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.

The sunlight on the garden

Struggled to find a title for this post. Thought of "all that glisters" la-di-da but I've used that already, or maybe 'patent leather shine' but, nah, that's a bit naff. Margot, she with the English degree, thought Louis MacNeice's

"The sunlight on the garden
Hardens and grows cold,
We cannot cage the minute
Within its nets of gold;
When all is told
We cannot beg for pardon.

Our freedom as free lances
Advances towards its end;
The earth compels, upon it
Sonnets and birds descend;
And soon, my friend,
We shall have no time for dances.

The sky was good for flying
Defying the church bells
And every evil iron
Siren and what it tells:
The earth compels,
We are dying, Egypt, dying

And not expecting pardon,
Hardened in heart anew,
But glad to have sat under
Thunder and rain with you,
And grateful too
For sunlight on the garden. "

might be useful. So, as this was a new one for me, why not ?..., well, blame her...

The good news from Victoria Pier is that the hole caused by the tidal surge two and a bit years ago has finally been patched up but ( & there's always a but) for some reason the area is still fenced off.

Weekend Reflections are here.

Flares and flags

This brought to mind memories of the physics lessons of my distant youth; the angle of incidence equals the angle of reflection or so they say. The thing in the middle is one of a pair rags on this pier; possible entrants in the most tattered flags in the world competition, and a truly heart-warming symbol of the state of this United Kingdom. Rule, Britannia!
 

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.

Angel wing

Oh dear. This poor swan has angel wing, a deformity of the last joint of the wing that causes feathers to stick out from the body instead of lying flat. From the little I've read about it, it's thought it could be caused by too much protein in the diet and this guy swimming in a pond near Driffield was very fond of the white bread being thrown to him by little children. So if you're tempted to feed the ducks and so on chuck them some seeds instead.  I've also read that the outlook for birds with this condition is bleak but either there's a lot of this about or this guy has been lurking around Driffield for at least five years since I took the picture below in 2010.

Weekend reflections are here.

Lake view

I've posted about East Park before so I've absolutely no excuse for doing it again ...

Weekend reflections are here

Simply Buses

I always strive, as you are aware, to be upbeat and positive in my postings about this fair town. So it gives me immense pleasure to inform you that half of Hull's buses, those blue ones run by Stagecoach, have undergone an overhaul. Not the actual buses themselves, no that would be too much, no the routes they run on. Routes have been combined, adjusted and played around with so that now there are just fifteen routes, numbered 1 to 16. For some reason there is no number 15. Mirabile dictu there's now even a service that runs from the west unto the east (and back again) and it runs right past my front door every ten minutes. The old buses were labeled Pronto now in a masterpiece of PR they are to be known as Simplibus. We tried out that new service on Monday and sure enough it went all the way across to Holderness Road; pretty straight forward except when the driver forgot the new route in town and took us on an impromptu tourist ride round the houses to get back on track. Still, early days ...

Weekend Reflections are here.

Penguin prison window

Anyhow here I am pointing the camera outside the biggest fish tank in the country (possibly in the world, who cares?) to capture these well known Hull landmarks in reflection. This place hires a man with a hawk to scare off the pigeons that have every right to be there (well just wait 'til the seagulls find out about that! That'll be one dead hawk!) while incarcerating penguins from the South Atlantic. What a bunch of humbugs!  Oh yeah this place has blocked my account on Twitter ... alors tant pis! Ou tant mieux!

Weekend reflections are here.

Blue barge

This old barge or lighter with the odd name of Poem 25 is a fixture in the old harbour of the river. I've shown it before here but that was before colour was invented.

Weekend Reflections are here

That place once again

I think they sell Apple computers ("More power behind every pixel" ??!!!) in this shop  but that doesn't stop there being a good reflection of the Maritime Museum.

Weekend Reflections are here.

Looks like the back end of a bus

This is not just any bus parked up outside City Hall, no this is a Beat the Street bus, a luxury coach for the entertainment industry complete with bunks, kitchens, every conceivable mod-con for the comfort and ease of the hard worked artistes. I think the artistes in question were a band known as Texas who come not from the USA but from Glasgow in the newly independent state of Bonnie Scotland.

For the union makes us strong

"People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices."

Adam Smith

Workers' unions, as we all know, are a Bad Thing, but associations of employers are a boon to the economy and strengthen trade and business and are therefore a Good Thing. Here on Queen Street the glowing future of the region is being forged by the great leaders of enterprise. Solidarity Forever!

Weekend Reflections are here.

