By schisms rent asunder

First of all I admit to coming here once again with half a story. I don't know what the intentions are regarding the recently burnt out Methodist chapel on Lambert Street. What I can say is that the triangular pediment that looked like it might tumble down at any moment has gone, also the top storey on one side. But most of the front, back and one side look, to my untrained eye, to be solid; so there might some hope of salvaging something out of all this. However the building is still in the hands of  "East Yorkshire's experts in demolition" so we'll just have to wait and see. As I said, half a story, if that.

Will it be worth the wait?

Less haste, less speed is the motto in these parts as you well know. A mere three years since I posted that there was to be redevelopment on this site, eighteen months or more since it was cleared but now we are at last at the end of the beginning and a new block of shops is springing up before our very eyes, callooh callay! OK some of the problem lay with the planners who were unaware that this was industrial land (D'oh a scrap yard not give that away?) and couldn't be used for shops. So there was some legal hassle but that's all behind us now. I'd like to say that it will be worth the wait but alas it is to be a dreary unexceptional build that could be found anywhere in a thousand other towns. Meh!

The pawnbrokers and the shop next door seem to have survived all this kerfuffle. I suspect they'll outlast this new development.

Excellent Cafe

This is the Excellent Cafe on Holderness Road. If your nearest competitor is a branch of that ubiquitous purveyor of burnt cow meat called McDonald then there is, I suppose, little point in being modest. Despite its name the local council rates this place as only average for hygiene and so on; and I'm afraid images of the fare on offer are not quite to my taste. I think I'll give it a miss.

The weekend in black and white is here.

No April showers have come our way

WELCOME, wild North-easter!
Shame it is to see
Odes to every zephyr;
Ne’er a verse to thee.

Charles Kingsley

Somehow Spring has sprung without me really noticing it. Though it looks nice and sunny the picture cannot begin to describe the slightly nithering north-easter that is flowing across the land giving the feeling of walking through a tub of ice-cream. And it's been a really dry April so the droghte of Marche has not been sooted as they used to say.

"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.

See how great a flame aspires ...

...Kindled by a spark of grace!

I could not say that I was entirely surprised to learn yesterday morning that the George Lamb Memorial Chapel on Lambert Street had been destroyed by fire. As I mentioned in my post three years ago it had been in a fairly derelict state for years and last used for God bothering 21 years ago. Other long empty buildings have been subject to similar blazes in the recent past. 

I'd heard rumours the Council were going to buy it under the compulsory purchase system but I don't know if anything came of that. Anyhow that's all a bit moot at the moment. The innards are completely gone and engineers are testing the structural viability of the shell. Let's hope the facade is sound enough to be saved at least though it does look a bit iffy to be honest. There is, of course, plenty of scuttlebutt about how convenient this destruction might be for any potential developer, I couldn't possibly comment.

Soon the democrats will be democking

May 7 is the big day for the quinquennial exercise in so-called democratic accountability. But at least in this country you don't have to vote and it's really tempting not to bother since there isn't going to be a 'None of the above' option on the ballot paper.