A Good Wall Spoiled

There's a craze to paint murals in this donkey's ass of a town. You've got a few square feet of blank  Victorian or Edwardian brickwork doing no harm to anyone and it just can't be left in peace; it has to be coated in some "artwork". We've seen it on Hessle Road and other places and it's creeping all over the place. There's even a plan to paint houses on Spring Bank in gaudy colours just because some layabouts want a grant from the Art Council or the stupid Council and they have nothing to offer the world but vandalism dressed as "community art". The themes in this case we are told were suggested by primary school children because, as is clear to any fool that has ever breathed, uneducated, uninformed 5 to 11 year old youngsters are a positive fountain of inspiration and objectivity. So the four corners of this unfortunate bridge on Chanterlands Avenue have the above garbage (Aim high, never give up, pshaw! How often young children come out with such phrases ...), a sporty theme featuring two unknown sporty people celebrating  sporty events from before many of the children born, a badly drawn collage of Hull images (including Larkin's Toad an image familiar to all Year One intake children at all primary schools) and a long "Eco" thing involving a whale, an octopus, a shark, a large green turtle, some penguins and a polar bear oh and some floating plastic bags to remind us all what sinners we are. (It seems youngsters have a very depressed view of the world and quite possibly think it is all doomed) Quite what all this has to do with Chants Avenue I haven't a clue. It's just plain old fashioned prattery. Worse though; it is condoned vandalism, a good wall spoiled.

This squat little building was once a gents' urinal now closed because of Council cuts ... which leads me to ask  who will pay to maintain this tosh because in a couple of years they'll all fade and date and you can never go back to the nice, cool red Victorian bricks that just did their job and harmed no-one.

And you can imagine the whimpers of condemnation when someone came along and put up their own shitty little "artwork"; without permission (shocking!) not at all in keeping with the theme (The horror, The horror!). I do not recall this bridge ever being 'tagged' like this before they decorated it with their murals ... Well, as ye sow, so ye shall reap

Shaves and trims

I have to say if it should ever come about that I can't shave myself (not that I ever do)  or trim my own beard (again only rarely) you can take me out and shoot me. I am, perhaps, not the barber's best friend. Anyhoo this cute little sign aimed at a somewhat younger (and richer) clientèle than myself is on the way home from Hull Fair on Chanterlands Avenue.

WW on Chants Ave

I'd seen this Wilberforce thing on Chanterlands Avenue before but never had a camera handy so today armed with a new-to-me Fuji I was prepared.

Lord bless us and save us

They say confession is good for the soul and I confess I got it wrong along with just about every other pundit (some of whom were even paid). The electorate had a simple job to do, pick a government, any government, but somehow it chose not to do its job. Well fine, so be it. Oh the Tories are still there for sure but only by going into into bed with Northern Ireland's Calvinist loony party and then only by the narrowest of margins. The general view now is yet another election and soon. How exciting! This church's wayside pulpit may have the answer to the country's present political entanglement, but somehow I doubt even heavenly intervention is going to clear up this little lot. Meanwhile I'm sticking to forecasting what's for dinner.

Smile, damn you

I was going to say that today, unlike yesterday, is poets day but then I find that October 7 is Happy World Smile Day! Spread that Joy so it comes back and hits you in the gob.

The weekend in black and white is (thankfully) smiling at us from here.

Weeping Ash

Fraxinus excelsior (Pendula)

Coming up to June and every other tree and bush has been busy getting out the greenery whilst the ash seems to be still asleep with barely a bud showing. This fine specimen is on the corner of Spring Bank west and Chanterlands Avenue, in the cemetery as you can see.

The weekend in black and white is here.

This is no country for the young

There you go; that's what's called a proper career choice: sausage or burger. Difficult and depressing when you've had your heart set on being a juicy chop or a succulent sirloin steak but you don't get those opportunities without qualifications, experience but best of all, knowing the right people these days ....

On the subject of sausages and as it's Friday and the end of the month here's the cautionary tale of ambitious Sammy Bell and his misfortunes.

The British way of death

Northern Cemetery Chapel, Chanterlands Avenue, Hull

People, it appears, can no longer afford to die. Yes I know they keep on shuffling off without a care but those left behind are finding it increasingly difficult to pay for disposing of the earthly remains. The average cost of dying, that's including funeral, burial or cremation and state administration, rose last year by over 7% to £7,622 if you believe a survey by an insurance company although that does seem rather a lot. That figure is greater than average savings so you can see how it might distress the bereaved to get into debt over this matter. Clearly someone is making a pile (dare I say they are making a killing, why not?) out of all this; undertakers' mark-ups on coffins, for example, are  reputed to be 200%!. Then there's deeds of grant (£25 a year, minimum 10 years payable in advance) and interment fees, in Hull that's currently £820! And don't get me talking about wreaths and flowers!  Still you don't have to fork out all that; there are cut price jobs for under £1000. If you own your own patch of garden you can always go under the roses wrapped in a blanket for that stay-at-home interment, just make sure you're at least two foot under the sod. 

