Timeless Hallgate

I thought I'd give Margot's photo of Hallgate an antique aged makeover to make it seem like was taken a hundred or so years ago. Apart from the TV aerials, satellite dish, multiple rubbish bins, the road markings and safety barrier for little Cottinghamites, neon street lights and the scar on the road left by the installation of fibre-optic cable I think I managed quite well. I honestly don't know how the old folks managed without all these boons to life.

Looks like the back end of a bus

This is not just any bus parked up outside City Hall, no this is a Beat the Street bus, a luxury coach for the entertainment industry complete with bunks, kitchens, every conceivable mod-con for the comfort and ease of the hard worked artistes. I think the artistes in question were a band known as Texas who come not from the USA but from Glasgow in the newly independent state of Bonnie Scotland.

To see the cherry hung with snow

I don't know if A E Housman ever came to the City of Culture but if he did I'm sure he'd have appreciated these loveliest of trees even if they are on Clough Road which is as far from a woodland ride as you can get.

Margot, who is quite possibly Mr Housman's number one fan, took this.

Perhaps Wendy Cope is a bigger fan.

I think I am in love with A.E. Housman,
Which puts me in a worse-than-usual-fix.
No woman ever stood a chance with Housman,
And he’s been dead since 1936.

Wendy Cope

Two car family

There's a fashion these days to turn your front garden into a car park. Of course not every household has two of these beasts lurking on the lawn or what's left of it. 

The traditional result

"They came on in the same old way and we defeated them in the same old way." ...

Arthur Wellesley, First Duke of Wellington

Well my election predictions were accurate as far the local constituencies were concerned. How was I to know that the rest of England, for this was an English phenomenon, was to swing to the Conservatives in such a way? So we'll have five years of  cuts to public services, increased privatisation of the NHS, tax cuts to the already rich, benefit cuts to already impoverished, probable exit from the EU, more devolution to Scotland (effectively independence). Oh how could I forget the future gerrymandering of constituencies to ensure 20+ more Tory seats in England. This is democracy at work they say. Well this is the votes of 37% of those who voted outweighing everyone else in this medieval, first past the post, crap shoot that passes for democracy in this country that has given us, yet again, a House of Commons that lacks legitimacy. This may sound like sour grapes but even with proportional representation the Conservatives would most likely have won. So Labour goes off once again to pick the meat off its bones and study its bellybutton, the Lib-Dems crash back to the position they were in fifty or more years ago (never, ever go into coalition with a right-wing party!), and the little Englander party, UKIP, learns the hard way that democracy in the UK is not about winning votes.

 *Here endeth the lesson*

" a traditional left-wing party competes with a traditional right-wing party, with the traditional result”.

Tony Blair

A beck runs through it

Taken by Margot K Juby

If you wander through the snickets of Cottingham you'll come across this little beck. It may look fairly harmless but some idiot built houses right next to it and becks being becks have a tendency to spill over now and then flooding said houses. Well D'oh!

Arson about

...and that makes three. Following fires at the Cornmill Hotel and then Lambert Street chapel it seemed only a matter of time before yet another derelict building got the ordeal by fire. Investigators says they cannot rule out a link between these fires. So far no-one's been injured but give it time ....

I have posted several times  the sad tale of this place the latest is here.

I think I may have jinxed Joynsons, the shop with the scaffolding in the background. Shortly after mentioning they had been trading here since 1890 a large piece of masonry fell off the building, no-one was hurt. Ooops!

The weekend in black and white is here.