A tree on Ferensway

The weekend in black and white is here.

Playtime

Europa House, Ferensway

Do you ever play with graphics programs and wonder what use all those distorts and transformations could possibly have? Me neither.

In case you're wondering it used to look like this.

Store Closing D...

Actually the store closed last year. This is T J Hughes' store on Ferensway, the former C&A for those like me who are of an age. The company went into adminstration late last year and closed loads of shops around the country. All is not lost as the news on the grapevine is that this building will reopen as an oriental restaurant. The reflection is of the railway/bus station.

Going up fast

I last posted about the new "swanky" hotel on Ferensway back in April when it looked like this. Since then the rooms, which consist of prefabricated boxes, have been slotted in and now the exterior cladding is going up. At this rate it should be ready just in time to miss the end of the year of culture.

The Hull Daily Mail has redesigned its website and so doing seems to have made unobtainable pages from the old site. As a consequence the many links on this blog to the HDM will probably not work. I don't know why they've done this, I'll ask them what's going on but do not have high hopes.

Creating space

At long last the 'temporary' shops on Ferensway, put up just after the last war, have been demolished. They are making way for no-one knows just quite what  yet, flats, hotel, more shops, who knows and who cares, 'cos I don't and I'm pretty confident you don't either.

Over at City Daily Photo they're having their monthly theme on 'The Creative Artisan', whatever that is supposed to mean. To me the the guy in the JCB is a worker in a skilled trade, he creates by destroying. Anyhow the link to all this nonsense is here.

Swanky

I mentioned last year plans to build a new hotel on the site of a former dance hall/disco/nightclub/knocking shop on Ferensway. Well it's up and growing. This picture was taken at the end of March but it's going up so fast that it's probably open and taking its first visitors by now ... I'm told it will look like this when it really is finished. The local paper calls it "swanky"; I think that's sounds pretty close to what I would call it.

Poundland Blues

I've shown this magnificent store before when it was a 99p Store just about to be taken over by the more upmarket Poundland. It seems that take over hit the profits of said Poundland hard (84% decline) and as a consequence this store is now an ex-Poundland (call me a cynic but I suspect that was always the intention; takeover and close down the competition is the way of the business world). And while I'm here and going on (and on) about Poundland the other store I posted about on Ferensway has also been closed and is now to be a gym and sportswear shop (how exciting!). So now the city of culture will have to make do with only one Poundland. Can things get any worse?

Margot took this symphony of blue.

Aschenbach to the future

A Victorian guide to Britain's railway, Bradshaw's Guide, talks of Hull being like Venice and people taking special trains from the Leeds and so on to view the sights of this spectacular city. Back then the city, or most of it at least, was surrounded on all sides by water, the Humber and a ring of docks. No-one would thnk that now, but when the sun goes down over the Marina and if you squint your eyes maybe that's a canal going off into the distance...

And speaking of Venice, Margot, entering into the city of culture spirit that runs excitedly throughout the town, thought that for 2017 the streets could be turned into canals, to which I added, it could celebrate the ten year anniversary of the 2007 floods ... but think gondolas on Ferensway, oh, oh, oh and a masquerade and some wild licentiousness to a soundtrack of Vivaldiish muzac... No? Oh well.... We could add cholera and phthisic young men as a sideshow if that is your thing. Aw come on  now ...

I was going going to make some comment on the anniversary of the city of culture award but things are becoming too absurd even for me. Let's just say that those supposedly in charge ("They will be our Barnum and Bailey, helping us to deliver some fantastic art and helping draw together everyone who wants to be part of 2017." ) are developing a "beautiful narrative" and leave the rest  your imagination. 

Weekend Reflections are over there.

Reflections on Ferensway

So much junk

Waiting around near the war memorial on Ferensway I had time to take this detail shot and to notice that the recent stormy weather had played havoc with the Remembrance Day wreaths piling them up like so much junk. My grandfather joined up at the start of WW1 and fought through some of the worst action, his brother was killed in action. When it was over he seldom spoke about it, had no animosity towards the 'enemy' and certainly had no time for poppies, parades and memorials. He was too busy trying to raise a family through the depression years on 12 bob a week in this land fit for heroes.

Klokketårn

This is the Danish Sailors' Church of  St Nikolaj on the corner of Osborne Street and Ferensway. This 1950's building replaced a Victorian building on the other side of the street destroyed in the bombing of Hull during the last war. There are bells in this tower but I've never heard them ring. 

A road by any other name ...

