Fat Larry's as was

Fat Larry's if I remember right sold second hand CDs and that sort of stuff a few years back. This corner block including the shop next door was known as Pools Corner selling anything second hand, TVs, bikes, furniture and lots of  fishing gear as I recall. They ran a cheque cashing scheme as well. I may have bought a TV from there many, many years back (I've checked with Margot and yes we did, says herself, it was the one that went pink! Hmm.). Well Fat Larry is long gone and Pools Corner is now Ella Street Social Club.

One flew over the Crow's Nest

Outside this Italian restaurant on Newland Avenue was parked the smallest delivery van I've ever seen. This place was a year or so ago called La Perla, new name, new decor and it's getting good reviews. I've seen the menu and like all these places it's far from cheap for what is essentially pasta with some sauce on top. Thirty years ago this was a greasy spoon of a place by the name of the Crow's Nest (if I remember me rightly) it specialised in bacon butties and tea served in a pint mug! Autres temps, autres goûts! 

Keep focused

Oops!

Astonished brickwork

Ella Street (or at least its residents' association) has a thing about birds, there are bird tables along the length and little model birds attached to street furniture, I've posted about this a while back (here). What I didn't know then but have found since is that this avian fix has extended to putting up little quotes from literature with a birdy theme. Various authors from Wordsworth to Poe were chosen. Anyhow this being Hull and reason being what it is I suppose they could not escape the Larkin effect. At least this is one of his more cheery verses, yes I know it's difficult to believe. 

And while I'm on about old baldy, some of you may recall the fibre glass toads that decorated the town a while back on the celebration (there is no better word for it) of his death some 25 years earlier, well wait five years and suddenly it's thirty years since his death and a reunion of toads is planned this year along with a very large inflatable toad to hang over the town centre. You know a dead Larkin is the gift that keeps on giving ... It's a culcher thing, innit!

This is on the wall of the Jewish cemetery at the far end of Ella Street and close by that delight of modern architecture that I posted the other day .

You want the whole picture and the whole poem? Surely you do, it's really not that long, honest.

Coming 

On longer evenings,
Light, chill and yellow,
Bathes the serene
Foreheads of houses.
A thrush sings,
Laurel-surrounded
In the deep bare garden,
Its fresh-peeled voice
Astonishing the brickwork.
It will be spring soon,
It will be spring soon—
And I, whose childhood
Is a forgotten boredom,
Feel like a child
Who comes on a scene
Of adult reconciling,
And can understand nothing
But the unusual laughter,
And starts to be happy.

Philip Larkin

A stylish exit

Living near the large cemetery and crematorium on Chanterlands Avenue means funeral cortèges are a common sight in these parts. Most involve black limousines but I've noticed a worrying trend lately for grey hearses (!); this will never do. A few, very few, involve the old style horse drawn hearse like this one that clip-clopped slowly along Cottingham Road yesterday; a fine if, as I suspect, expensive send off.

Four walls and a roof

Here's another of the modern architectural delights on Saint Ninian's Walk.  I've shown it in black and white but you are not missing much colour since it is a pale blueish white, somewhat akin to a cyanotic corpse, in reality. I like the little sun hole in the roof which looks like an afterthought, the rest is just dire.

The Weekend in Black and White is here.

"Bag it and bin it; that way we'll win it ..."

Bricknell Avenue, Hull

Mobile refuse containers or wheelie bins as everyone calls them are surely the bane of modern life. Designed to save the planet by aiding recycling they have multiplied so that now each household in the land has at least two sometimes three, four or even five depending on how eco-stupid the council is feeling. Naturally a population of 70-80 million bins cannot be contained and so it spreads along the streets like a plague. As for the trash collected I'm told most of it gets put on to big ships and sent to China where no doubt it gets converted into wheelie bins and exported back to dear old Blighty....

And if you think leaving a bin on the street is a harmless pastime think again ...

From the Criminal Justice Act 1982

"137 Penalty for wilful obstruction.

(1)If a person, without lawful authority or excuse, in any way wilfully obstructs the free passage along a highway he is guilty of an offence and liable to a fine not exceeding [F1level 3 on the standard scale]."

F1level 3 is £1,000!