Deserts of vast eternity

The cunning plan to make Hull's tenure of the title of UK City of Culture as miserable as possible seems to be working ever so well. Above is what used to be called Holy Trinity Square but no doubt due to changes in the political climate is possibly called Perfidious Albion Plaza or Mea Culpa Square or some such. Those of an age can maybe recall the neutron bomb and how it was to take away the people and leave the buildings (a wonderful device) ... Anyhow thousands were spent clearing it up, installing mirror pools, plans made for food festivals and so on and they had to go and invent a plague just out of spite. They need not have bothered I wasn't going to go anyway.

The statue of Andy Marvell still stands, though really the viral iconoclastic nonsense of pulling down statues seems to have peaked and died away here much like an English summer. I read that this MP for Hull during interesting times (civil war, regicide, restoration and what have you; OK not of interest to everybody I know...) was a master of self-preservation. I wonder what the man who wrote this:

Now let us sport us while we may,

And now, like amorous birds of prey,
Rather at once our time devour
Than languish in his slow-chapped power...

would make of the servile, bedwetting, safety-first, neurotic, mask devouring cowards that want to impose their fear upon us all. But then maybe he too would mask-up, rub in the alcohol gel and conform; self-preservation, dear boy, self-preservation. Gah!

Cultural Compass Bearings

In town yesterday and came across this odd thing in Prince's Dock; a compass cum lighthouse. It's to do with some light show (a "stunning light show" to give the proper description) for the hoi polloi at the end of the month. Hull, or rather its pathetic town council, has a thing with light shows, almost amounting to a fetish: put up a few coloured shiny things and folk are thought (by the delusional council) to touch their forelocks in gratitude and go "gorblimey and gawd bless you, gov" and acquire a warm "cultural" glow in their hearts and appreciate how their miserable lives have been improved by a few magic photons.

I've just read some more about this courtesy of the local rag: seems it "contacts the Met Office and displays a weather omen showing what people can expect for the following hour."(I'm at a loss for words!) ... you'll want know what a Councillor responsible for this tosh had to say ... “This incredible installation from Kazimier is a great example of how art and culture can play an important role in the exciting regeneration and future of our city.” He called it "art and culture" and he's a Councillor responsible for "culture, leisure and tourism" so he must know. There am I thinking it just panem et circenses but then I lack culture and couth.

To lose two looks like carelessness

On our way to Cottingham via Snuff Mill Lane we came across an amusing sight ... a pair of artfully arranged riding hats possibly by the same guy who brought us the "spectacles on a bench" installation that was such a success the other year.

Repairing

In much the same way that out-of-works actors are not "out-of-work" but "resting" this shop is not "vacant" but "repairing". This photo was taken some while ago (it has lingered in the draft folder for years) and I believe the shop has been "repaired" and reopened, it may well have closed for repairs again such is the style these days.
I read a piece in the Times the other day about how a town in Scotland, Paisley, had dealt with its empty shops by converting them into flats and accommodation and had somehow revitalised its town centre from the scourge of retail desertion. The major retailers aren't going to be coming back ever so why not? Hull City Council however continues to double down with plans for even more retail space on the soon to be demolished BHS site. Maybe they don't get the Times in the Guildhall.

The Feel Good Legacy

You can if you like just look at the picture of the pretty lights on Ferensway and move on. I'm going to prattle on about the City of Culture and stuff like that so if that bores you terminally press on to better things ...

Just the other day there were reports on local TV and in the local paper of the final evaluation report by the University of Hull on the year 2017 and the City of Culture and what , if any, its long lasting benefits might be. I've tried to find a copy online but failed so what I'm commenting on is second hand, might not be accurate, indeed may be a pack of stale tosh but that never stopped me before so here goes. 

The picture I get is one of desperation. For example nearly 80% of the "visitors" to "events" in 2017 came from either Hull or the East Riding neighbourhood, of the other 20% I bet a fair few came from Lincolnshire just across the Humber Bridge. Less than 1% of visitors were from abroad. It seems that, despite being the "national" UK City of Culture, they now claim that the year of culture was to be a local thing, aimed at Hull folk and they never intended to be aiming to attract a foreign (or indeed national) audience, well that was at least one measurable success they had. This was local culture for local people we now hear ... well more on this below.

