seems fair enough to me. So form an orderly queue at this rather splendid Victorian booking office which was clearly designed to cope with far more passengers than ever use this line. You might have to wait as the ticket seller is probably having a coffee in the buffet across the way ...

I've waited in far worse places than Bridlington station for my train to arrive though, as I've mentioned before, the hanging bikes are a bit of an oddity.

Being by the seaside brings with it a yearly influx of young gulls learning the delicate art of walking on a sloping glass roof.

A couple of cobles

Cobles were the clinker built shallow draught workhorses of the North-east coast's fishing industry. The larger one to the rear is the Three Brothers, the last coble to be built in Bridlington (1912) which used to lie slowly rotting in the harbour (see below) until recent restoration and rebuilding means that it is fit for purpose once again. In front of that in the red, white and blue is the much newer Whitby built Gratitude. Both these boats are the pride of the Bridlington Sailing Coble Preservation Society and if you want to know more I'd recommend going to their site.

Prior to restoration the Three Brothers was painted white and never seemed to move from this spot. This photo taken in April 2010.