The Building

Higher than the handsomest hotel

The lucent comb shows up for miles, but see,

All round it close-ribbed streets rise and fall

Like a great sigh out of the last century.

After 46 years Hull Royal Infirmary is beginning to show its age. Chunks of cladding have been coming adrift for a few years and so finally money has been found to repair and rebuild, there's even enough for a new Accident & Emergency Department, so as you can imagine the site is bit chaotic with more builders than doctors. I fear it is going to take more than a few million and a crowd of builders to save our NHS from the predations of this Government but this is not the place for that discussion.

The quote is from that beacon of joy Philip Larkin, (who else?), it ends:

That is what it means,

This clean-sliced cliff; a struggle to transcend

The thought of dying, for unless its powers

Outbuild cathedrals nothing contravenes

The coming dark, though crowds each evening try

With wasteful, weak, propitiatory flowers.

Until tomorrow then, if I'm still here ...

N ♥ L 09

A declaration of love made four years ago, I wonder if the passion is still as strong now and would they carve their names again on an old churchyard tree?

For those who like numbers and so on, Blogger informs me that this is the 1,000^th post. I suppose a modest celebration is in order,

Going to waste

This is the back of Humber Street taken from what would at one time have been Scott's Square. The cleared land was once made up to be a car park but now it's sealed off as even that can't turn a buck and besides those falling bricks might damage the chrome work. 

The Weekend in Black & White is here.

Was it Bill or was it Ben?

Readers who do not understand the title of today's post might like to Google 'Flower Pot Men' though on the whole I wouldn't recommend it (see below). This potty character adorns a café on Chanterlands Avenue.

OK for those of you who like to suffer or simply regress back to a long lost childhood here's a whole episode of the Flower Pot Men. I used to watch this during my formative years; it may explain a lot! Are you sitting comfortably? Then I'll begin ....

Blue skies smiling at me nothing but blue skies do I see ...

Even a failed and lapsed scientist like me knows the importance of taking a representative sample but yesterday afternoon no matter where you pointed your camera there was only this horrible blue sky, a big old sun and no clouds.  This is only noteworthy because it rarely happens. Hopefully it won't last.

There's more blue sky thinking at Skywatch Friday here.

A green path

This is one of the paths through Spring Bank cemetery, the eastern end that's no longer used. The trees are doing their yearly trick of looking new. 

Windows and mud

Here's the view across the entrance to Humber Dock or the Marina as it's now called. This the old Steam Packet Wharf that I mentioned in a previous post. As you can see it's just a little bit silted up.