It's claimed that five million people came to Hull to see the "events" but this figure cannot be anything but a guesstimate (or, as I call it, an outright lie): I came to Hull several times during the year, I "saw" some of the "events" but I was there to do my shopping and would have been there in any case much like many of the so-called "visitors" from Hull and hereabouts. I can only assume I was counted several times as a "visitor". It was not so much a case of "Let's go see the big thing in Queen Victoria Square" as "Oh look there's a big effing big thing standing in my way, and what the F*** is it doing there?". Surely passive (or irate) "visitors" like this cannot count, indeed should be counted as a negative visitor ... and anecdotally I should add I did not notice more folk in town during the year. I admit, though, I was asked once by a tourist where Humber Dock was ...

Still and yet there's the glorious legacy, as they like to call it. It seems those who volunteered to be part of the show did, on the whole, think it was positive for them. How nice for them I'm sure; but then these were only a few, a very few out of the many thousands who live in the place. Young people apparently were not too impressed by it all with mainly 50+ year olds attending most of the offerings. Also youngsters at school apparently missed out and continue to miss out due to curriculum requirements (shame, indeed, that their educational needs should take priority over this cultural hogwash).

Surely all that money has left something behind, something tangible ... (I love that word! tangible!) Well it seems there was a 1% increase in tourist spending in 2018 over 2017 but then inflation was ~2.5% so that actually is a decrease in real terms ... There have been some hundreds of millions of public and private investment spent in the town in the past six years but the best the report can say is this could "at least be partly attributed to the UK City of Culture" or maybe it is partly due to this splendid blog or who knows? ... like I say : desperate.

Now, look around the town: has it got better? Are the shops full of wealthy customers eager to keep the local economy thriving? Hardly,  they're shopping online or going out of town to Sheffield or York. The photo shows the old House of Fraser shop, Binns, as I call it draped with lights but it shut back in summer (I'm told it will open as an "artisan food hall" whatever that is ...) and there are dozens more shops like this some empty for many years.
There is apparently a legacy organisation, with the absolutely ridiculous title of Absolutely Cultured ("core purpose is to put culture and creativity at the heart of people’s lives to drive Hull’s ambition and aspirations.")  that is described as "vague in terms of resources, responsibilities and modalities of implementation." which is I take to be a polite way of saying they haven't got a clue ... I can say I've heard of it but cannot see anything that it has actually done and its website hardly inspires.

Ah but culture is not to be measured in such crude financial ways, the benefits to the people of Hull are intangible, some might say. They get a boost somehow from all this publicity, they get to feel good, to have pride in their city. Hmm well in 2018 4% fewer Hull folk felt better about Hull than in 2017. I guess those who took the £32 million or so that was raised, the out-of-town installation makers, the out-of-town providers of torch lit parades (Continentals do such a good torch lit parade, don't you find?), the strange out-of-town American guy who took photos of hundreds of naked folk on the streets of the town (for a big fat fee, of course), the gangly out-of-town oik who was in charge and the out-of-town journalist whose sole qualification seemed to be that she went to Hull University once and was second in charge (for oh so reasonable a fee) I bet all these and so many more out-of-townies who selflessly had to force their snouts into the trough (again the fees were reasonable)  are indeed feeling a lot happier about Hull.
Let us, therefore, seek the cultural legacy elsewhere since it clearly ain't here, mate.

Are you ready for Brexit?

 J. Heebink is a Dutch transport firm with bases in Manchester and MIlton Keynes. Their bright orange lorries are a common sight on Castle Street as they head to and from the port. They've been in business for decades and with a bit of  common sense from all parties, will keep on trucking for many decades to come.

The theme for this month is orange. 

