The Lamp Shop, King's Lynn

Railway Road in King's Lynn does not as you might think head to the railway, no, it runs teasingly close but keeps away from the station and the tracks. Someone will know why it's called Railway Road but that should not detain us. On a corner of said road, with Portland Street (which FYI does run to the station), sits a little shop that sells lighting stuff and, at night , is all lit up like someone else is paying the bill. Naturally your fearless correspondent took a few pictures for the record.

 

Customs House, King's Lynn

Sometimes I think places try too hard to get the people in; take this light show on the Customs House for example. Is it really necessary? Does it add anything to the place? I'm not convinced. Oh it's an entertaining five minutes or so and, yes, I took far too many pictures but I feel it somehow trivializes the architecture. Simple lighting would satisfy me. There's four of these shows on in the town apparently but when we were there this was the only one actually working. Does a 900 hundred year church like St Margaret's need decorating by projected illuminations to please tourists? Maybe it does these days I don't know.

Weekend Reflections are here.

Never Fails to Disappoint

I knew that the light show in town was going to be a dull affair, I'd read what folk had said about it on social media. Still nothing could quite have prepared me for how truly insipid and utterly pointless the installation called Navigate would be. This was being put on by the Council to mark the start of the Hull town council's latest £24million trick to pull in punters by calling itself Yorkshire's Maritime City, frankly they need not have bothered... and if this is a measure of what we can expect then they should give up now and go lie down in a darkened room.

We'll start in Queen Victoria Square with something called Zenith, supposedly an "immersive sonic landscape of the sea". It was eight or so silly lights and some indistinct noise that might have been music or just random noises on a looped tape. It put me in mind of a dismal 1970's disco.

Next and not moving far at all is something called Meridian: four beams of light from the City hall. Wow! Just wow ... maybe a Gee! as well but mainly just wow ...

Oracle I posted before in its daytime slumber. It gets no better illuminated. It too had some rumbling noise to go with and the white light points to the direction of the wind. But as the Bard sang so many years ago you don't need a weatherman to know which way the money goes  ...

The crowning  inanity award has to go to this automated drum machine outside Holy Trinity church, going by the name of Pendopo. I read that its metallic percussion was inspired by east Asian drums and not by the thought of easy money from a Council lacking two brain cells to rub together.

The most impressive light show, however,  was nothing to do with this tawdry pathetic nonsense; the church behind was all lit up in varying hues but hardly anyone paid it or Andrew Marvell any mind. I'd like to see those lights from inside the building, through those massive windows, now that might be worth the bus fare ...

                                                   

Still it didn't take more than ten minutes to see what little there was to see and the trip wasn't a totally wasted journey as I managed to do my shopping in Tescos and get the things we could only get from town.

`You'll want all day to-morrow, I suppose?'

`A poor excuse for picking a man's pocket every twenty-fifth of December!'

The fortnight of 'festive' indolence is under way. I recall, when I was a child getting on for sixty years ago, that grown ups would work all the way up to and including Xmas Eve have one or two days off and go back to work until New Year's Day which for some reason found the grown ups sore of head and full of remorse... Then one year, in the 70s, the holiday was at a weekend so it was thought right, fitting and proper to take the Monday off as well, to make up for not having had a day off ... and so the nonsense grew until Xmas Day met and married New Year's Day and gave birth to a tawdry litter of fourteen days of pap and pabulum. Nowadays many just jack it all in and have a two week end-of-year break up (like they were school children again) ...  it's an imposed commercialized pseudo-pagan (well the Xians nicked it from the pagans to begin with) drink fueled marking of the passing seasons in a bland debt-ridden, double-glazed, air-conditioned world where seasons have absolutely no meaning any more.
I blame the Victorians, they invented the modern Xmas with their idiotic Xmas trees (let's put lit candles on a tree and keep it indoors near an open coal fire, seems like a good idea!) and cards with impossible snowy scenes (it rarely snows in this country, truth be told, and, in any case, snow is just the absolute pits!) and the roast bird and the presents and the family get together (and the inevitable fall out ...  If only "one's own kin and kith were more fun to be with...", so true Mr Nash, so true...) A particular villain in all this indulgent, seasonal frippery is, of course, Charles (Gawd bless us, every one!) Dickens with his nauseating sentimental tripe, I hope his chestnuts are roasting on an open fire, eternally ...   Bah!

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.

The Feel Good Legacy

You can if you like just look at the picture of the pretty lights on Ferensway and move on. I'm going to prattle on about the City of Culture and stuff like that so if that bores you terminally press on to better things ...

Just the other day there were reports on local TV and in the local paper of the final evaluation report by the University of Hull on the year 2017 and the City of Culture and what , if any, its long lasting benefits might be. I've tried to find a copy online but failed so what I'm commenting on is second hand, might not be accurate, indeed may be a pack of stale tosh but that never stopped me before so here goes. 

