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.

You have arrived

Bespoke fencing

The weekend in black and white is here.

Libraries: who wants 'em?

So another month is upon us and as ever the first day is theme day at City Daily Photo and today's theme is "libraries". As I've been quiet for a while I thought I'd give you not one but two libraries. Above is Hull Central Library on Prospect Street/Albion Street. The original bit on the right was built ~1900 and there's been further additions along the way including the startlingly original shoebox on the side added in 1959. I used to live not too far from this place and used it quite a lot until the librarian decided it would be "helpful" to separate paperbacks from hardbacks and to develop a "classics" section (the definition of a classic was quite arbitrary and seemed to be a whim of the shelf stacker). The result was that you could end up trying to find a book in any of three places (Did Melvil Dewey die in vain?). The place seemed to encourage (or at least not stop) children running around playing; all very strange and not at all pleasant. So I'm afraid I gave up and haven't set foot in the place for years (If my sister, a former head librarian,  reads this no doubt she'll have a fit). But it seems I'm not alone in turning away from libraries the number of active borrowers is down by 5 million (!) from ten years ago. Now I know public spending cuts have closed branches and reduced book stocks but this decline seems to pre-date the austerity. We are told by the great and the good that libraries are essential but it seems Joe Public has better fish to fry or Pokémon to catch. If they carry on much longer not providing the sort of service people want then the future is indeed bleak for these noble institutions.

Below is the big boy in town; the Brynmor Jones at the University. I've shown it before but not lit up like this and also I've only just noticed the enormous comma thing in front. How did I miss that? Anyhow this place has coffee bars, an art gallery, WiFi up the ying yang and is open 24 hours a day. Maybe the public libraries could learn a lesson.

The Lighted Doorway

I took this back in December and somehow forgot about it. This is the Venn building at the University, in daylight it looks like this.

A pair of cranes

A pair of cranes has taken up residence behind the University's business studies building this Summer as yet more building work gets under way. Somehow the University has put together £25 million or so to build a new bio-medical facility complete with "a mock hospital ward, operating theatre, intensive care facilities and a large lecture theatre". Where will it all end? I should mention that £7 million of this has come from a donation by a very rich (I believe the term 'stinking rich' applies in this case) man who I shall not name here because, well, you can look him up if you're that bothered and he certainly doesn't need any more publicity.

Blue Violet

What else can an aspiring university do with a football pitch that was only used on Wednesdays and as a short cut to the exit other than build a set of halls of residence? There'll soon be 560 students living in accommodation that will be "among the best in the country". When you've spent £30 million you might expect it to a bit classy. I'm disappointed that the stunning pale violet colour is to be covered up with boring cladding and the whole thing will eventually look like this. Dull, almost boring

University rhubarb

Of course it's a damn hoarding, do you take us for fools! University spending millions on a big TV screen, no sorry, an "industry standard digital cinema"; yeah right! You can't buy culture? Pshaw! Culture is a whore, you have to haggle over the price.

Hull Entrance

It'll soon be that time of year when the youthful hordes descend again on the Cottingham Road campus to take up again their ascetic life of study. The Uni likes to boast how many of its graduates are in employment (95%, if I recall right) but will not disclose just what that employment is; be it a burger flipper or CEO of Tesco. This Summer's political hoopla means that it has now provided this poor nation with two deputy leaders of the Labour Party (keep that quiet). The University may have many secret drinking clubs with  bizarre toad rituals; I wouldn't know about that; this is not Oxford after all.... Anyway to any freshers reading this nonsense a warm welcome and remember to move down the bus when standing ...

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!

Two Characters in Search of an Exit

It's been a while since I posted these figures from outside the University's Business School. I see they are still attempting to understand their internal and external worlds. Eh bien, continuons... 

The Weekend in Black and White is here.

Building for books

The University's Brynmor Jones library is having a bit of work done to it so there's a less than academic air about the place at the moment. No doubt it'll all be settled by the end of next month when the little darlings return from their long vacations. I'm sure some of them will want to use this place, though I know of one student who got a First in English and only ever went in here once.

