Roundabouts but no swings

Quite the most pointless roundabout in town. Behind are the battery farms off Osborne Street where people are raised to become awesome citizens and quite a few of them are.

Colour coded demolition

Well there goes the Osborne Street multi-storey car kennel to make way for a newer brighter better one. Also revealed are the colour codes for each floor in case remembering first floor or second floor or whatever was too onerous a task for the poor drivers of this town

Demolished

It would be remiss of me to allow you to gain the impression that it is all abandonment and decay in the City of Culture, by no means is that the case, oh no sirree! Here the old ambulance station is  being gently pulled apart. The car park, too, is coming down if it doesn't fall down first. Roper Street, parts of Osborne Street  and much of Waterhouse Lane [1, 2, 3, 4, 5 ] are also if not already down then soon to be levelled. Since there was no plan to use these old buildings then by all means knock them down and build afresh. But what to build? The fallout from 2008 put an end to Princes Quay's planned expansion. So what to do? "Hmmm I know", says a bright spark at the Council (I'm in a generous mood, we all know there's very little brightness in that place), "let's borrow, oh I don't know, about £36 million and build an arena for "bands" to perform and businesses to hold conferences and such like, (other cities have them so why not Hull?) ... and lets put it where access will cause maximum disruption to traffic, and let's make it too small, and let's make look like a giant yellow slug erupting from the ground and let's force it through planning after it's been rejected and and and ... let's call it, oh I don't know, something like, erm, Hull Venue; how about that for an idea?" See I told you it's not at all doom and gloom.

These delightful images "borrowed" from the Hull Daily Mail.

Listed buildings and respectability

A long while ago I was upbraided for referring to Midland Street as being "seedy". Did I not know that respectable people lived there and that there were two listed buildings in the neighbourhood and no fewer than five churches? Well actually I did not know that (about the buildings and churches, that is, I am well aware that the area's reputation is wholly undeserved and only saints and God fearing folk live in these parts) nor, to be honest, did I care much. 

Anyhow to make some sort of belated amends here are the two listed buildings, the front one with the odd tower is Owbridge Court, built 1895 as a cough mixture factory making Owbridge's Lung Tonic (I kid you not), the building's other name is the Laboratory!. The tonic was a mixture of chloroform, honey and alcohol and, as it said on the bottle, it never fails; just don't give it to babes under six months of age! In the distance is Turner Court originally built as model dwellings for working people in the 1860's and now flats owned by the William Sutton Trust and home to some, no doubt, very respectable people.