You know how towns like to honour folk by naming streets after them: so this town has a Larkin Close; an appropriately dull cul-de-sac, Alfred Gelder Street, Jameson Street, and Ferensway , of course; that local turncoat John Hotham from the civil war times gets a road along with Sir Thomas, Lord Fairfax who gets an avenue; there must be dozens more: Raich Carter Way, Blundell's Corner spring to mind as I write... just outside Hull, across the road from me, there's a short avenue named after a guy who wanted to be Lord Glencoe but somehow the connotations of bloody massacre made him change to Lord Strathcona ... so, anyway,  the other year they decided to rename Garrison Road as Roger Millward Way. I'm not sure that this is any kind of honour since Garrison Road as was is really just an extension of the dreaded A63/Castle Street, the bane of motorists' lives and a right pain in the nethers to cross at times... and I wonder how many even know about this or whether the name will catch on ... when they finally get home, will the motorists of this fair town put their feet up, wrap their hands round a well deserved hot brew and say "oh that *beeeep* traffic on Roger Millward Way was such a *beeeep* disgrace" ... nah not going to happen, ever.
I won't pretend to know anything about who or what Roger Millward was, some sporty bloke, so I've heard,  rugby league, really, really not my scene ...

I mentioned today and several times before that this road is  a pain to cross and that young men have been seen to turn into grey beard loons waiting, funeral directors have been spotted lurking for falling stock ... well some concerned person has put up a plaque to let the world know that those who wait may be gone but are not forgotten, not lost just gone before ...

Remains to be seen

There are still some brave people in Hull, people with real vision. They can see that what is needed on this site between the war memorial and the busy dual carriageway that is Ferensway is an outdoor eating experience. Yes, the place will be a "landscaped outdoor seating area for new café bars and restaurants that it is hoped will emerge from the refurbishment of old shop units". First up a new brasserie ...Well good luck to all concerned. On a cold damp day at the end of November I had difficulty seeing the attraction but then I've always a problem with the vision thing.

What, will the line stretch out to the crack of doom?

Here's a familiar sight on a Friday evening on Beverley Road, traffic tailing back to the town centre and not moving much faster than a horse and cart did two centuries ago. But this is bliss compared to the predicted Carmageddon to come on Monday and Tuesday when a section of Ferensway is to be completely closed to allow the completion of some road improvement. A three mile diversion (!) has been put in place involving crossing the river twice. Now even at the best of times those river crossings are bottlenecks and with all the extra traffic it's going to be so much fun. The official advice is to take a bus instead of your car but being stuck on a bus in giant gridlock wont improve things much. My advice: stay in bed.

The weekend in black and white is here.

Where have all the flowers gone ...

What, you might ask, has the brutal murder of a young man in Woolwich, south London a couple of weeks ago got to do with Hull? Well I don't know, I'm sure, but quite a few have taken that horrific event to heart and left bunches of flowers at the war memorial on Ferensway. Presumably it makes them feel better and if doing this  means they are not joining the odious English Defence League marching on our streets and hurling vile racial abuse at Asian shopkeeprs then I suppose it does no harm. But then again that's a big if ....

East wind

Weather vane on Ferensway

“The East Wind, an interloper in the dominions of Westerly Weather, is an impassive-faced tyrant with a sharp poniard held behind his back for a treacherous stab.”  Joseph Conrad

High pressure over Scandinavia is drawing around an easterly wind that, we are are informed, comes all the way from Siberia. I know a wind chill of -2C is but a balmy day for some hardy folk but for a soft Englishman like myself it cuts through to the bone.

A place to rest

The rather silly Boer War memorial on Ferensway makes a nice perch for a sea gull. I think he improves it tremendously; I'm  thinking of calling him Steven ...

Closed for demolition

This row of shuttered shops on Ferensway is not a victim of the banksters greed, at least not directly. In a way they are a surprising success story that has had come to close. These buildings were put up as temporary shops just after the war to replace bomb damaged property. They had a life expectancy of ten years but have been here over sixty years. They were due to be demolished a few years ago but there's no money so here they stay. On a personal note I bought my first 'serious' camera , a Practika, I believe, from Hilton's (the third shop down) nearly thirty years ago.

The Feel Good Legacy

You can if you like just look at the picture of the pretty lights on Ferensway and move on. I'm going to prattle on about the City of Culture and stuff like that so if that bores you terminally press on to better things ...

