The Vacuous Nonsense

As part of the cultural bonanza currently being spread like field manure, hither and yon, several advertising hoardings around town are to be taken over for what is termed Art. Now I know art is not meant to mean anything so this is clearly qualifies as art, a house, a car like thing and Rudolph the reindeer suddenly discovering who has been sworn in as 45th president of the US of A. A whole year of this fap crap, oh how wonderful!

The Takeaway

This one is on Cottingham Road but it could be just about anywhere in town, they're ubiquitous and they all look pretty much the same.

The Laundry

You can't make an economy out of taking in each other's washing said somebody, (possibly Mark Twain it sounds like the sort thing he might come out with). Well maybe not an economy but certainly a thriving little business. The laundry at the end of the road seems to being doing nicely so much so it has recently expanded into the old Victoria Wines off licence next door. I've always called this place sounding like Netta but it occurs to me they might want to be more like Neater, who knows or even cares?

Sunset silhouette and shadows

Not much to say about these; they are what they are. Margot wants the world to know she took the top picture.

The simple way to get a parking ticket

It's that time of year gain when prospective debt slaves otherwise known as students turn up for the start of yet another academic year. And for their entertainment there are a few places of nocturnal delight (so they say) and they advertise their wares just outside the University entrance. Now the observant among you may have noticed the small sign informing that parking is limited to two hours and no return within three. Well the top two pictures I took yesterday and it seems these vans just stay there all day for the first week of term. Now that's just asking for trouble which duly arrived today in the form of a parking enforcement officer who probably couldn't believe his luck. Neither could I as happened to be passing on the bus this afternoon.

Hung with bloom along the bough

Yes it's the annual A E Housman memorial post ...

A movable feast

This Sunday being the first Sunday after the first full moon after the Spring equinox means that it is Easter Sunday, a day for eating chocolate eggs and chocolate rabbits and, well, chocolate basically. (I know it has some other significance but we'll leave the increasingly irrelevant, not to say bizarre, Christian sects and crazed neo-pagans to their own private grief. ) This, of course, means that today is Good Friday; a day for eating hot cross buns, traditionally just lightly toasted and eaten with a smidgeon of melting butter, very yummy. But what's all this then? Here, from a distant antipodean place (where no doubt be dragons), comes this meaty, cholesterol laden concoction; the hot cross burger! I love it! It offends on so many levels that I'm almost tempted to wander down the road and try one.

The bonny rowan tree

This year's bumper crop means the local blackbirds won't be going hungry for a few weeks.

Sunflowers

There's a guy down the road who grows these giant sunflowers every year and every year I mean to photograph them and every year forget. Well this year I was passing, camera in hand ....

"Some feel the rain. Others just get wet"

and some have enough sense to get out of the rain ...

Margot wishes it to be known that she took the top picture. There now you know.

The lightbulb joke

No you won't find me making derogatory remarks about council workers changing lightbulbs, no sir, not me. Cheap shot. Beneath me. I'll simply ask why they came round at about seven in the evening to do this job, surely not on overtime by any chance ... Anyhow banished now are the orange glow neon lights of my lifetime, replaced by moonlight-white light emitting diode thingies that save electricity and leave drive ways unlit and gloomy. Still the stars shine brighter, there's lots of them, did you know?

And while on the subject is it lightbulb or light bulb? 

OK so you want lightbulb jokes, go knock yourself out here. 

It takes two people to make this blog post. Margot to take the photo and an idiot to write this drivel.

Gardener's Arms

With the University just a short walk down the road this place is very much a favourite with the academic (and perhaps not so academic) crowd. It's usually full to the brim and overflowing at lunch times. Along with this sunny beer garden there's also pool tables and no fewer than 17 TVs (blimey!) all showing sport, sport and more sport!!! (how nice...)

A stylish exit

Living near the large cemetery and crematorium on Chanterlands Avenue means funeral cortèges are a common sight in these parts. Most involve black limousines but I've noticed a worrying trend lately for grey hearses (!); this will never do. A few, very few, involve the old style horse drawn hearse like this one that clip-clopped slowly along Cottingham Road yesterday; a fine if, as I suspect, expensive send off.

I'm just a walking the dog

'For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbors, and laugh at them in our turn?'

Jane Austen

I caught this couple walking their pet just across the road the other evening. For some reason I don't think this puppy will win any prizes at Crufts. 

It's only money

Cottingham Road, Hull

Let me see now it must be getting on for four years since some Council bods turned up and erected this erstwhile sign just down the road.Then it took a few weeks for them to get the electrics all wired in. Oh and a tree had to be trimmed back so it was visible from the road. And there it sat, a device intended no doubt to give useful information to passing travellers. Except that it didn't. It did nothing for months on end then it gave out some message reminding cyclists to take care on the roads; as if cyclists use the roads these days. Its biggest act was to warn of delays over the Olympic torch relay back in 2012. Then nothing again, until, in the middle of last year, it was just removed leaving the two supports. (I don't think it was stolen, though it is a possibility) Now all this might seem a tad uninteresting and indeed it is but consider the hours of consultations, the planning meetings, the costs of ordering the parts, installing, then the plans and discussions to remove it, then the cost of uninstalling. It must come to thousands of pounds just wasted. Then consider that this is just one item of madness among many in this small town and that the same stupidity goes on in one form or another in every town across not just this country but I'd guess in every town across the whole world ... I think I'll go back to bed.

A word from our sponsors

A couple of Government sponsored adverts have appeared on Cottingham Road, they accompany others on TV and in newspapers in a similar vein. It is a new development, in this country, that the Government should seek to advertise like this, trying to convince us that the country is doing "Great".(War time hype excepted) It comes on the back of other advertising campaigns about the Scottish referendum and the UK's role in Afghanistan. Overall Government advertising spending has risen by 22% this year. I cannot recall anything like this particular campaign in my lifetime, maybe the pathetic "I'm backing Britain" thing in the 60's comes close but it was nothing like as widespread as this. One might almost call it propaganda. Oh and there's an election coming up in May did I forget to mention that? I expect the Government will win that again ...

Who ate all the pies?

A new shop has opened just down the road, a pie shop. It's the latest in a spreading chain of pie shops; OK it's only the fourth but soon there'll be nothing but pie shops across the land and then we'll all be happy except for Simple Simon ...

Click and Collect

This appeared just down the road a few weeks ago. It's a safe for parcels to be dropped off and then you come along and collect at your convenience. With all this internet shopping and so forth I suppose it saves having to organise redelivery if you are out when the postman calls. I have to say I've not seen anyone actually use it as yet.

Les feuilles mortes

One of the downsides of a long avenue of trees is the great fall of leaves at this time of year. If, however, you still have to find the inner adult in yourself then a long path of crispy crunchy golden brown leaves is a joy forever, as you noisily slush you feet through them and kick them gleefully in the air to the obvious alarm of youths who have yet to find the simple pleasures of life.

Now to the tricky question which to prefer: Yves Montand's Les feuilles mortes or Piaf's Autumn Leaves? Personally, I think listening to Piaf sing in English is akin to hearing a cat bark mais à chacun son goût! Now I'm sure I'll get this mournful tune as an earworm, agh!

Can we have our bees back, please?

Someone armed with a stencil and a can of yellow paint is decorating the neighbourhood with these bees which is all well and good except there seems to more of these than the real buzzing little critters. OK maybe I exaggerate but I'm seeing far fewer than in past years. Anyhow there's a survey going on over at the Great British Bee Count to find out what's going on. Right I'll buzz off and leave you with that...