Lightship reflection

For want of anything else to offer here's the old Spurn Lightship reflected in a solicitors window. Possibly the only thing they can't charge for...

Weekend Reflections are here.

"After you, Claude – no, After you Cecil"

I'm not sure that whoever designed the bus station, or Interchange as purists would have it, wasn't on some sort of sadism trip or just plain incompetent or maybe both. The place consists of a long line of bays, over 30 I think, from which depart buses laden with passengers and into which buses similarly arrive. Simple you might have thought except when the arriving buses meet the departing buses at the same time or even better when a load of buses all depart at the same time. There then takes place an elaborate slow motion dance of the omnibuses with the lower number bays giving way to the higher ones. It's just the sort of barmy, ill thought out cheap-o design we've come to expect around here. It matches the similarly badly designed passenger waiting side of the shop which I moaned about before here. Still it does give time to take a few photos while we wait our opportunity to go home at long last.

The great omnibus Excuse Me

Weekend reflections are here.

New plans for an old site

Over on North Church Side plans are afoot for a boutique hotel no less, in or on the site of these fairly plain shop units. A local property developer by the name of Allenby (such a fine name, if I may say so myself!) wants to make 30 or so short stay apartments. 

As the top picture indicates this development to this quiet backwater comes with close up views of Holy Trinity's fine medieval brickwork.

Weekend reflections are here.

Some Silly Billyness

For today's offering I present our great deliverer in a reflection of the door way of the King Billy pub on Market Place. I read recently that King William was the very man who introduced this country to gin ("England may I introduce to Gin, Gin meet merry old England; I'm sure you'll get along famously!" and so it came to pass.), well he can't have been all bad.

À la recherche du temps perdu or whatever

For no particular reason here is the Anlaby Road end of Midland Street from the station car park. The place hasn't changed much, if at all, in the time I've known it. Joynson's have been in that building since the 1890's selling kitchen equipment. I have to admit to a certain, possibly irrational, disliking of this street, indeed in an another post I called it seedy. When I first came to this town I was looking for digs and a B&B was recommended to me on Midland Street. I don't think I'd ever seen a more run down Dickensian flea-pit in all my then young life. It's not often I run away but that day I ran. Always a slight shudder when going past this place.

Weekend reflections are here.

Barmy Drain

When applying for planning permission to build anything new  nowadays you have to supply a flood risk assessment, a surveyor, at no small cost, looks at the plot and decides how likely it is to flood and what if anything should be taken into account when drawing up plans. Good job then that such niceties did not prevail in the middle ages else nothing would be standing in these parts. The whole Hull river valley until the middle ages used to be one big marshy malarial infested lake stretching up as far as Driffield with occasional interventions from the Humber to add to the gaiety of nations. But bit by bit and without any help from the Environment Agency river banks were raised and drains put in. The late 18^th and early 19^th century saw really large investment in drying out the land and bringing it into cultivation. And so here's the Barmston (Barmy) Drain as seen from Clough Road doing what it has been doing since the passage of the Beverley and Barmston Drainage Act of 1798 taking the wet stuff from East Yorkshire's marshy carrs and putting it into the river Hull in a neat controllable fashion. Despite the rubbish piling up on the banks these drains provide a rich habitat for wildlife though it has to be said I only saw two wrens and a depressed looking duck while I was here.

I've posted about this waterway before here.
If you are into the history of drainage (and be honest who isn't?) here's an old pamphlet about draining the Hull Valley.
The weekend in black and white lurks here.
And weekend reflections are hiding here.

The round end

I was going to title this "the Stern of the Spurn" but thought better of it. It is, as I'm sure you knew, the back end of the Spurn lightship moored in the marina and given a slight green tint juste pour rire.

Weekend reflections are here.

The Cecil

I can't believe I haven't posted this former cinema before now. It stands on the corner of Ferensway and Anlaby Road. The Cecil was opened in 1955 with a screening of the Seven Year Itch. It has a rather dull looking exterior perhaps because the architects, local firm Gelder & Kitchen, were more noted for designing flour mills than cinemas.  This was where I saw the last film I paid to go watch, (Splash, since you ask, with Daryl Hannah as a mermaid, yeah I know, pathetic!) and as I'm told it closed as a cinema in 1992 that just shows what an avid film buff I am. The building is now a Mecca bingo hall. The picture is a reflection in a window of Europa House which was built on the site of the original Cecil which stood on the opposite corner until May 8th 1941 when it was destroyed by the Germans dropping bombs on it as was the style in those days.

Weekend reflections are here.