The picture I get is one of desperation. For example nearly 80% of the "visitors" to "events" in 2017 came from either Hull or the East Riding neighbourhood, of the other 20% I bet a fair few came from Lincolnshire just across the Humber Bridge. Less than 1% of visitors were from abroad. It seems that, despite being the "national" UK City of Culture, they now claim that the year of culture was to be a local thing, aimed at Hull folk and they never intended to be aiming to attract a foreign (or indeed national) audience, well that was at least one measurable success they had. This was local culture for local people we now hear ... well more on this below.

It's claimed that five million people came to Hull to see the "events" but this figure cannot be anything but a guesstimate (or, as I call it, an outright lie): I came to Hull several times during the year, I "saw" some of the "events" but I was there to do my shopping and would have been there in any case much like many of the so-called "visitors" from Hull and hereabouts. I can only assume I was counted several times as a "visitor". It was not so much a case of "Let's go see the big thing in Queen Victoria Square" as "Oh look there's a big effing big thing standing in my way, and what the F*** is it doing there?". Surely passive (or irate) "visitors" like this cannot count, indeed should be counted as a negative visitor ... and anecdotally I should add I did not notice more folk in town during the year. I admit, though, I was asked once by a tourist where Humber Dock was ...

Still and yet there's the glorious legacy, as they like to call it. It seems those who volunteered to be part of the show did, on the whole, think it was positive for them. How nice for them I'm sure; but then these were only a few, a very few out of the many thousands who live in the place. Young people apparently were not too impressed by it all with mainly 50+ year olds attending most of the offerings. Also youngsters at school apparently missed out and continue to miss out due to curriculum requirements (shame, indeed, that their educational needs should take priority over this cultural hogwash).

Surely all that money has left something behind, something tangible ... (I love that word! tangible!) Well it seems there was a 1% increase in tourist spending in 2018 over 2017 but then inflation was ~2.5% so that actually is a decrease in real terms ... There have been some hundreds of millions of public and private investment spent in the town in the past six years but the best the report can say is this could "at least be partly attributed to the UK City of Culture" or maybe it is partly due to this splendid blog or who knows? ... like I say : desperate.

Now, look around the town: has it got better? Are the shops full of wealthy customers eager to keep the local economy thriving? Hardly,  they're shopping online or going out of town to Sheffield or York. The photo shows the old House of Fraser shop, Binns, as I call it draped with lights but it shut back in summer (I'm told it will open as an "artisan food hall" whatever that is ...) and there are dozens more shops like this some empty for many years.
There is apparently a legacy organisation, with the absolutely ridiculous title of Absolutely Cultured ("core purpose is to put culture and creativity at the heart of people’s lives to drive Hull’s ambition and aspirations.")  that is described as "vague in terms of resources, responsibilities and modalities of implementation." which is I take to be a polite way of saying they haven't got a clue ... I can say I've heard of it but cannot see anything that it has actually done and its website hardly inspires.

Ah but culture is not to be measured in such crude financial ways, the benefits to the people of Hull are intangible, some might say. They get a boost somehow from all this publicity, they get to feel good, to have pride in their city. Hmm well in 2018 4% fewer Hull folk felt better about Hull than in 2017. I guess those who took the £32 million or so that was raised, the out-of-town installation makers, the out-of-town providers of torch lit parades (Continentals do such a good torch lit parade, don't you find?), the strange out-of-town American guy who took photos of hundreds of naked folk on the streets of the town (for a big fat fee, of course), the gangly out-of-town oik who was in charge and the out-of-town journalist whose sole qualification seemed to be that she went to Hull University once and was second in charge (for oh so reasonable a fee) I bet all these and so many more out-of-townies who selflessly had to force their snouts into the trough (again the fees were reasonable)  are indeed feeling a lot happier about Hull.
Let us, therefore, seek the cultural legacy elsewhere since it clearly ain't here, mate.

"Looks like an accident in the cutlery drawer"

Over last weekend and to the annoyance of many gridlocked motorists Castle Street was blocked off and the new footbridge (which we last saw parked up in preparation in a car park a few weeks ago) was shuffled into position in a faultless manner and much quicker than expected. The road was reopened fifteen hours earlier than forecast to much rejoicing. The bridge is only the small matter of thirty odd years late (who's counting?) ... and it won't be fit for pedestrians until spring.

The title was Margot's comment upon first seeing this. "Like the dish ran away with the spoon?" said I. Still you don't have to look at it when you're on it.

The weekend in Black and White is here.

The Fisher Fleet

The Fisher Fleet just after sunset with a bit of a tide to reflect the lights and ghostly almost invisible ducks quacking to themselves is an experience not to be missed. Sure it involves a wee bit of trespass on port authority land but no one will mind too much and even if  they do they can only politely advise you to leave.

Folk have been setting off from here to scour the Wash and North Sea for fish and such like for centuries, these days it's mainly shrimps that provide a living for dozens in King's Lynn.

