It's a Cutlure thing

The streets of the toon were all kivvered aroon

Wi' stuff that was colourful, gowden and broon,

It was put there, of course, by a big Clydesdale horse!

And they called it manyura, manyura manyah!

                                                                                                        Matt McGinn

Readers of this delightful and informative journal will recall that the streets of Hull town centre were, at great expense both of money and inconvenience, recently changed from small paving bricks to slightly larger paving slabs. How proud those who consider such things were to have such a wonderful and attractive pavement for folk to walk about and browse the shopping "offer" of the town.  This however is the City of Cutlure (extended due to force majeure until May next year, Coventry due to be the next victim of this stupidity is scared the Covey will put folk off visiting, can't think why that might the case... Cutlure is staying) so it came as no great surprise to find the streets of the town had developed a nasty case of white-spot disease with Jameson Street, King Edward Street and good old Queen Vicky Square affected by a plague of painted dots. I guess that the council imagined that vast hordes would descend upon the place and, with the then Government policy of 2m distancing being the rule (sorry, guideline), folk would need help in judging how far apart to stand. How this was supposed to work I can't imagine: was there to be synchronised hopping from dot to dot? Would you wait until the next spot was clear or just proceed until you came up against an occupied place and stand, possibly on one leg and whistling Dixie, until you could go about your business. It was, of course, absurd, panic from the pretendy powers-that-be. No-one took a blind bit of notice of them and tell the truth there's hardly enough folk to make a crowd (two's company ...)  wandering around the  mainly closed shopping areas.

The fad for surgical masks and gloves, I believe the collective term for this is PPE, means that there is a novel (and completely unexpected, who'da thought ... tsk, tsk) litter problem. 

Sad soft fries

More of an update on the old Co-op/BHS mural. In early October the council announced that the whole lot was to be demolished, too much asbestos, too tricky to remove, too expensive, too dangerous, too, too, just too much everything...  You get the picture. Then later in the next month and a bit like the cavalry arriving in the last reel of an old-time movie, the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (quite a mouthful that) declared that the mosaic had Grade 2 listed protection as it has "special architectural and historic interest". This does not save the mural by itself. I think what this means is that the council now has to apply for special permission to knock the thing down and many a Grade 2 has been lost over the years. This late intervention, however, puts the game into extra time as they say ...

Finally and on a silly note I came upon a site that writes 'haikus' that depend on your GPS location or where ever you happen to want it to be. They're  actually just three line random bits of junk since a haiku must have 5,7,5 syllables, but still it managed to 'know' about the Co-op mural in some strange way that makes the internet a pleasing nightmare.

It's beginning to look ...

... a lot like mid-November.

I don't know which is the more disappointing, misleading and tawdry. The tinselly fake-snow eight week build up to that stupid whilom Christian, whilom Pagan end-of-year exercise in conspicuous consumption and phoney bonhomie or the tinselly, fake, five week exercise in mendacity, vilification and knavery known as the UK general election. This year's offerings from the town that has the culture are particularly unimpressive, the town tree I'm told is much taller than the usual twig but someone hadn't turned the lights on so I couldn't see or maybe the helpful Grinch had stolen them (Hooray!).

Indeed there seemed to be no festering, sorry, festive lights at all in Queen Vic Square (Hooray! Hooray!). The only seasonal thing of any note was a gaudy illuminated  ginger bread house affair on King Edward Street. Council must have spent all their pennies on that and couldn't afford any more (Hip, Hip, Hooray!)

This looks impressive but it's all an illusion like everything these days.

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" ...

Promis'd joy!

The best-laid schemes o' mice an' men

Gang aft agley,

An' lea'e us nought but grief an' pain,

For promis'd joy!

News came a few weeks back that the Council had bought this building and the empty Edwin Davis building behind it. There's a grand plan to demolish both and erect shops, some housing and that thing most vital for a civic entity, an ice rink (every town should have one), the tout ensemble to be known as Albion Square. As I understand it the demolition will go ahead speedily, leaving the mural and a demolition site, no doubt artfully boarded off. Then, well then, as I understand it, the Council go out with a begging bowl and seek a commercial partner to pay for the scheme. Of course if no such partner is forthcoming then there is, again as far as I know, no plan B and the people of Hull face having a scaffolded façade fronting a very pleasant demolition site for the foreseeable future. 

The boarding around the BHS building shows artist's impressions of the scheme, involving encasing the mosaic in a glass atrium. You may draw whatever inference you wish by my inclusion of the waste bin in this picture.

Small town blues

Hull City Council has had an epiphany; it has discovered what everyone else knew years ago that the town is a desert after 5pm. ( It's hardly the bustling metropolis before then but we'll keep with the story). So what does the Council do to address this? It creates something to look into it ... so a "special scrutiny review" has been set up to describe in full detail what we already know. But I can tell them now with no charge; Hull is not a city, cities never sleep; Hull is an over grown town that needs its eight hours ... so if you'll excuse me I'm off to my bed.

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! ).