At the end of this month, if certain folk are to be believed and the UK does finally leave the protection racket known as the European Union, the sky will fall in, this country will run out of medicines, food, fuel, folk will be put out of work and we will collapse into a state of complete paralysis with lorries unable to transport goods to and from the EU. This will only happen if the EU chooses to make it happen, let us be clear, it will be their choice to mess with trade; someone, somewhere will have to choose to block or delay the transport of vital medicines...  thus showing what inhuman bastards they have been all along.
It's poppycock (a fine Dutch word), of course, but that is how these scaremongering idiots work. I've given up on the political machinations going on in Parliament, plots here, plots there, plots against plots, court cases to reverse the PM's actions, plots to change the PM, rumours of plots, denials of rumours and you think it and it is happening (possibly, who knows? who cares any longer?) ... all keep the BBC (the biased broadcasting conspiracy) salivating. This parliament is simply not working, the government cannot govern, the supposedly neutral Speaker is in cahoots and conspiring with the Opposition, ... The people cannot have an election because the Opposition is rightly scared of the result and won't let them, so much for democracy. It all boils to one thing: are they, a few hundred MPs, really going to overturn the votes of 17.4 million people and block Brexit completely? Do they think they can get away with it? Well the answer to that is, suck it and see: Oh the Great Reckoning there will be!
Meanwhile the Government is putting out adverts with the question: "Are you ready for Brexit?" to which my answer (and I guess a lot of others) is "Just get a bloody move on ..."

You only live once

So you're 18 years old, you've attained the maturity that comes with adulthood (Hah!); you've passed your A levels (or maybe not ) and now you are wondering where to spend your thousands of pounds of student loan debt. And so you ponder the standard of your future education, the standard of your lecturers, what degree you are going to take, the amenities of the town, the accommodation and all the other petty considerations but having done all that what is going to sway it for you to come to the city of culture? Could it really be that monthly gym membership is cheaper than London? Gosh! well that clinches it then ... 

Given the choice, at 18 years of age, between three years in Hull or three in the Big Smoke (or indeed any other proper sized big city in the UK) paid for by a debt I most likely will never have to pay off  I would be on the train out of here quicker than you could spit ... and you can stuff your gym membership! Hull is all very nice in parts and no bad place to live but London it is not and it does not come close. I don't want to say this is no town for bright young people but it doesn't have anywhere near the offerings of big cities. Small town Hull will still be there and the cheaper gyms, should you ever want them, when the bright lights pall ...

Refreshes the parks that other beers cannot reach

Pearson Park is the unlikely recipient of a large dollop of money (is £3.8 million a large dollop or a goodly sum? what is the convention on money matters?) to restore, repair and otherwise faff with those bits that remain of the original Victorian gift to the town from property speculator and gun runner Zacc Pearson. The works includes taking away the gates and making them as good as new though why that should mean that entrance is closed for approximatly (sic) six weeks is beyond me. (And why good money should be spent on gates that are never, but never, closed is also beyond me, but it's not my money so I don't care.) There's rumours of a new bandstand for the drunks and takers of spice to stay dry on rainy days so they will be happy. The conservatory will be replaced  and there's to be a wee bridge across the lake just like there was when Prince Albert had his memorial made. For a few thousand more they could have had a crossing sweeper named Jo ... but tough decisions have to made.

The park has a bit of a reputation  for being a place  where people of a certain disposition indulge their pleasures (both carnal and narcotic). But after all this turning back of the clock by the friends of Pearson Park they will no doubt be so in awe that they will move on elsewhere and not spoil it for respectable people (same goes for the rats that abound there in).

Underperforming

“Literacy is a fundamental human right and the foundation for lifelong learning. It is fully essential to social and human development in its ability to transform lives.”

... so says  a statement from UNESCO and it's pretty hard to disagree. So, let us say that in the City of Culture, the place where hundreds of thousands if not millions (if you swallow the Kool Aid stats) came to visit and gawp in amazement at the torch lit parades, the fancy dress parades, the installation of  a wind turbine blade, the simply ridiculous Turner Prize, the art-and-fart, here-today-and-pissed-off-tomorrow, paid-for-by-the-taxpayer steaming garbage that oozed through the newly paved streets of this town ... well, in this benighted place far too many adults (42% in some wards) can barely read or write above the level of an eight year old and nearly 40% of their children leave primary schools not able to read properly. To put this into some sort of historical context back in the early 19^th century it was reckoned nearly two thirds of working men could read after a fashion though fewer could write (teaching writing was frowned upon as working folk might start writing their own stories and tales of woe and so on and that most definitely would not do). In parts of this town there seems to have been little progress in two centuries... 