The Fleet now lies strictly controlled with embankments between two docks and surrounded only by light industry. A painting from the 19th century shows a more rustic, even bucolic, place with folk having a nice family day out by the banks of the stream. I can't see that happening these days. I found a couple of other old paintings here.

Margot Juby took this

Just ignore this sign ...

MargotJuby  took this

And if you are a tad confused over the word fleet, here it means a creek not a collection of boats. In fact the Fisher Fleet is the mouth of the Gaywood river which flows with no great urgency for a few miles and empties into the Great Ouse here. So there you go, it's clear as mud ... There are other 'fleets' in and around Lynn, Millfleet and the Purfleet spring to mind.

Flying the black flag of himself.

A town crow, blacker than ever, treats the Saturday afternoon shoppers and carousers with utter disdain before swooping down on a discarded morsel.

The Christmas Crush

While I was posting about King's Lynn the so-called festive season came and went and New Year too; seems so long ago now. Anyhoo ... here's Whitefriargate, erstwhile shopping hub of the city of culture and as you can see you could hardly move for the pressing throng all desperately getting their seasonal shopping ... 

I know I've posted many a time and oft about the decline of this street and was going to be ironic (not to say sarcastic) about the crowds down there but today I heard news that the big store on the left , Marks and Spencer, just about the only big shop left down here, announced plans for closure. It doesn't do to speak ill of the dead ... so let's just  move on, nothing to see here.

All the fun of the Fair ...

Early October in this town can mean only one thing: Hull Fair. Yes it's that time of year again when the air is filled with the distant rumble of machinery, extremely loud music and the faint aroma of burnt cow meat and onions wafts across from Walton Street. So here's a small selection of shots from the other night. I seem to have left my colours at home so you'll have to use your imagination...

Trees at night

The new trees and seats on Jameson Street have ground level lighting so you don't bump into them in the dark... did you know that some trees at night let themselves droop by up to four inches? And furthermore there are people being paid a good salary to find out more about this valuable titbit of information.

The ever fascinating and never drooping Weekend in Black and White is here.

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 Quality Street Lights

So here's some old flats on Porter Street all lit up as an arts project called "I Wish To Communicate With You" for some reason that escapes me. Puts me in mind of those coloured cellophane wrappers that came (probably still do for all I know) with Quality Street chocolates. Obviously it's all to do with that damn culture thing. The pictures I've seen of it, including this one, really don't do it any justice, it's much more impressive in real life, though hardly a stunningly original piece.

The Alley

I showed the pleasures of the far end of this delightful place a while back (OK five years ago, who's counting?). It looked like this. I don't think it'll have changed much since then.

I suppose in the interests of fairness, filling in space and finding something to say when completely out of ideas that the building on the right is reckoned to be one of the most haunted buildings in Hull if not in the whole country. The local rag regularly runs pieces (here's one) on alleged paranormal happenings, there is apparently an evil force lurking within. Even the police have been called out, I bet they loved that. I guess even Hull has its dull news days (no, no it does, rarely, I admit, but it can be dull in Hull) so these fantastical reports should come as no real surprise. If I was to tell you that you can pay to spend the night there and be scared out of your wits you might think some sort of scam was being played. I couldn't possibly comment.

Cottingham lights up again

Thanks to the efforts of volunteers and sponsorship from local shops Cottingham puts on a decent display of seasonal lights considering it's only a village (albeit the biggest in England). It almost rivals Blackpool ... almost.

As the evening sky grew dark

There you go; tree, lights and an illuminated fountain. Who says I don't do Xmas?

Falling haloes, whips and other seasonal failings

It's that time of year for silly window displays. Here we have some seemingly drunken winking mannequins tottering over to starboard with haloes at what can only be called a jaunty angle. If the intent was to say that angels get their kit at this shop I think it merits a glorious fail.

A few doors down we have a mannequin with a whip for no discernible reason. Maybe for some festive flagellation; who knows. Maybe whipping up trade ... any way another fail I think.

And speaking of failure these shops are on Whitefriargate which, in the past, has had seasonal lighting that at least looked faintly impressive. This year there's a tawdry single string of lights. Pathetic really, maybe they shouldn't have bothered.

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.

These are local lights for local people

In a operation to delight the gloomy Grinch, Cottingham's seasonal lights were switched on in strictest secrecy on the other day. The need for subterfuge was to stymie the urge of thousands of non-locals from, ermm, Hull and hereabouts to descend upon the village to enjoy an hour or so of entertainment before the lights went on. Such meetings of outsiders required, it was said, dozens of security attendants to marshall the throng, attendants that the Parish Council couldn't or, I'm guessing, wouldn't afford. Not that I care for Christmas and its attendant pap one way or the other but there was no need to marshall families with little children as they all behaved themselves impeccably. But there must be security or we shall most surely perish or be sued for a stubbed toe or some such. So there's no big switch on, no happy children,  no opportunity for a little bit of business, no party, bah!, humbug!