"Thanks drive!"

Living where I do and the town centre being where it is some form of transport is needed to get me from the one to the other and nine times out of ten this delightful East Yorkshire 103 or 105 service carries me gently to my destination. There is, of course, a Simplibus service 3 but that is simply more expensive and not quite the door-to-door experience I expect for the exorbitant fares. 

Oh, and should you ever ride the buses in this town never forget to thank the driver when alighting ("Thanks drive!" is an accepted mode of expressing appreciation, though I once said, my mind being elsewhere you understand, "Muchas gracias señor" without any reproach). If you do so you will surely find yourself amongst the blessèd ...

An Englishman's Home ...

“It could be an almost heavenly development,giving scope for infinite variety and the opportunity to create a real community.”  Herbert Walford Anderson, Lord Mayor of Hull, 1967

In 1352 a certain John of Sutton was given permission to crenellate his building, Le hermitage, in a place called Braunceholm near the village of Swine in Holderness. This was after he'd been brought up by the justices for having built a castle without permission. The justices, from the nearby upstart new city of Kingston upon Hull had taken a dim view of castles being built in the neighbourhood and grassed the said John of Sutton up to the King, Edward III. John prayed pardon for the trespass and palmed the King 20 shillings for his troubles and King granted his pardon and the all important licence. (That was the way business was in those days and probably still is ...) Now John must have had a good reason to want protect himself and maybe he'd had a vision of what was to befall his lands in the centuries to come ... 

Fast forward, as they say in the movies, a few hundred years and John's castle is but a grassy mound beside a disused rail line but his precious Braunceholm is now home to thousands in one of the biggest housing estates in the country, behold, I give you Bransholme...

After the last war with half the population homeless and most of Hull's housing damaged and in need of knocking down (the slums that is) the Council and others had a wizard idea, why not build a new town, a model community, well outside of Hull to rehouse all these poor folk (and no-doubt pass what ever problems they might have on to the new town's council) ... well the new town idea didn't come off but land was bought to the north east of town and by the mid sixties everything was ready to rock (I know some twenty years after the end of the war, this is Hull everything takes time (and a little greasing of parts that needed greasing no doubt)) and in a decade Bransholme was built with ~20-30,000 inhabitants (I've read varying figures) a handful of schools, a shopping centre (that closes at 5.30-6.00 and then they throw you out!) and a few pubs. The place was and remains a vast, sprawling warren of meandering pointless roads that lead nowhere but back upon another meandering road. The houses, being built so quickly and so cheaply were as you might expect and within a decade or so demolition of some of the worst was under way, most notorious were the so called misery maisonettes or "alcatraz", a concrete man-made hell hole. The estate  is described as being a place of multiple deprivation with social problems that are common these days (drugs, petty crime, anti-social behaviour and so on) ....and still and yet folk who live there seem to love it ... or so some of them say in the local paper.
So what was I doing in this place? I was on my way home from the delightful Kingswood Shopping Centre on the 11a Simplibus service (simple fares, simple routes, simple times, simple numbers!) that takes what is possibly the most circuitous route from A to B;  it's basically the scenic route taking in the delights of Bransholme, Sutton and Holderness Road, just don't be in a hurry.

"Little boxes made of ticky-tacky ..."

"... little boxes, little boxes, and they all look just the same ..."

This odd looking building is a pub called the Nightjar and not, as we both thought, the Nightmare.


The weekend in black and white is here.

A very parochial tale

Picture by Margot K Juby

Towards the end of October last year somebody, OK it was a man, decided that it would be a good idea to drive his car at a fair old speed into our bus stop and demolish the bus shelter in the process (as you can see below). The story in the local rag was that the driver had been drinking (gosh, I am shocked, shocked...!) and the police had arrested said driver as they put it: "on suspicion of drink driving". There's a pub just 400 yards down the road ... do I need to paint you a picture?

Anyhow that was back in October and still we have no bus shelter nor even a pole saying this is an actual bus stop. The orange barriers have been lying on their side all the while, sometimes being moved by youths who lack anything better to do. Bus drivers are no longer seeing this as a stop and sometimes run past as we, with our shopping bags full, shout at them to stop ... it was getting to be beyond what they politely call a joke... 

