Resting

East Park

Looking the other way from yesterday's post these are the ornamental flower beds that make such a colourful display in high Summer but are resting just now.

Winter trees

East Park, Hull

So far it's not been  much of a Winter to be honest more a prolonged slightly chilly Autumn with mild winds and bouts of rain. Hardly any frosts. It's been so mild I've not been wearing my trademark woolly hat.

The weekend can be seen in black and white here.

Could be any old street

Mersey Street is just an ordinary East Hull street of neat two-up two-down terraced houses most with their little satellite dishes. It runs off Holderness Road down to a primary school whose tower you can see in the distance. Oh there's the Croda wind powered generator lurking in the distance but other than that it's just a plain old street where nothing dramatic happens except this and sadly this and many, many years ago children from the school were involved in this but apart from all that, as far as I can tell, it's just an ordinary street but who can tell?.

The Bank

I'm guessing this particular bank on Holderness Road didn't suffer too much in the recent financial crises. This old Hull Savings Bank despite no longer taking deposits seems to have no liquidity problems.

James Stuart JP

I've passed this statue on Holderness Road hundreds of times and thought that this guy must at least have been a famous politician, an MP or some such. I mean just look at the size of the pedestal. Turns out he was just some local councillor, president of the East Hull Liberal Association no less. He started a firm producing seed oil which eventually became British Oil & Cake Mills Ltd. So a big fish in a small pond. He is said to have been active in improving education in Hull (a truly sisyphean task). Apart from this I've no idea what he, as opposed to any other local bigwig, did  to merit such a statue, paid for by one Thomas Ferens, he of the art gallery. Normally this chap is adorned with a traffic cone to keep his head warm in the Winter nights but it's been so mild lately he's cast it off.

Half open or half shut?

Cottingham council offices

The latest news is that East Riding Council looks likely to freeze its council tax bills for the next year whilst at the same time cutting spending by £23 million. So we're paying the same but getting less in return, so no change there then. We don't know what little extras the parish council will come up with to pay for the flowers in the street and the increasingly objectionable Cottingham Day extravaganza. If government wanted to find a cut that would meet with almost universal approval then abolishing parish councils would be a sure winner. 

The Simpsons

Not Springfield, I'm afraid, but Spring Bank.