Full of hidden surprises

Posterngate

The 'Hull can do no wrong' brigade were crowing again over the weekend after the Sunday Times put Hull in a list of the sixty or so best places to live in Britain. After the usual City of Culture guff and a comparison of house prices (relatively low, since you ask, but rising fast) and inventing a popular road called "The Avenue" (??? typical bad reporting but then standards have been dropping for years) it then, I think, rather damned with faint praise by saying the reason it's great is that it's full of hidden surprises.... well yes it is and not all of them pleasant.

Is this land made for you and me?

Just down my street a sign has gone up for the sale of 7.5 acres of what is essentially flood plain scrub land. Given that there is claimed to be a shortage of housing in this country I expect someone will buy this and plan to cram as many dwellings as possible onto it (no doubt all made of ticky-tacky). Watch out for planning objections and inquiries (not to mention Councillors mouthing vacuous sweet nothings) and in two or three years another hundred or so houses.

Speaking of land or in this case the lack of it, Hull Council is setting up an inquiry into taking over the neighbouring villages Cottingham, Anlaby, Hessle and so on from the East Riding. It claims people are living in these villages but using the facilities (???) of the city without paying anything for them. Hull, it is claimed, is being hemmed in and should be allowed to become much, much bigger spreading to Beverley according to one Hull Councillor. Given the track record of Hull Council in running what is in effect an overgrown town you can imagine the disdain with which this proposed expansion is being greeted in the villages concerned. This isn't the first time this quest for lebensraum has been put forward, back in the 1990's Hull was denied it and will no hopefully fail again.

Millennium Bridge

There seems to have been a bit of  a bridge building craze at the fag of the last century with the result that there are lots of Millennium Bridges spanning rivers up and down the country. Some like the Gateshead Bridge have a stunning original design whilst another suffered well known design failings. Here in Hull we got a simple lift up bridge with a bright yellow counterbalance. I read in a recent article that looking at the bridge one could almost imagine being in Copenhagen. I don't know whether that's good thing or not.

The Weekend Reflections are here.

Sporty little number

I'm not one for motor cars, as regular readers will know. I don't drive, never have and I've never been one for drooling over sports car and so on. I did, however, admire this over decorated Subaru parked up on Fairfax Avenue. It's totally out of place in this suburban environment, a bit like a penguin in an aquarium.

The weekend in Black and White is here.

That was the Winter that wasn't

So a season with no snow, no frosts to speak of, a bit of rain and mild ...meh! I don't call that Winter. Still I'll have saved on the old gas bills and so forth. So from 16.57 GMT it's officially Spring (I had to look that up) and it'll probably snow, did last year.

It's a Hull thing 2

Without going into the whys and wherefores of it all Hull has got two Rugby League teams, Hull Kingston Rovers (the Robins) out in the eastern boondocks and Hull FC (the Airlie Birds) in the slightly tamer west. There's a fierce, friendly, for the most part, rivalry to be top dog in this one horse town. On Savile Street however the two are united in trade as they try to take even more from the poor saps who support them. As an incomer I maintain a position of bored neutrality except to note that Rovers are having a clearance sale...

Carmelite House

On Posterngate Carmelite House was built in 1826 as an almshouse for twenty-three seamen and wives. It was named after the Carmelite order of monks who used to have a monastery or some such around here before being suppressed when religion got nationalised in the 16^th century. Carmelites were also known as white friars hence Whitefriargate. The building was converted into offices in the 1950's.

After I posted the above I came across the following from Ambrose Bierce's Devil's Dictionary.

CARMELITE, n. A mendicant friar of the order of Mount Carmel.

As Death was a-riding out one day,
Across Mount Camel he took his way,
     Where he met a mendicant monk,
     Some three or four quarters drunk,
With a holy leer and a pious grin,
Ragged and fat and as saucy as sin,
     Who held out his hands and cried:
"Give, give in Charity's name, I pray.
Give in the name of the Church. O give,
Give that her holy sons may live!"
     And Death replied,
     Smiling long and wide:
"I'll give, holy father, I'll give thee—a ride."

     With a rattle and bang
     Of his bones, he sprang
From his famous Pale Horse, with his spear;
     By the neck and the foot
     Seized the fellow, and put
Him astride with his face to the rear.

The Monarch laughed loud with a sound that fell
Like clods on the coffin's sounding shell:
"Ho, ho! A beggar on horseback, they say,
     Will ride to the devil!"—and thump
     Fell the flat of his dart on the rump
Of the charger, which galloped away.

Faster and faster and faster it flew,
Till the rocks and the flocks and the trees that grew
By the road were dim and blended and blue
     To the wild, wild eyes
     Of the rider—in size
     Resembling a couple of blackberry pies.
Death laughed again, as a tomb might laugh
     At a burial service spoiled,
     And the mourners' intentions foiled
     By the body erecting
     Its head and objecting
To further proceedings in its behalf.

Many a year and many a day
Have passed since these events away.
The monk has long been a dusty corse,
And Death has never recovered his horse.
     For the friar got hold of its tail,
     And steered it within the pale
Of the monastery gray,
Where the beast was stabled and fed
With barley and oil and bread
Till fatter it grew than the fattest friar,
And so in due course was appointed Prior.