Ice Cream Time?

As the remnants of Storm Katie wander off into the North Sea taking with them the gales, horizontal rain and hail that make a traditional Easter Bank Holiday such a fun day out it's surely time to enjoy a double whippy ice cream. No? Well, perhaps a hot cup of tea with a little something added to thaw out your bones would be more appropriate.

The perennial gull problem

Or rather the perennial stupid human being problem.... There are several signs by the harbour claiming that gulls are aggressive and so should, on no account, be fed. What a calumny! Gulls are no more aggressive than any other bird. You build a town on their territory, eat your meals outside and wave food about in front of their beaks, quite naturally they think you're an idiot and swoop down to take a free meal. That's hardly aggression that's just taking advantage of human numptiness. And so every Summer there's outrage at seagulls taking ice-cream out of a tourist's hands or whatever and just as surely some opportunist politician will pipe up about culling these magnificent, intelligent beasts. (The answer to all our wildlife 'problems' it seems is to slaughter the animals. Our badgers are to be culled because our farmers cannot be bothered to immunise their stock against TB or practice good husbandry. There's no scientific evidence to blame badgers but they're going to be killed anyway, that's the weight of the farming lobby on this vile government. But that's another story) The whingeing ninnies, who go to the seaside maybe once or twice a year, won't be happy till every last gull is safely in a bin bag, the coast silent and dead, and they can stuff their stupid faces in peace.

The owner of this car, parked by the harbour, will have a hefty cleaning bill but that's not my problem. Should have known better!

Utter claptrap!

Weekend reflections are here.

The Gansey Girl

On the north pier sits this recently installed (October last year) statue, the Gansey Girl, depicting a young woman knitting a traditional jumper or gansey for her fisherman sweetheart. It's part of the maritime trail which is apparently ten years old; how time flies. The sculptor was Steve Carvill.

I have since found out that the little fishes on the base carry the names of fishing families from Bridlington and nearby. If I'd known I'd have taken a close up but if you zoom in on this picture you might just be able to make out some names.

The weekend in black and white is here.

A movable feast

This Sunday being the first Sunday after the first full moon after the Spring equinox means that it is Easter Sunday, a day for eating chocolate eggs and chocolate rabbits and, well, chocolate basically. (I know it has some other significance but we'll leave the increasingly irrelevant, not to say bizarre, Christian sects and crazed neo-pagans to their own private grief. ) This, of course, means that today is Good Friday; a day for eating hot cross buns, traditionally just lightly toasted and eaten with a smidgeon of melting butter, very yummy. But what's all this then? Here, from a distant antipodean place (where no doubt be dragons), comes this meaty, cholesterol laden concoction; the hot cross burger! I love it! It offends on so many levels that I'm almost tempted to wander down the road and try one.

A footnote in history

Somewhere in Bridlington

By the harbour side on a bollard, one of dozens of such bollards, hides this little plaque to a fairly big event in the English civil war between king and parliament. Queen Henrietta Maria liked to be addressed as Her She-Majesty Generalissima, and why not, you'd need a fancy title being married to an idiot and long-time loser like Charles Stuart. The guns and ammo, however, did no good, as we all know, her husband's side lost. I don't know whether whoever put this up didn't want any one to see it or whatever but if Margot hadn't pointed it out I would certainly never have seen it. I had to kneel down to read it.  I nominate this for the "possibly the most inconspicuous plaque in the world" award.

Don't you know there's a war on ...

And so to Bridlington, and what is all this then? The High Street was chosen to be the location for filming a rehash of Dad's Army, a late 60'-early 70's BBC sitcom about the Home Guard in WW2 (sounds dire but was actually very good, and still is, a bit of classic). The filming was in 2014 but the film itself has only just been released (some say it should be recaptured and never see the light of day). A review in the Times called the venture "cultural necrophilia", the Guardian said (more or less) it wasn't as bad as it could have been while others politely called it a "bad idea". As the original show is repeated constantly on TV I really can't understand why a second rate repro would get off the ground. Anyhow shops on the High Street are brazenly cashing in while they can with windows taped up against air raids, vintage posters and a general attempt to recreate 1940's Walmington on Sea; and who can blame them?

The Black Lion pub was renamed the Royal Oak in the film and no-body seems to have taken down the sign.

Arts and Science

Last Summer I posted a statue of Minerva that stands in the museum gardens; I mentioned at the time that there were two other statues that I had failed to find. Well I must have been walking around in blinkers to miss these two standing by the exit gate, not exactly hidden are they? The near one represents Art and the other, fittingly headless, one, Science. Neither are in particularly good condition but then high explosives will do that to you.