Kaleidoscopic vacuity

Here from the height of last year's summer is the terminally dull and unoriginal mural that appeared on a gable end on Spring Bank. There are, in the wind, plans to turn this Victorian thoroughfare, a place of many cultures from the Middle East to eastern European, a place that has a vibrancy all of its own, not all together legal, not all together understood by those powers that want to be; in short a place that may not be to everyone's taste but certainly does not need any interfering busybody coming in to "improve" things... to turn this into a pitiful, pastiche of Tobermory or that unique neighbourhood in Bristol with painted houses. Yes, as you might have guessed, there is public money in the form of arts grants washing about and that means people will have the c(lapt)rap, sorry Art, thrust upon them volens nolens by talentless, parasitic oiks who, seemingly, could not get gainful employment other than through the public purse. It is called a community art project, but communities do not make art, communities make sewage and litter and children that need educating and patients in hospitals and so on but never art. Artists make art and on this street artists leave few traces.

I believe this is a spin off of the City of Culture, a so-called 'legacy event' ... a legacy of peeling fading paint and second grade 1960s art school doodles with vacuous, archaic, pseudo-socialist, concepts such as Unity. Unity of what? With what? For what? Pshaw! Unity, that fabled imaginary strength of the multitudinous and disparate working classes, is much like God and religion; what little there was of it died and fell apart a long time ago and is not much missed.

Je ne regertte riene

This wonderfully misspelt shop on Spring Bank is no longer trading, cannot imagine why ...

The Bike Shop, Spring Bank

Cliff Pratt's have been selling bikes on Spring Bank for donkey's years. They claim to be Hull's leading cyclist specialist since 1934 and I'm not in a position to argue.

(Other cycle shops are available in Hull)

A lost necropolis

They say there is no returning from the grave but that does not stop me returning to Spring Bank Cemetery with a couple of shots of its leafy summer splendour and Victorian taphophilic excess.

The Weekend in Black and White is here.

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.

New uses and abuses

On Spring Bank, the former waiting room for hell has been transformed into an ice cream parlour. I appreciate the grey and red decor and am glad that a good use has been found for this building. 

I do however have a slight concern about what this sign could possibly mean ... surely not.

Edward Booth, fireman

On our way through Spring Bank cemetery yesterday I came across this unique memorial which I hadn't noticed before. I think I might have remembered a steam train on a gravestone. Anyhow the web is a wonderful place and after two  little clicks it provided me with this site which tells you all you need to know about the sad demise in 1906 of young Edward Booth, fireman, in a rail accident and the subsequent improvements in rail safety that followed. Thanks for this work must go to the Friends of Hull General Cemetery and to W.P. Everingham & Sons Ltd, a local firm of monumental masons.

Margot took the close up.

Young Crow

Margot took these a few years ago in Spring Bank cemetery..

Water Troubles

I took this from the bus on my way home thinking to post about the evils of fluoridation and Hull City Council's wish to override the wishes of the surrounding villages and pollute the water with toxic chemicals so that the ignorant, sugar loving children of the city of culture would have fewer dental fillings and extractions. I was going to mention how a certain councillor who has no qualifications in dental matters has popped up from under his slime covered stone to pontificate grandly on the 'benefits' of compulsory medication. I was going to drag in an allusion to ancient troubles going back to the late 14^th century between Cottingham and Hull regarding the water supply and how the gentlemen of Cottingham would put carrion in the dyke that carried water funnily enough along this very street, Spring Bank, and how they could only be calmed by an edict from Pope John XXI ... I was going to do all this then I saw that the Council had put the plans on hold because they don't have the Do Re Mi as Woody Guthrie used to sing. So you see years of austerity have saved me the bother of writing all that and you the trouble of reading it.

I note that this nursery on Spring Bank is taking in babies aged six weeks! I mean six weeks old, at that age you could put them in your handbag (with handles or not) and go to work ...

O what made fatuous sunbeams toil ...