Inconspicuous

The first day of September brings a new theme from City Daily Photo: Photographing the photographer. So knowing this I held these two back from that glorious Saturday in July when the streets of Hull were filled with wondrous traditional music and dancing. The lady with the camera is a member of the local morris team, Rackaback Morris who not only organised the other teams but put on a good show themselves. I see from their site there is to be a Hull Day of Dance on Saturday September 23^rd. Should be yet another fun day.

King Edward Street: a touch of the baroque

King Edward Street as the name might suggest was pushed through the chaos of late Victorian Hull around 1905. These are a few buildings that survive from that time still retaining what I've heard described as Edwardian baroque revival upper storeys. The ground floor styles are Elizabethan in need of reviving.

The cladding on the middle building is noted for containing volcanic bombs which sound exciting but actually look like fossilised dog droppings. This cladding dates back to when the building was a bank, before it was a bank it was a chapel; now it's community church and food bank

I've shown this before here but I think this is a better picture.

OK, Let's Play

Here's the newly paved over junction of Jameson Street and King Edward Street taken a few weeks ago when the the orange lurgy was still hanging about. I believe this dull, windswept stretch of reclaimed land goes by the equally dull, tediously sycophantic and boring old name of King Edward Square. Now really was there no body else they could honour? Somebody who actually did something more useful than screwing several dozen mistresses and siring a bunch of inbred twerps. Even Wilberforce Square would have been better, though not much. Anyhow as is the way of things in this place no empty space can be left unfilled and so the local rag has a tale of daffodils, fluttering and dancing in the breeze no doubt, filling this godforsaken wasteland with springtime icky yellowyness only (now you knew there had be an 'only' coming along)  these are made of Lego. Fake flowers ffs! But then that's culture for you, all phoney baloney from the get-go. And no I won't be taking pictures, not now ... not ever.

The lamps are going out

Actually these lights are being thrown out as part of the grand makeover. There was a small heap of them outside BHS. I hope they're going to be sold on and recycled somewhere.  Here's one in better times.

The weekend in black and white is here.

The Wrong Way

If it were done when 'tis done, then 'twere well. It were done quickly ...

I hope yesterday's post did not give the impression that the town is cleared of the orange menace. As you can see there's still plenty of it about. Work is still going on and won't be finished until March so I'm told. So if you're in town and want to get from A to B without going via C to Z, it's as well to check out the intricate maze of pathways that have been set out before us. The unwary may be taken several hundred yards out of their way. 

If you think there's an inordinate amount of this stuff going on in Hull it's because the Council claim to be trying to do three years work in one year.  We shall see if might not have been quicker to go slower.

Highway Maintenance

Those familiar with the current state of the town's highways may appreciate this unsubtle attempt at visual irony ...

Barrow boys get van

The guy with his strawberries "Punnets, two for a pound" has got himself a richly decorated van.

The Operation Was Successful, But the Patient Died ...

King Edward Street opened early 1900's to connect Prospect Street and Queen Victoria Square. When I came to this town in the early 80's it was a bustling place with plenty of traffic and pedestrians. But then traffic became a dirty word and so for the past twenty or so years one half of it has been bricked off in the grand pedestrianisation scheme. Now the Council are finishing off the job by paving over the rest of the street and the remainder of Jameson Street that had escaped that unpleasant fate. A slow, lingering death awaits the area. I think if the Council want to bring back life to this place they could do worse than follow the most successful shopping street in the country. Nobody would dream of bricking over Oxford Street,  would they?

Sudden Closure

There has been a rash of sudden closures of restaurants in the town centre. This one, a fish bar on King Edward Street, opened last October and closed in September. Starbucks and Pizza Hut have already left town. There's news today of yet another closure in the old town. The local rag carries tales of woe from restaurant owners demanding that 'something must be done' as if the public purse should remedy their poor business choices. At this rate of attrition there won't be any left by the year of Kultur.  But, you ask, don't the good folk of Hull like to dine out of an evening? Sure they do, just not in the moribund centre of town but in places such as Princes Avenue which is crammed with restaurants and bars. I think it's called market forces or some such ...

Soon the democrats will be democking

May 7 is the big day for the quinquennial exercise in so-called democratic accountability. But at least in this country you don't have to vote and it's really tempting not to bother since there isn't going to be a 'None of the above' option on the ballot paper. 

...quoniam ipsorum est regnum caelorum.

A new coffee hole on King Edward Street is a blessing, I was beginning to worry in case there weren't enough to satisfy the cravings of the poor in spirit. This one claims to be independent unlike the one next door. It has seating upstairs no doubt with the very Gods themselves. Oh and the view is as I posted just the other day. Heavenly, almost.

The weekend in black and white is sipping a latte over here.

Rule of three

King Edward Street, Hull

Empty, vacant and unoccupied.

Punnets, two for a pound!

"I love work,it fascinates me,I can sit and watch it for hours"

Jerome K. Jerome

For this month's City Daily Photo theme day of 'people in their workplace' I give you this slightly cheeky example of wardrobe malfunction known as Builder's Bum or Plumbers Butt or worse depending on low you wish to go ... best not eh!

They say the early bird catches the worm but if you want real cheap strawberries turn up late just as he's closing shop and desperate to get rid of 'em ....