Dealing with stuff

Here at the foot of the Queen Victoria statue are heaped flowers and balloons and toys and cardboard messages. It's part of that modern fashion for taking part in ceremonies or rites of remembrance and outpourings of sympathy and solidarity. I think I can date the start of this fashion at least in this country; 31 August 1997 or what we call in our house Princess Di Day. The weeks following that car crash were filled with outpourings of grief, giant heaps of flowers and dozens of books of condolences up and down the country (who read them?). I didn't know the woman, never met her but it seemed the whole country had lost a greatly loved family member; it was all totally surreal. So now with every natural disaster, road accident or passing terrorist attack (this one in Manchester the other week but it could be anywhere) we get this and more sometimes (Je suis Charlie was particularly grating). 

I have to say I prefer the old way of dealing with deaths and disasters; flags at half mast maybe, a few words of condemnation or commiseration, absolutely no interviews with survivors, family members, no coverage of police operations, no sensationalism and certainly no heaps of flowers, toys and so on and just move on. Deny your enemy the oxygen of publicity as Mrs Thatcher reportedly said, the bastards absolutely hate to be ignored or, as a columnist in the Guardian put it recently, "Publicity is terror’s “second wave”. Without publicity, terrorism is just dead bodies." But with 24 hour news coverage of everything they have to fill in the gaps with something even if it's only people putting flowers round Queen Victoria in Hull. I suppose I'll just have to deal with it.

Two Circles of Hull

So the promised fountains are in business. And instantly turned into some kind of amusement feature for screaming children to put on their cossies and splash around in the jets of foul smelling over chlorinated water. Cue jokes about the great unwashed of Hessle Road or East Hull (take your choice) getting their annual wash... Someday perhaps the novelty of these fountains will wear off but until then Queen Victoria Square, the centre of town, has been turned into a stinking nauseous pit of hell.

Double Helix

The first day of a new month arrives and the City Daily Photo theme is Nature.

Wanna buy a bank?

I've shown bits of this building before but for some reason never the tout ensemble. This was until recently the HSBC bank on Whitefriargate. Imposing old pile isn't it? The usual outlook for buildings of this nature is to be transformed into a bar/club/restaurant and perhaps given the HSBC connection something with a little Mexican/Columbian flavour might be appropriate. They could called it El Cartel, just a suggestion.

Some rusting steps

At the back of the Uni connecting one concrete sixties building with yet another is an elevated walk way and being elevated it needs steps. These are those steps.

Say it with flowers

At the entrance to the Uni the Botany Department shows it can grow a few plants.

Margot probably wants some credit for taking this; how hard can it be to push a camera button?

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