T'other side

Enough navel gazing, time to look out at what the world outside this place has to offer. Ah yes the delights of Killingholme! Here to entertain our eyes are two oil refineries and two natural gas power stations and last but not least a liquid petroleum gas storage facility. Should that little lot go bang I wouldn't give much for the two miles of Humber to protect this wondrous city, but let's not dwell on that.

No, today comes news (well it's oldish news really I just hadn't got round to it) that Hull will, according a leading councillor, have a cruise liner terminal! Well at least lots of money (will £380,000 be enough?) is being spent to think about having a terminal. (This council's caution before making any decision has led to a small boom in business consultants eager to help HCC make up its mind, I wonder if this is just a local thing or do other councils spend small fortunes on these expensive exercises?) It is to be placed near the Deep so, realistically, somewhere in the middle of this picture. Now I know you're all thinking ah Cruise ships, sundowners on a sundrenched deck, Love Boat and all that baggage. Hmmm this the Humber, basically the North Sea by another name so I'm thinking more frost bitten Kate O'Mara of Triangle infamy. (Did I just show my age there?)

Postscript:
It's not every day you learn something new. So I am grateful to Christine Hasman for telling me that Killingholme Creek is where some of the Pilgrim Fathers, the Scrooby Separatists, managed to embark for Holland in 1608. Below is the memorial erected by the Anglo-American Society of Hull in 1924, this is now at Immingham as a petrochemical plant sits on the original site and is visited by many Americans each year.

Thanks once more to Christine Hasman for these photos.

The price of failure

I have mentioned Neptune, the tidal power scheme, before and also how it proved to be not quite the raging success that had been hoped. A few weeks ago I noticed that it was no longer moored just past the Deep and thought that it had gone for good. Imagine my surprise then to see this little boat with the unmistakable yellow cabin just chugging upstream the other day. Off to the scrapyard no doubt.

Looking for business, mistah?

County Hall or Guildhall? Meh!

It had got to be written down, it had got to be confessed. What he had suddenly seen in the lamplight was that the woman was old. The paint was plastered so thick on her face that it looked as though it might crack like a cardboard mask. There were streaks of white in her hair; but the truly dreadful detail was that her mouth had fallen a little open, revealing nothing except a cavernous blackness. She had no teeth at all. (1984, G. Orwell)

Many years ago I lived near Paddington Station, an area well known for prostitutes. One of their enticements, indeed the only one I ever heard, was "Are you looking for business, mistah?". It was brief and to the point and there was absolutely no mistaking what the business was.

I mention this because we, that is to say the residents of East Yorkshire who have the misfortune to live near to neighbouring Hull are being solicited for our favours by two sadly, very unattractive ladies of the night. The one playing the role of mater familias urges us not let our eyes stray upon the dubious delights of the younger, pushy tart who has a new German pimp and is eager to swallow us up whole. This second, flashes her eyelashes in a most seductive way and tells us it would be good for business, honey, ah but what kind of business is far from clear. And when you look closely, if you dare, at both these suppurating cankered madames they reveal nothing but cavernous blackness. So we are asked to be like some latter day Paris with a worm riddled apple and like poor Winston we go ahead and do it just the same.

Referendum papers for ERYC's £60,000 farce are being sent out today.

No great loss

Amid the expected wails of anguish and gnashing of teeth of those who think anything old, anything Victorian, must be worth propping up (no matter the cost) the decrepit Wellington House has finally been flattened. Hurrah! And good riddance to all that. Would it be any great loss if that machine were, just let's say, to flatten the whole area and finish the job that years of decline and neglect have started?

Yet, Freedom! Yet thy banner, torn, but flying ...

It's that time of year again when painted pianos pop up around town, a slightly overweight man in a green mask waves large handkerchiefs and local news reporters look grumpy in Queen Victoria Square, a sad looking Freedom Flame lurks and flickers behind safety barriers and flags lots of flags, oh and a night time torch lit parade (banish all thoughts of Leni Riefenstahl) and more so much more. Oh yes it's the Hull Freedom Festival, again, hah! Two and half days of celebrating "through artistic and cultural expression, Hull's independent spirit and historic contribution to the cause of Freedom". (Obviously I quote, I couldn't write pap like that and still breathe.) Always a good idea to see who is paying the piper and in this case the chief sponsors are Hull City Council and the Arts Council. It seems old Friedrich was wrong, culture and the state aren't antagonistic after all, more like lovey-dovey symbionts.

Pathetic is the word that springs to mind here.

Silly Season

The warm Spring and cool Summer have been ideal conditions for a bumper harvest of pom poms this year. And, as we all know, you simply cannot have too many pom poms...

Luxury Flats

Buildings with enormous windows are no new fad [ 1 ] as this pair of Victorian villas on Westbourne Avenue show. When the moneyed middle classes left for the delights of Swanland, Anlaby and such places these buildings and others like them were split into unfurnished flats. The cheap regulated rents attracted a certain quality of tenant, artists, poets, layabouts and so on. Many of the Hull poets, in those days a smaller, more select band than the those who have since climbed on the Hull poets' City of Culture bandwagon (Roger McGough, Tom Paulin, Uncle Tom Cobley and all), either lived in or visited 4 Westbourne Ave. Back in the very early 1980's I lived with Margot Juby in the ground floor flat of number 4, second large window on the left. Some memories I recall include  a perpetual state of war with the upstairs soi-disant artist (of the often pissed variety I may add) who seemed to wear lead boots and do a lot of hammering, the bathroom ceiling falling in due to actions of said artist. Another resident, now a well known poet and winner of many prestigious awards, found, after cooking some rashers of bacon, he had also grilled a large slug. The mouse seen on the step which grew and grew until it turned into a rat. Moonshine, a grey cat with good judge of character throwing up over the rent collector's shoes. The young amorous couple next door who did not realise the walls were not very soundproof and ... well I draw a discreet veil over that.
Looking back it was basically squalor but when you're young and daft they say it doesn't seem too bad, let me tell you they lie.

Note there is no garret for the servants, they lived in a freezing cold outhouse at the back with two pokey rooms downstairs and two even smaller upstairs. Ah luxury! And in 1982/3  available for rent at £6 per week with no central heating, no gas fire, in fact no heating at all. The ice made pretty patterns on the windows.
I see there's a flat available at Number 2 with a rent a mere ten times higher than back then, I wonder if that includes slugs ...