Seems to grown a new bit at the side and a new entrance if I'm not mistaken

Yet more trees

Working on the principle that you can't have too many trees here's some more of the mile long stretch of plane trees on Cottingham Road. This bunch are by the entrance to the University. Plane trees are credited with cleaning up air pollutants which get  trapped in the bark which is then shed on the ground. They also shed fine leaf hairs during the Summer which some (that would be me) find irritating causing sneezing.

J R R Tolkien: who he?

I've got to admit to a guilty secret; I've never read anything written by J R R Tolkien. Just about everyone I know has read LOTR and/or the Hobbit but somehow tales of hobbits, elves, Middle Earth and whatnot just left me cold. Anyhow I've heard he's big box-office these days with a new piece just released, needless to say I haven't seen the films either, I'm truly an uncultured yob. This new blue plaque was put in place on the Dennison Centre, Cottingham Road,  part of the University, after someone did a bit of detective work and figured that was the building where he convalesced. Quite how that is significant I can't imagine. No doubt this tenuous link will play part in the upcoming Year of Culture. Speaking of which there's a charming tale of Hull City football fans taunting visiting supporters with chant's of "You're only here for the culture". What a fine city!

Business School

This is one of three similar buildings surrounding a sunken lawn and rose garden that make up Hull University Business School. Originally these buildings were a teacher training college producing much needed educators to enlighten the youth of this country and lead them out of the pernicious evils of illiteracy and ignorance. Now it produces those jacks-of-all-trades-and-masters-of-none known as managers (see below). Still there's no shortage of applicants willing to cough £9,000 a year to "develop the capacity to recognise the connections that make a difference and think creatively to lead change in a responsible way, whatever their role on the global business stage". Well they talk a good talk I'll give them that.

As I was taking this shot a horny-handed son of toil who happened to be passing commented  "That'll make a pretty picture". I couldn't agree more.

manager n 1: An egotistic lemming, often with delusions of competency, able to leap small bandwagons with a single phrase. 2. One who occupies one’s time with meetings, seminars, and training, thereby keeping oneself out of the way of people who are actively trying to accomplish something. the revised devil's dictionary

Property game

I haven't played Monopoly for many years; the last time I did it caused rifts and rows (I can't help it if I'm lucky). Anyhow this student accommodation outfit seem to like the game so much they've decorated their front yard with little green houses, red hotels and other themed items. 

Venn Diagram

It is a little known fact that I used to be employed by Hull University (not for long, I hasten to add). In my day this was the Admin Building and the Biochemistry Department, where I was supposed to be working, was housed in what seemed to be the attic. Since then a fashion for naming buildings after famous people has overtaken the place and so this late 1920s building is named after Dr John Venn Sc.D, FRS, FSA and senior President of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge. Yes, he of the Venn diagram so beloved of modern logic. He was born in Hull in 1834 but spent precious little time here and died four years before Hull University was opened (lucky man).

Poster ponderings

You can tell the students are back by the lengthy queues for the bus and promos like this for a drinking establishment in town. Today the fresh faced first years all seemed to be carrying rolled up posters to stick on their walls with blu-tak, maybe another batch of tennis players with an itchy bum or perhaps Che Guevara least that's how it was in my day.

Wooden figures

I feel that if a piece of art requires a lengthy explanation of what the artist is trying to convey then somehow it's a large bit of a failure. And so I turn to this, a grouping  called Odyssey which is part of the University's Polish season. They're colourful and at 2.5m they're tall and monumental, they're crudely carved and there's 40 of them; but what's it all about? Hmm? Can you tell just by looking?

Well there's a large sign accompanying this 'work' which tells all and which I did photograph but which I'm not posting  because I'm wondering if anyone looking at this could possibly guess what the artist is doing here.

If you give up the artist's website has information on what his intentions were ..... Of course it was a visual arts prizewinner at the Brighton Festival in 2006.

Lecture Theatre

 

It's thirty or more years since I sat in one of these things, frantically taking notes while some lecturer prattled on about biochemical pathways or some such. It seemed interesting at the time but now I can't see what the attraction was. This nicely geometrical building squats at the back of Hull University.