Nunc pro tunc

Ah the old injunction: learn from the past ... but whose past are we to learn from? Historians being human beings like ourselves tell tales like us and have to pay their bills like us and so write their histories not with any degree of impartiality or objectivity but to put bread on their table. They'll twist the past to fit the present (and vice versa), make up a glorious past, tell and sell outright lies just to suit their own or their master's ends ... so perhaps the only good lesson, then, to learn from the past is caveat lector.

I came across this inset just the other day. It's in the newly-laid-two-years-ago paving stones close by the ... well I won't say where it is, I'll see if any one else has spotted it in Hull. It's an odd, easily overlooked, small thing and I can find nothing about it from the usual channels.

"92) Spot the koi carp in the old dock next to Princes Quay"

Pictures by Margot K Juby

Last year the local paper ran a piece labelled: "The ultimate Hull bucket list: 101 things to do in the city before you die"; the sort of cut and paste job they do when there's no news in June. Anyhow, apart from finding that I'm now quite ready to kick that bucket having done nigh on all the things on this list, lurking down there at number 92 is "Spot the koi carp in the old dock next to Princes Quay"... no picture accompanied this just a reassurance that "They are in there. Honest." ... like there is any difficulty getting a photo of these beasts, easy peasy you'd think. Except I've tried over the years with different cameras, different times of day, polarising filter, you name it... getting nothing that was anywhere near good enough. So when Margot said she'd have a go with our new Lumix I was not hopeful, "It'll never work", I said, "You're wasting your time ....", I said ...

So how did so many big, prize carp end up in Princes Dock? Well I've heard two stories: one was that they were taken from Queen's Gardens pond to give them more room to roam (seems unlikely). The other was to control the algal growth and flies next the to Princes Quay shopping centre (seems a bit more likely) ... what ever the reason the Council did put over 1000 fish into the old dock back in 2010 and they seem to be thriving on algae, flies and bits of naughty children thrown in by desperate parents ...

The Beauty of Snuff Mill Lane

Picture by Margot K Juby

Hogweed is such a crude name for this little gem of an umbellifer. An alternative of cow parsnip is not really a whole lot better. How about Heracleum sphondylium (Heraclean vertebrate??? Linnaeus has a lot to answer for) does that sound grander? Or (new to me) Eltroot? As it's seemingly de rigueur these days to bring in the Bard at any opportunity I'll just ask what's in a name? ... and move on, quickly.

Snuff Mill Lane whence came this beauty is doing that thing it does in June when it rains lots and is warmish (OK cool ~14C) and muggy. Hay fever sufferers should probably avoid this place for a while. You'll have to imagine, if you can, the sound that accompanies you in this place with dozens of singing birds all competing for my one good ear... It can only be a matter of time before someone comes and strims the whole lot down in the name of tidiness... 

And it pays to keep your wits about you as you never know what you might come across down this lane.

The weekend in Black and White will be blooming here, hopefully.

Underperforming

“Literacy is a fundamental human right and the foundation for lifelong learning. It is fully essential to social and human development in its ability to transform lives.”

... so says  a statement from UNESCO and it's pretty hard to disagree. So, let us say that in the City of Culture, the place where hundreds of thousands if not millions (if you swallow the Kool Aid stats) came to visit and gawp in amazement at the torch lit parades, the fancy dress parades, the installation of  a wind turbine blade, the simply ridiculous Turner Prize, the art-and-fart, here-today-and-pissed-off-tomorrow, paid-for-by-the-taxpayer steaming garbage that oozed through the newly paved streets of this town ... well, in this benighted place far too many adults (42% in some wards) can barely read or write above the level of an eight year old and nearly 40% of their children leave primary schools not able to read properly. To put this into some sort of historical context back in the early 19^th century it was reckoned nearly two thirds of working men could read after a fashion though fewer could write (teaching writing was frowned upon as working folk might start writing their own stories and tales of woe and so on and that most definitely would not do). In parts of this town there seems to have been little progress in two centuries... 

There's no glamour in functional illiteracy, no awards for being unable to write, no visitors from Primrose Hill and Hampstead, no sponsored rainbow coloured celebration in the heart of town, it is most definitely not liberating  ... just a daily struggle to get by as  the better informed, better paid world races on ahead.

You might think that libraries like the one above on Beverley Road could help; it is, after all, right in the heart of one of the most deprived areas in the town ... but some time back (10 or 15 years) this place (along with several others) was closed. "Underperforming" was the accounting term used. It became part of a brand new expensive school, called  "Endeavour". That school lasted but a few years and is no more, it too "underperformed" ... along with all the other underperfoming schools in the town.

So the Council's plan to deal with adult under education as I understood it was to expand the Central library, bring in Learning Zones ... with fewer books and more computers and that essential aid to learning, a modern ambience (think how well Oxbridge would do with a modern ambience!). The result is that Hull is not the worst place in the country for literacy problems; no, no ... it's just the eleventh worst place.

The Northern Library, as it was known, was built in 1895 to the standard pattern of public libraries back in the day. It is now seems to be a Grade 2 listed empty place that is clearly no longer underperforming ...

Gimme Shelter ...

"Try imagining a place where it's always safe and warm ..." warbled the ageing Nobel laureate from Minnesota so many, many years ago. Well imagination is a wondrous thing and will be well exercised by our brand new long awaited replacement bus shelter. Those who design these things no doubt never stand waiting for the bus that never comes and give no thought to the very idea that the wind might blow and the cold rain fall from a different direction to the one they decide. Still this marks progress, all we need now is a little sign saying "Bus Stop" and perhaps, if we may be so bold, a timetable for decorative purposes only you understand ...but as someone else warned some time back "You should not ask for so much" ...

A kind of magic

As you go up Newland Avenue (up meaning Northwards) you pass under a rail bridge and maybe pay little heed to the patch of land just to your side. It is hidden behind some protective fencing and only measures a few square feet. It used to be a bit of a problem with litter and "stuff" accumulating there, really just an ugly nuisance; but then some locals took it in hand and transformed it into a teeny magical garden where not everything is as it appears... So a big well done and many thanks to the folks who did this.

A case of the s'pose'das

Last year I read that this old trawler, the Arctic Corsair, was supposed to be moved from here next to the museum of streetstrife and transports of delight, where it has been since 1998, eventually to one of the ancient dry docks upstream. The move was supposed to allow for flood defence work to be carried. Then I read, that the boat was supposed to be moved last October on the equinoctial high tides. Well, that did not happen. I read that a bunch of regulations and paper work were supposed to in place before that could even begin to happen. Also the silt was supposed to be washed away before they could move it. A new date for moving was set; supposed to be equinox in March this year... (and here we are in June which is supposed to be warmer than February but this year's weather has decided to do things arse over tit ...)

The old dry docks are, of course, silted up and the mud, I read, was supposed to be used to make building bricks. The work to clear the mud was reportedly delayed by a brood of ducklings which had no idea it was not supposed to be there (naturam expelles furca, tamen usque recurret...). As you can see the trawler and the old silt are still where they are (per omnia saecula saeculorum)... and the next equinox is supposed to be in October ... at least that's the supposed to date.