There's no glamour in functional illiteracy, no awards for being unable to write, no visitors from Primrose Hill and Hampstead, no sponsored rainbow coloured celebration in the heart of town, it is most definitely not liberating  ... just a daily struggle to get by as  the better informed, better paid world races on ahead.

You might think that libraries like the one above on Beverley Road could help; it is, after all, right in the heart of one of the most deprived areas in the town ... but some time back (10 or 15 years) this place (along with several others) was closed. "Underperforming" was the accounting term used. It became part of a brand new expensive school, called  "Endeavour". That school lasted but a few years and is no more, it too "underperformed" ... along with all the other underperfoming schools in the town.

So the Council's plan to deal with adult under education as I understood it was to expand the Central library, bring in Learning Zones ... with fewer books and more computers and that essential aid to learning, a modern ambience (think how well Oxbridge would do with a modern ambience!). The result is that Hull is not the worst place in the country for literacy problems; no, no ... it's just the eleventh worst place.

The Northern Library, as it was known, was built in 1895 to the standard pattern of public libraries back in the day. It is now seems to be a Grade 2 listed empty place that is clearly no longer underperforming ...

Mea maxima culpa

                 
                           "The Philistines were Wrong: Culture can bring a city back to life"
                                                                                       Richard Morrison, The Times

I noticed how vibrant Whitefriargate had become as I wandered down there on a rainy day last week. It was like the old times, only seen in those black and white films of smiling folk in fifties coats and suits all wearing hats trying not to look at the camera but somehow failing ... and the sun always shining. The sound of thousands of happy shoppers thronging the revitalised stores and small shops near deafened me and I had to struggle through the milling crowds as they ambled slowly along to the rattle of filling tills ... I was wrong, I thought, I lacked faith, with a little bit of imagination, Culture really can bring a city back to life.

And this, this is just fake news, I wouldn't pay it any mind.

Knife Angel

Freshly arrived in town today, the Knife Angel or National Monument Against Violence and Aggression, made from thousands of knives surrendered to police forces across the country (“Save a Life, Surrender Your Knife” ) , is a memorial to those whose lives have been affected by knife crime.

The statue will be in Hull for a few weeks before going off on its Round Britain journey. There's a lot about how it was made and so on here.

 

Lots Of Love

Someone clearly needed to write a quick memo to remind themselves of the meaning of this ubiquitous acronym and I think we can admire the almost Chaucerian spelling. It may, for all we know, have been the former Prime Minister, Mr Cameron, who thought LOL meant Lots of Love, no seriously he did ...

May Day brings a new theme: "Laugh" to the City Daily Photo folk why not go on over there and crack your face...

Thirst quencher

It's been a bit of dry spell for this blog;  here's a little something to be going on with. It seems the new fashion is to disparage plastic bottles and the lovely sugary confections that they contain. Folk are having their colas, fruit drinks and lemonades taxed or replaced with vile artificially sweetened substitutes (all for their own good you understand, adult choice having been outsourced to  HMRC) and being led by the nose (and other sensitive parts) to drink water from their recycled plastic bottles. So in keeping with this nagging and nannying the local water company have splashed out on this fountain on King Edward Street and a couple of other places. Of course it cannot just be a simple drinking fountain it has to be an oasis with attendant sculptures (I believe that was the word used). It all brings to my mind a saying of my long departed mother: " Water only made one man and the wind blew him over" ...

A Pair of Glasses on a Bench

At some point last summer someone found that cheap reading glasses are cheap for a reason ... and this being the City of Culture instead of just binning them they neatly arranged the erstwhile spectacles in a respectful homage to Nguyen and Khayatan's famed installation at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. 

The Weekend in Black and White is here.

Space and Entity

I meant to post these last year but obviously didn't. They're part of that exhibition at the University which I've shown bits of before (1 2 3 ). The one above is entitled Space and not as I thought Halitosis, the lower one goes by the name of Entity and Margot is responsible for that photo. I had thought this exhibition would be over by now as the bumpf on it says it lasts until 31 march 2017 but I guess they got the year wrong and haven't noticed.
I have a couple more of these things and will dig them out and post them soonish meanwhile you will no doubt be pondering on how well they stimulate "thought and refection about the historic connection between Iceland and Hull"....

