Well Spotted

Those of a certain age will understand if I say this is the very biggest spotty dog you ever did see.... OK it's a pub on Inglemire Lane.

A little local difficulty

Just across the road from 5^th Avenue is the Endyke pub. Another 1920/30's mock Tudor building. Just another neighbourhood pub, you might think, with its usual comings and goings and the odd not very serious disturbance. Well that is until one night in February last year when a man who had been asked to leave because he wouldn't put out his cigarette returned with a chainsaw and ran amok in the pub! Some very brave customers managed to chase him out by throwing chairs at him and he was eventually caught but not before one person was seriously injured. 

Here's a not very clear video of the events.

Green fountain

OK, this is my Spring has sprung posting. This impressive willow brightens up the junction of Endike Lane and Greenwood Avenue.

Jackson's as was but now isn't

Here on Paragon Street, golden land of opportunity, yet another shop has closed and been put up for sale. Jackson's was a Hull institution with shops on just about every main road in the city that is until the shops were sold to Sainsbury's a few (10 or more!) years back. They may have changed the name but as far as most people were concerned they were still called Jackson's. Now the city centre shop has been closed leaving only one supermarket in the city centre. Thus we see how capitalism and competition have left us with as much choice as the citizens of old Soviet Russia.

There's more monchrome fun over at the Weekend in Black and White here

5th Avenue, NHE

That's North Hull Estate as opposed to New York City. The estate was built between the wars to house those moving out of the slums of  the inner city. It was a council estate of small but well built houses almost all with a garden of some sort. There was little variety in the housing with long roads of identical buildings, I've read there are only six types of houses on the whole estate. Still if it wasn't exactly heaven it was better than the alternative and these properties were much sought after. Over the years, however,  the estate became run down and had a reputation, probably undeserved, for anti-social behaviour. So a while back the council spent loads of money doing up the whole estate, every house was modernised and new walls with railings went round each property, red tiles replaced grey slates. This work and the efforts of owner-occupiers have made the place look a whole lot better than it did.

One odd feature of the estate is that may of the streets have numbers rather than names maybe the planners just got lazy.

Great giant glitter balls

Maybe it's something they put in the water or the lateness of Spring or whatever but plans have been put forward to construct a massive mirror ball, you know the kind they used to have (and probably still do for all I know) in discos of the 70's around this site on Humber Street. The plans come from a group calling itself the Museum of Club Culture; a spokesperson is reported as saying " “The gently revolving mirrorball will glow in the evenings as it transforms into a giant 360 degree cinema screen. Audio/visual artists’ work will be projected by ten video projectors onto the inside of the sphere and will provide a free open air cinema for the public.”. The price? A cheeky £40 million. I checked the date of the report and it wasn't April 1^st.

Dutch Courage

So here's a colourful sign I found in a snicket off High Street.  This is the consulate of our Dutch friends, well we haven't been at war for several centuries. Intrigued by the motto I find these words were supposedly uttered by William the Silent, Prince of Orange and Nassau, (perhaps that's all he ever said) in the seemingly never ending struggles of Holland to free itself from foreign occupation. I'll pass over the fact that the motto is in French as our royals also have a French motto. The French sensibly got rid of their royals.