Big Lil

Lillian "Big Lil" Bilocca

The only memories that I have of Hull from my childhood back in the swinging sixties in the idyllic seaside town of Hartlepool is of dock strikes (seemingly every other week), trawlers being lost at sea and a large woman in a headscarf berating all and sundry up to and including the Prime Minister about safety for trawler men. That woman, whose trademark image of the headscarf and raincoat on the grainy black and white TV of the days was really unforgettable, was Lillian Bilocca, who, along with other equally formidable women from the Hessle Road fishing community, managed to get some modicum of safety on the fishing fleet. Trawlers had to have a radio operator, come to that, trawlers had to have a radio, quite a few didn't. Why did it take a group of women to achieve these things while the men were seemingly invisible? Well that's a story for someone else to tell.

So what's all this mural about then I hear you ask? Well someone's written a book, Headscarf Revolutionaries, about all these goings on and the film rights for the book have been sold so watch out for a Hollywood blockbuster. Then the BBC program, the One Show, got involved and commissioned two fellows from Belfast (where murals like this are two a penny) to come over and paint, well, what you see. It was unveiled, if that's the word, over last weekend. And I have to say I'm impressed and I don't impress easy.

Moving upmarket

Last weekend the 99p Store became a Poundland; clearly going for the more discerning customer.

Turn that frown upside down

This being Hull even our Smiley faces are bursting into tears. Still if you look behind there's a reason to be cheerful; the pier is now mended and open again and you could dance a polka if you so desired on the new boards, just don't wear high heels.

One in five

Oh he's not going to go on about empty shops again, is he?  Well yeah, he is. In 2015 21% of Hull town shops were vacant, a rise from the previous year of 0.5%. And this is before the Council started their excavations and closures and so on. Now nationally the number of vacancies fell to a rate of 11.5% in town centres. So you'd think there'd be some real concern instead we hear nothing but complacent platitudes from those the council and whoever chose to put forth as spokespeople ... here's one that stuck in my craw: "We're building a world class city centre for 2017!" Well hmmph won't be any shops left by then, matey.

Yes even Heaven has closed its doors ....

Guildhall ball dropping exercise

Peer closely at the top of the Guildhall tower and you might just make out  a ball with pole sticking out of it. Yup not an impressive sight I agree but this is, or rather was, a time signal for ships on the river and in the nearby docks. The ball would be raised up and then dropped at noon, much like the more famous Greenwich ball dropping thing down south. It hasn't worked for donkey's years and indeed I didn't even know it was there until an article in the local rag drew my attention to it. There's been a few attempts to get it going again but all have failed due no doubt to the fact that £50,000 to drop a ball at noon seems a bit of a waste of money given that there's no ships and no dock. But these are mere piffling details; with the City of Culture coming up balls will drop I have no doubt.

Swordfish

Part of the Fish Trail, this rather unhappy looking life-sized swordfish is on Humber Dock Street close to the marina.

The weekend in black and white is here.

Heaping Pelion upon Ossa

“Ter sunt conati imponere Pelio Ossam”.
                                                          Virgil

The Greek myths tell of  giants waging a war on the gods and in an effort to destroy the home of the gods they pile one mountain on another. These days, of course, there are no giants and no gods either. Just the midgets and minnows of the Council who are seemingly waging an undeclared war, not on heaven but on Hull itself. The opening front of this stadtkrieg involves ripping all the pedestrianised areas up in order to lay new paving stones with fountains (they will no doubt squirt you for the sake of civic virtue). The supposed enemy, reeling from this blitz, are then faced with a flanking manoeuvre; the closure for refurbishment of Carr Lane. Ah yes the timing of this assault is exquisite, that is to say, exquisitely awful..
So there'll be four months (better make that five you know how things go round these parts) of upheaval, 32 buses per hour rerouted, pedestrians rerouted, shops made inaccessible in the usual Hull way of cacking things up. I'm looking forward to the inevitable epic gridlocks that will happen; it's bad enough at the best of times. My bus doesn't go down there but, things being the way they are, one little niggle in a road and the whole godforsaken place grinds to a halt. Oh it's going to be so much fun ... but when it's all done there'll be silver paving stones, the road will glisten with gold and people will dance gaily in the brave new world while minstrels will sing songs of praise to the glorious Council.
But as Virgil says three times they tried to pile Pelion on Ossa  ... ah yes the works already carried out in Jameson Street are having to be ripped up and reinstalled because there were "defective".

And while I'm here, and on a roll, I may as well mention the Ferens art gallery, on the left,  is also being done up to make it able to meet the demands of modern day art exhibitions (the Turner Prize for example), the bill for this just recently went up by a cool half mil to £2.8 million. Kerching!

"Quos Deus vult perdere, prius dementat" as no-body ever said.