Just the other day there were reports on local TV and in the local paper of the final evaluation report by the University of Hull on the year 2017 and the City of Culture and what , if any, its long lasting benefits might be. I've tried to find a copy online but failed so what I'm commenting on is second hand, might not be accurate, indeed may be a pack of stale tosh but that never stopped me before so here goes. 

The picture I get is one of desperation. For example nearly 80% of the "visitors" to "events" in 2017 came from either Hull or the East Riding neighbourhood, of the other 20% I bet a fair few came from Lincolnshire just across the Humber Bridge. Less than 1% of visitors were from abroad. It seems that, despite being the "national" UK City of Culture, they now claim that the year of culture was to be a local thing, aimed at Hull folk and they never intended to be aiming to attract a foreign (or indeed national) audience, well that was at least one measurable success they had. This was local culture for local people we now hear ... well more on this below.

It's claimed that five million people came to Hull to see the "events" but this figure cannot be anything but a guesstimate (or, as I call it, an outright lie): I came to Hull several times during the year, I "saw" some of the "events" but I was there to do my shopping and would have been there in any case much like many of the so-called "visitors" from Hull and hereabouts. I can only assume I was counted several times as a "visitor". It was not so much a case of "Let's go see the big thing in Queen Victoria Square" as "Oh look there's a big effing big thing standing in my way, and what the F*** is it doing there?". Surely passive (or irate) "visitors" like this cannot count, indeed should be counted as a negative visitor ... and anecdotally I should add I did not notice more folk in town during the year. I admit, though, I was asked once by a tourist where Humber Dock was ...

Still and yet there's the glorious legacy, as they like to call it. It seems those who volunteered to be part of the show did, on the whole, think it was positive for them. How nice for them I'm sure; but then these were only a few, a very few out of the many thousands who live in the place. Young people apparently were not too impressed by it all with mainly 50+ year olds attending most of the offerings. Also youngsters at school apparently missed out and continue to miss out due to curriculum requirements (shame, indeed, that their educational needs should take priority over this cultural hogwash).

Surely all that money has left something behind, something tangible ... (I love that word! tangible!) Well it seems there was a 1% increase in tourist spending in 2018 over 2017 but then inflation was ~2.5% so that actually is a decrease in real terms ... There have been some hundreds of millions of public and private investment spent in the town in the past six years but the best the report can say is this could "at least be partly attributed to the UK City of Culture" or maybe it is partly due to this splendid blog or who knows? ... like I say : desperate.

Now, look around the town: has it got better? Are the shops full of wealthy customers eager to keep the local economy thriving? Hardly,  they're shopping online or going out of town to Sheffield or York. The photo shows the old House of Fraser shop, Binns, as I call it draped with lights but it shut back in summer (I'm told it will open as an "artisan food hall" whatever that is ...) and there are dozens more shops like this some empty for many years.
There is apparently a legacy organisation, with the absolutely ridiculous title of Absolutely Cultured ("core purpose is to put culture and creativity at the heart of people’s lives to drive Hull’s ambition and aspirations.")  that is described as "vague in terms of resources, responsibilities and modalities of implementation." which is I take to be a polite way of saying they haven't got a clue ... I can say I've heard of it but cannot see anything that it has actually done and its website hardly inspires.

Ah but culture is not to be measured in such crude financial ways, the benefits to the people of Hull are intangible, some might say. They get a boost somehow from all this publicity, they get to feel good, to have pride in their city. Hmm well in 2018 4% fewer Hull folk felt better about Hull than in 2017. I guess those who took the £32 million or so that was raised, the out-of-town installation makers, the out-of-town providers of torch lit parades (Continentals do such a good torch lit parade, don't you find?), the strange out-of-town American guy who took photos of hundreds of naked folk on the streets of the town (for a big fat fee, of course), the gangly out-of-town oik who was in charge and the out-of-town journalist whose sole qualification seemed to be that she went to Hull University once and was second in charge (for oh so reasonable a fee) I bet all these and so many more out-of-townies who selflessly had to force their snouts into the trough (again the fees were reasonable)  are indeed feeling a lot happier about Hull.
Let us, therefore, seek the cultural legacy elsewhere since it clearly ain't here, mate.

Window Dressing

Is it cheating to take a picture of pictures of Hull? This is that closed down store on Ferensway I showed some time back. Its windows are now filled with large photos of this fair city. The sponsors are Visit Hull and East Yorkshire and the Hull Business Improvement District. Whilst it's all very pretty and a great improvement on  depressing blank windows it's still an empty shop in a city with many other empty shops.