So about three weeks ago and somewhat unhappy with this situation I wrote to the County Council who are responsible for roads in these parts asking what was going on ... "Oh we'll send someone round to have a look" came the speedy reply and that was it, no more did I hear. That is until the other day when, still fed up with the state of play, I contacted the Council via Twitter ... "Oh it's nothing to with us, mate, it's a Parish Council matter" came the stern reply. ( I got no answer when I asked why they could not have told me this three weeks ago).

The Parish Council clerk was quite apologetic when I asked about this. "We're a small organisation with no reserves, so we have to wait for the insurers to pay up" was the sad story and it seems that the Parish now has the money, has ordered a brand new shelter (from a company called Shelutions, I kid you not. ) which should be with us in a few weeks (I'm not holding my breath) and all should be well. And as a ps "Did I know the precept for the Parish Council was one of the lowest in England?" (No, I did not, but I was delighted to hear this)

I never found what happened to our (alleged) drunk driver ... I just hope he's waiting for a bus that never comes ... in the rain.

Pink Kisses

Which came first the flower or the colour? These are pinks (Dianthus) and have been called pinks since day one or, at least, since the Dutch brought them over; now it seems the colour came from the flower that is to say things were "pink-coloured" eventually this became simply pink... so what word did we use for pink before we had pink? It seems we used 'incarnation' and 'incarnate' (flesh-coloured; you can see a need for a slightly less gruesome word and without religious and other connotations). So from incarnation you might think it is but a very short step to carnation which as you know is also a dianthus or pink but this etymology is said to be confused, or so I read (the whole damn thing is confusing and I wish I hadn't started out on this nonsense), and could come from coronation, the edges of the flowers looking like a crown.  
Still and more, the word pink became a term for excellence ... so these could be said to be the very pink of pink pinks ... and then, of course there's pinkos for those of a not quite red, slightly left of centre  persuasion (persuasion itself is becoming dated notion), pink elephants can, of course, be on parade and pinkie (again from the Dutch) ... and then there's the verb, to pink, meaning to pierce which is totally unrelated and which could give us pinked pinks ... and  I think I'll have a little lie down with a large pink gin.

Anyhow these are Dianthus Pink Kisses and you could buy a pretty pink potful for £3 from a big shop on Clough Road should you wish.

Today's monthly theme, as you might have guessed, is pink.

All mod cons ...

Cor there's posh! Most Hull folk still have to wander down to the corner pump with a bucket ... Cottingham houses have their own private wells.

Gin School

I don't know how these things work; I'm talking about fashions. Now a few years ago you couldn't give gin away, it was mother's ruin, the tipple of the well-oiled sot. From the 1920's through prohibition, to the end of the fifties, if Hollywood is to be believed, anyone who was anyone was fuelled by lashings of gin disguised as a dry Martini.  I must admit that on a hot afternoon a large G & T with ice (and a slice of lemon if you really must) can be a delight,  though by the end of the last century it was really not the drink of choice for the young get up and go types (like what I wasn't). A couple of centuries back, though, it was the patriotic duty of every loyal Englishman to drink pints of gin daily (Think Hogarth Gin Lane, "drunk for threepence, dead drunk for sixpence" ) and none of that nasty French brandy, thank you very much. So it should come as no real surprise that gin is now flavour of the month again or should I say flavours of the month since the plain old juniper berry infused distilled liquor is just a bit passé. Now the thing is 'artisan gin'  made and sold at great expense with any flavour you can pop into the still. Can I tempt you to a rhubarb gin? No? How about plum and vanilla? or strawberry and cream? perhaps a herbal rosemary and thyme would appeal? Cheese and onion, anyone?
Here some enterprising soul is clearly trying to catch the wave in full flood and you can make your very own little bottle of gin to take away and cherish ...cheaper by far to buy a bottle or three or four but then you won't be learning anything.

Oh look we are rapidly approaching World Gin Day ... Saturday 8^thof June 2019.

Green and Blue

I've mentioned before that Cottingham has a fair few splendid trees so I thought I'd post some again because they are still splendid and other things goings-on in the world are somewhat less interesting. This grand old specimen you've seen before but that was in its winter attire; it's a near neighbour of that red beech I posted the other day.