Albert

Albert has had to wait six years for his appearance in this blog due to a slight aversion on my part to anything batrachian. It's been three years since my last toady post so allow me a small indulgence while I clear these old photos out of the waiting list. This fine fellow squats (he may have hopped off by now; it's been a while!) by the entrance to the Pearson pub on Princes Avenue. If you have no idea what Hull's Toad fixation was consider yourself lucky and count your blessings.

Mr Toad meets Gandhi

Seems this toad has found its way across town, a short hop you might say, into the Transport Museum's gardens with convenient access to a suitably large pond. A much more tranquil site than next to the Arc building on Castle Street where I last saw it; and peace, as someone once said, is its own reward.. 

National Poetry Day

I've just found out that the first Thursday in October is National Poetry Day. And since I also just happen to have a piccy of  Laughing Boy Larkin's old place complete with slate plaque and glass fibre toad I thought the two would go nicely together. Now Larkin when he first came to this place thought Hull was "a frightful dump" "smelling of fish" but as the years rolled by and there was clearly no money left in running down the place Hull became "… a city that is in the world yet sufficiently on the edge of it to have a different resonance’. Personally it's still a dump but both Larkin and the smelly fish have gone so it's not all that bad.

It's a Hull thing

Patty: a concoction of mashed potato and sage covered in batter and deep fried; sometimes served with chips which are potatoes also deep fried and scraps which are bits of deep fried batter. Often served in a Patty Butty which means the patty comes in a breadcake with butter (the health conscious leave out the butter).

Breadcake: a small round piece of bread  sometimes known as a bap or barm cake or stottie or bun or  fadge or whatever other dialect term meets your fancy.

Obesity Table: one of the few leagues that Hull tops [ 1 ].

This toad, known for some reason as the "Hull Poem Toad" was part of the Larkin Toads thing from a couple of years back. It's not on food shop, oh no, it's on a shop selling doors on Anlaby Road.

Reflective Colours

Oh no, not another toad! I thought I'd seen the back of these critters until I came across this little dazzling beauty outside the Arc building on Queen Street. It's part of last year's 'Larkin with Toads' ballyhoo. The artist is Sue Kershaw who has a website here.

Before these toads drive me completely mad I must tell you the Larkin with Toads scheme was voted the "Most Remarkable Experience in Hull and East Yorkshire" and was also the winner of the Yorkshire Tourism Event of the Year award. Enough, that's it; no more toads ....

Space Hopper

It's a toad, of course, but from a different world. This one landed outside the station and is showing the signs of having come into contact with many alien hands. 

  

 

Toad revisited

Those of you unfortunates who have never been to Hull will not have had the pleasure of encountering the local accent. This makes  phone sound like fern, home like herm and toad like....,  well I leave that to your imagination.

There are 40 of the things and I promise I will not show each one.

Writer's Block

June 12 saw the start of 25 weeks, no less, of Larkinalia; celebrating the death and commemorating the life of this tedious man. He once said that Hull was "a place that lets you write", then, notoriously wrote nothing for over twenty years. His block was so famous they named a section of the University of Hull after it.

If you are remotely interested in this event, which involves fibre glass toads, painted buses and much, so much more; then do, by all means, go here.