The chapel here is a grade 2 listed building from the early 1900's, it'll cost you a £70 'chapel fee' to hire it! Have a nice day!

Here's one I did earlier

Somehow this one didn't get posted in August when I took it. It's underneath Chanterlands Avenue rail bridge. It was at about this time (and those of you with a weak stomach may wish to leave now) that the local rag ran a story of "inch long maggots" falling from this bridge onto the heads of unsuspecting pedestrians. It seems the rail company (or the Council, it was never clear who) had put up netting to keep pigeons from nesting but which instead trapped said birds (I saw at least two there may have been more) and led to a prolonged death by starvation and with the warm weather an inevitable host of maggots which left the rotting corpse when ready to pupate, falling like some biblical plague on the sinners below. The Council was informed and the Council sent an officer round to inspect and to write a report and then the Council undertook to study the report carefully and the Council said it would take swift and appropriate action should it be deemed necessary ...

Autumn Cemetery

Western Cemetery, Chanterlands Avenue

I always think these places look at their best in Autumn with a good scattering of leaves and the tree branches just beginning to show through. Another year to cross off ...

Toto, I have a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore ...

I read today that the UK, for its size, has more tornadoes than the US. So, whilst Chanterlands Avenue may not look much like the corn fields of Kansas, Dorothy should still keep a weather eye out for twisters. Why only last August East Hull had one knock down some trees and lift a few roof tiles ...

This flagrant breach of copyright is in a stationers on Chanterlands Avenue. It has for sale mugs, tee shirts and other tchotchkes all with 'Hull' written somewhere on them, it's the place to go for your Hull memorabilia ... no seriously, stop laughing.

Yellow spoilsports

In these days of safety and dullness it's hard to remember the days just a dozen or so years ago before spoilers were placed on all the fun bits of town like this little slope from the end of Victoria Avenue down to Chanterlands Avenue. So you might cycle or skateboard too fast down there and end up in the road and be run over, meh! Hardly ever happened and you wouldn't do it twice would you?.

Le vélo jaune

Bonjour from sunny Hull. The Tour de France, which finished recently in Paris, this year for some reason or other had its Grand Départ in Yorkshire. Cue lots of Yorkshire tourism advertising, lots of God's own county claptrap and so on and so forth. There can be few things more boring than a professional Yorkshire person gassing on about Yorkshire. Anyhoo this cycling shop not wanting to be left at the back of the peleton and not having any maillots jaunes simply sprayed up an old bike yellow. It does, however, have a red spotted shirt of the 'king of the mountains' which is kind of ironic given that Hull is flatter than a flat thing that's been flattened.

Lurkin' Toad

If you're taking a short cut through the cemetery and get that feeling of something not quite right it might just be that giant toad that you glimpsed out of the corner of your eye ...

The Weekend in Black and White is here.

That was the Winter that wasn't

So a season with no snow, no frosts to speak of, a bit of rain and mild ...meh! I don't call that Winter. Still I'll have saved on the old gas bills and so forth. So from 16.57 GMT it's officially Spring (I had to look that up) and it'll probably snow, did last year.

Twitter-light Connections

Taken by Margot K Juby

My thanks to Margot for this, taken while I simply wanted to get home and put my feet up after a trek to Chanterlands Avenue last month and was feeling ever so slightly grumpish. I take responsibility for turning a rosy red sunset into monochrome.

The Weekend in Black and White has more and probably much better monochromes here. 

Twitter-light an old word that needs reviving.

Price of petrol

Chanterlands Avenue

There was a time when petrol was sold by the good old imperial gallon. I remember my father moaning many, many years ago that the price of a gallon was threatening to rise to five shillings (25p in the new money)! Now we've all supposedly gone metric but just about the only things sold by litres are wine and petrol. So the price you see here is 130.9p for a litre of the smelly stuff. How they pay that 0.9p is a mystery known only to accountants. A quick back of the packet of cigarettes calculation makes that £6.26 a gallon. I shudder to think what the Aged P would make of that. As you all know I don't drive so I don't care.

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 ....

Colourful Doorway

Behind these doors on Chanterlands Avenue there's a small garden centre. I think it's a safe bet that the same guy also decorated their van which I showed last year.

Road works on Chants Ave

I mentioned last year about a major road works scheme in west Hull that involved laying miles of electric cable through the busiest roads. The tailbacks became the stuff of legends. Well finally they finished and all seemed well until this cropped up on Chanterlands Avenue (or Chants Ave.). At least when I went past there were actual men doing actual work rather than just a hole in the ground and no sign of life. 

This bridge, which always has some interesting graffiti on it, was the scene of some dramatic flooding during the downpour of June 2007 with water well over the raised pavements. It was here that someone with a  sense of adventure greater than their sense of filth and sewage went surf boarding in what for me is the iconic image of those events.