What a performance!

As well as the morris dancers there were a few others putting on a show on Saturday afternoon. The Elvis look-alikey was, well I won't say good because he wasn't terribly, more persistent. He did put it out on a grand scale singing along to backing tracks complete with all the Elvis pelvic manoeuvres for well over an hour and a half to my knowledge. It was hard not to laugh ...

And not to be out done just along the street was this colourful display of South American (Peruvian?) native costume. Playing the pan pipes, of course, and again to backing tracks. I'll let you have a guess at what the tune was ... yes, yes, it was El Condor Pasa! ( well it just had to be! ).

Been there for years ...

Another one of those "been there for years" shops non è più. This one on Holderness Road. Never mind we can always order a yard brush on line (free delivery!) and get DIY advice from You Tube. I mean, shops, who needs 'em?

You are here

If by some misfortune you find yourself at the wrong end of Whitefriargate and feel a bit weary and lost then this helpful tourist map on the old Britannia Building Society will set you straight. It shows some of the notable landmarks and surprisingly the casino on George Street who presumably are sponsoring this thing. It occurred to me that  about 80-90% of the whole of this blog can be positioned on that small map. I must get out more.

One year later and ... what?

Anniversaries come round so quickly these days, I must be getting old. Can it be a year since we strolled down to the polling station and made a mess of the world by voting to leave the EU? With the shenanigans in Brussels and Downing Street, the departure of one prime Minister, the humiliation of a second,  and the decline of the seemingly invincible Tory hegemony into a rudderless collection of loons and fools kept in office if at all by the even more bizarre (if that were possible) Democratic Unionist Party the year since the utterly unnecessary Brexit vote has been entertaining if completely unproductive with regards to leaving the EU. The UK Government hasn't got a clue what it wants to do (if it has it hasn't told anyone) or how to go about getting it and neither does it have the power at home to come to a decision on hard or soft Brexit or anything in between really. We shall see if the Queen's Speech gets past the Commons; if not then who knows what will happen. Another election or a minority Labour Government led by a man who was described as unelectable by the vast majority of his own MPs only last year. Add to all this events such as terrorist attacks and the appalling loss of life in a fire in a London tower block and it's clearly going to be a long hot summer for whoever is in charge which is as it should be.

Are you aware of Hull?

Does a creeping, cold sensation grab you by the sensitive parts as you gradually realise that you are being seized with the gruesome realisation that you are 'aware of Hull: UK City of Culture'? Fear not; you are not alone. According to the tiny Leader, some 53% of people have struggled to cope with this awareness problem, with even more suffering in the badlands of the "North". There is only one cure but it is drastic and may be fatal. Go, get you to the godforsaken hole and disabuse yourself of all that nonsense, once and for all. Then let us never mention it again...

Do as the Doukhobors Do ...

If you wanted to take off all your clothes, paint yourself tourquoise and strut around Queen's Gardens in the name of 'culture' then you should have gotten your applications in by yesterday. Mr Tunick may be an "internationally renowned New York based artist" (many dispute this) but his repetitious displays of flesh are tedious in the extreme. (Oh look there's another pile of boobs and bottoms neatly arranged on the sidewalk, bridge, city hall, park, mountainside, glacier ... you name it, he's done it) Thankfully I'm not in charge of the Ferens Trust and I don't have to justify spending (no doubt large) sums of money on commissioning this kind of non-Art sensationalist event that is otherwise known as boring crap.

Chop it up for firewood

They say planting a tree is a gift to the future well I think the time has come for us to enjoy what this gift has to offer by way of heat and light. This tree on Nelson Street has clearly not been alive for quite a while but, as ever, there's been no hurry to remove it possibly because this is a conservation area where you can't blow your nose without prior permission from the Council. Perhaps they are deciding what suitable gift to make for posterity ...

Temporary Closure

while I take a short break from the hectic life of a Hull and Hereabouts' snufflehound and take that big old black dog out back and well .... laters.

Contempt, who me?

A little bit of Humber Street

I'm pondering whether or not I hold the city of Hull in contempt, an odd thing to do on a Friday evening but there you go. Someone in response to a comment I made to a piece in the Guardian newspaper remarked that I held the city in contempt. I don't where he got this idea. I confess to being sceptical, utterly unconvinced by any of the gushing praises currently being heaped upon the place, I'm frankly amazed that people put up with the ridiculously poor service from the Council and its, at times, idiotic staff. The schools, the roads, housing, health provision and so on all these things are far from good. Is pointing this out an act of contempt? I could, of course, say that the place was one big gloriously happy family, I could do that but, frankly, I'm not good at fiction.

The Weekend in Black and White is here.
And Weekend Reflections are here.