The play's the thing ..

I'd be a right old hypocrite if I could tell you anything about this play that was put on last year at the over endowed new Spring Street Theatre, sorry Hull Truck Theatre. Something to do with that old Hull meme of stopping the anointed king entering Hull (with its arsenal) at the start of that ridiculous bloody civil war. I did not go see, I know nothing about it; it may have been the dramatic non plus ultra de nos jours for all I know. I did however like the advert from a few months ago and now I have the opportunity to share it..

The City Daily Photo theme for March is "Play"

Tired all the time

This was one of the many very irritating slogans of last year's Kulturfest. You may have read or seen of further recent instalments of fun from this town regarding "gifts" from an itinerant self-promoting defacer of buildings. There's been a wonderful farce as folk twist their moral selves into defending criminal damage of  a protected building as art, the outrage as criminal daubing was itself daubed with a nice coat of paint and so on and so on. The whole thing brought to mind a medieval saintly apparition and how the church could profit from such nonsense ... But I'm too tired to go see the now perspex covered scribbling; you'll have to wait to see if I can be bothered.

The theme for the City Daily Photo is "Tired" so if you'll excuse me I'll go catch up on my sleep.

2-4 Charlotte Street

As any fool will tell you this is not Charlotte Street but George Street and any fool would be right. But what you see now ain't how it always was. Before the new North Bridge was built Charlotte Street meandered down to the river and on to the old bridge. But road straightening and modernisation meant Charlotte Street lost about half its length which then became part of  George Street. It's all water under the many bridges of Hull now, but if you've ever wondered (as I'm sure you do daily) why there's a Charlotte Street Mews behind George Street well now you know.

Now from what I can gather with a modest amount of searching one of these building was the home of Dr John Alderson and the other was the former YPI, a charity connected with Thomas Ferens (he of the Art Gallery). All that counts for little as both buildings are now split into apartments.

The Wicked Witch of the Wych

Here's another set I should have posted last year before the grand ennui set in. You might recall an old dead tree being reshaped in Pearson Park and you might also recall me saying there was another dead tree close by that might be available. Well most of last summer someone was busy with a grinder transforming that tree into a mix of faces and animals.

We happened to be passing this tree and saw the guy at work; he stopped and made some kind of hand gesture indicating "would I like to come up and have a closer look?" So after much struggling ( I have the acrobat skills of a hippopotamus ) I eventually got onto the scaffolding and took a few pictures.

"What did I think this was?" asks the guy, "A clown?" says I  having in mind Punch and Judy. He was not impressed, "No, it's a witch! And why would I put a witch here?" he asked (it was beginning to feel a bit like the Spanish Inquisition) I shrug, "The tree was a Wych Elm!" he says with a gleam in eye ...

Here's the nice guy with grinder and  the skill to make things appear out of the wood, his name is Julian Barnard and his work was for the Trustees of Pearson Park. He was given a brief of “poetic” (Philip Larkin's old lodgings are directly opposite and the toad figure is again another Larkin thing) The piece, which is now finished, has the title Whispering Sweet Nothings.

I'm not driving

Rolled up in town late on Friday afternoon about 4pm but could tell something was up as the bus diverted and left us to get off on a side street. The reason was obvious; each street in town was filled with traffic going absolutely nowhere at all. I wonder if you ever played that game as a child where you had to move from place to place without touching the ground? We called it Pirates, you might have called it something else. Anyhow you could play Pirates all round town on the roofs of cars stretching from the river to Beverley Road and all other points west and east. And the reason so many hundreds of vehicles decided to use the centre of town ... someone decided to play with the Myton Bridge and oops, oh dear ... it broke down. Hmmm ...

The picture was taken last year on Spring Bank, another notorious bottle neck. It's a stretch of about one thousand yards and my personal record for rush hour slowness on here is twenty five minutes; that's a little over 1 mile per hour! Even I can walk quicker than that.