 ...To break earth's sleep at all?


The weekend in Black and White is here.

Final resting place

Usually fly tippers choose a secluded spot, a back alley or a country lane say. The depositors of this unwanted bed chose the entrance to Spring Bank cemetery on one of the busiest roads in town. Is rubbish dumping at long last coming out of the closet and into the mainstream?

Don't look down

So we're waiting on a bus on Spring Bank and Margot starts taking pictures of the trash that abounds in those parts. "What do you want to do that for?" says I. "No reason," says herself "but I bet it ends up in your blog one day"  ... Hmmm

The uplifting theme for the start of July is 'Look Down'.

Eleanor Crosses

Spring Bank cemetery has two of these Gothic iron Eleanor Cross style monuments. They are nearly identical. The left hand one is a listed monument  and both were repaired in the mid 1990's when a newspaper from 1868 was found in one of them. Originally they would have had some glazing and a funerary urn positioned within. Of course when new there were no trees and the place would have been kept clear and well maintained.

Grave offerings

It seems are the days of just leaving a bunch of flowers by the gravestone are long gone ...

Weeping Ash

Fraxinus excelsior (Pendula)

Coming up to June and every other tree and bush has been busy getting out the greenery whilst the ash seems to be still asleep with barely a bud showing. This fine specimen is on the corner of Spring Bank west and Chanterlands Avenue, in the cemetery as you can see.

The weekend in black and white is here.

Three fountains and a thingy

I've shown this installation outside Britannia House (the dole office) on Spring Bank before but that was taken from a bus and you don't really get the full sheer tackiness of it from that post. The three hemispheres are little trickling fountains; so far so meh. But what is that naff blue and white column? What is it supposed to be?

When new the idea of adding washing up liquid to the fountains appealed to certain elements but even that minor act of rebellion seems to have died away. Maybe it's so stupid no-one can be bothered to vandalise it.

The Polar Bear

The Polar Bear on Spring Bank has gotten itself a pretty new sign, well it's new to me. The place seems to have the decorators in at the moment so maybe it'll reopen soon.

The weekend in black and white is here.

Inappropriate to say the least

Bene qui latuit bene vixit.

So you spend a bit of money buying a lease on a quiet little plot in the General Cemetery, you lay out your dead in simple plain graves with no ostentation and there you might think you'll lie, without attracting much attention, in perpetuity or at least for the 999 years of your lease. But you had not reckoned with idiots (no better word, well there is but this is a family friendly site) plonking ten foot high signs that are just an insult, a desecration if you would, of the whole ethos of the place. No doubt it'll have something to do with the pestilence that goes by the name of 'Culture' and no doubt a grant will have been obtained to create this vandalism.

I don't know who is responsible for this and I can find no record of any planning permission being sought or granted so it's all a bit of a mystery.

Funerary Angel

It's been a while since I posted anything for the taphophiles amongst you. Here is the final resting place of one William Henry Smith who died in 1900 aged 48. This angel in Spring Bank General Cemetery has featured before a few years ago in a rear view here.

The weekend in black and white is here.

Road Works

For the past few months the orange bollards and safety fencing have been up at one of the busiest junctions in town where Beverley Road and Spring Bank meet Ferensway and Freetown Way. The plan is to widen the junction, renew the traffic lights and make bigger islands for pedestrians to cross over. They'll also throw in some so-called pedestrians light controlled push buttons but as these won't actually do anything until the traffic has been stopped by the traffic lights they are really just for show. As with all road works in this town delays are inevitable; last Thursday, for example, I was on the bus into town and got caught in a jam so slow that we made 50 whole yards in ten minutes. In the end I got off and walked. (If you zoom in real close to the centre of the picture my bus is the red and cream one still stuck on Beverley Road ten minutes after I got off it!) The rumour is that this work will be completed ahead of schedule, that'll be a relief and we'll be back to the natural background rate of delays. I expect, though, that the junction will look pretty much the same as it did before which is to say not very pretty at all..