Winter Trees

In this bleak midwinter rain has fallen, rain on rain ... and so Snuff Mill Lane fields are nicely awash and home to a few wary gulls and it's all a bit otherworldly.

I know it's hard to believe but I have seen a farmer try to grow a crop in these fields a few years ago. Every now and then it gets ploughed, harrowed and sown with barley or some such; I'm not qualified to say what sort of yields comes out of here but it can't be good since it's been fallow for a few years now. I think this is protected land, as in the Council's 'local plan' does not have in its sights, and it's also a site of scientific interest (but that means diddly-squat if developer wants it).

I've mentioned before that it's a great place for seeing the things of nature with birds, roe deer, weasels and so on. Best thing I saw this year was a buzzard being attacked by some crows. I took a not very good picture ...

Verdant, crumbling and in need of repair

Queen's Gardens pond looking really quite nice in the early September sunshine, almost picture postcard perfect, the only fly in the ointment being the big white streak of stupid imposed on the good folk of this town by the tasteless town council. Just don't look behind you as the walls are fenced off (well supposedly fenced off) and in danger of collapse and officially in need of urgent repair.

A story for another day

You'll be aware from a casual reading of this blog that the town is undergoing a make-over, a renovation , a transformation from ugly duckling to, well, we'd better wait and see. A large wodge of cash has been found to pay for all this. Included in the first stage plans was a facelift for Queen's Gardens which involved taking the place back to its 1950's redesign (down come those trees), a central performance stage (for what?), a removable stage over the above pond (again why two stages?) and more space to play 'sport' (just plain why?) and a memorial to some guitarist, Mick Ronson (who he?), from the 1970's whose appeal was and remains limited in the extreme. All of these bizarre ideas are, thankfully, now on hold, and officially won't start until 2018; that is to say after the year of the City of Culture (if ever). I don't know the reason for the delay but the suspicion that the Council bit off more than it could chew seems a reasonable one.

In the meanwhile, this place, which on a pleasant day should be an enjoyable peaceful haven in the centre of town, is suffering from neglect and decay by contractual cock-up. Being a park you'd think it would be looked after by the park services company, wouldn't you? Well the contract with that company mysteriously does not cover Queen's Gardens, so it is left to the overstretched street cleaners (or possibly the Council secretaries, dog wardens or whoever is free that day) to maintain this place and that is failing. The paths are cracked, litter is accumulating and anti-social elements, drunks and druggies, roam the place making it not as welcoming as it should be. The Council continues with its unrealistic, unnecessary pipe-dreams while the place is falling apart around it; nothing new there then.

More tales of woe from this lovely place tomorrow.

Weekend reflections are here.

Driffield Keld Pond

When I posted about this little spot before I somehow forgot to show the pond, well here it is.

Weekend reflections should be here.

Queen's Gardens: Back to the Future

I mentioned a few days ago that the collective insanity known as Hull City Council had proposed a series of makeovers for the city centre, at the time I said that I thought they weren't too bad. Well I think I spoke in haste because on closer examination some of the proposals are borderline bonkers. Take, for example, the proposal to reinstate Queen's Gardens as it was planned in the 1920's. Let's be clear this would be an act of pure vandalism. Queen's Gardens is now a place of mature trees and tranquil ponds with pleasing fountains. In the 30's the place looked like a desert with immature trees, boring planted borders and no ponds (see here and here). Is the Council really proposing to remove mature trees and fill in ponds? To top off this lunacy there's the creamy delish proposal to build a retractable stage over the duck pond at the far end, this is to stage 'events' and lies alongside yet another proposed stage to commemorate Mick Ronson, a guitarist with the eminently forgettable Spiders from Mars or so I'm told (this presumably would stage non-events). Very 1920's I must say! So there you have it, vandalism mixed with tawdry tackiness, about par for HCC.

Queen's Gardens is one of the few places in Hull that doesn't need fixing, so kindly leave it alone.

The Weekend in Black and White is here.
Weekend Reflections can be found here.