Weeping Ash

Fraxinus excelsior (Pendula)

Coming up to June and every other tree and bush has been busy getting out the greenery whilst the ash seems to be still asleep with barely a bud showing. This fine specimen is on the corner of Spring Bank west and Chanterlands Avenue, in the cemetery as you can see.

The weekend in black and white is here.

Don't be crackers ...

Had a little trip out to Holderness Road the other day and found that the once neglected and most despised of buildings that was the Elephant & Castle pub has become a fish and chip restaurant. All very good; but "Wackers"?

Three fountains and a thingy

I've shown this installation outside Britannia House (the dole office) on Spring Bank before but that was taken from a bus and you don't really get the full sheer tackiness of it from that post. The three hemispheres are little trickling fountains; so far so meh. But what is that naff blue and white column? What is it supposed to be?

When new the idea of adding washing up liquid to the fountains appealed to certain elements but even that minor act of rebellion seems to have died away. Maybe it's so stupid no-one can be bothered to vandalise it.

Do as the Doukhobors Do ...

If you wanted to take off all your clothes, paint yourself tourquoise and strut around Queen's Gardens in the name of 'culture' then you should have gotten your applications in by yesterday. Mr Tunick may be an "internationally renowned New York based artist" (many dispute this) but his repetitious displays of flesh are tedious in the extreme. (Oh look there's another pile of boobs and bottoms neatly arranged on the sidewalk, bridge, city hall, park, mountainside, glacier ... you name it, he's done it) Thankfully I'm not in charge of the Ferens Trust and I don't have to justify spending (no doubt large) sums of money on commissioning this kind of non-Art sensationalist event that is otherwise known as boring crap.

Milky Way

You can just picture the scene in the Council's road naming department after a new bit of road has been opened up ... at a loss for ideas, scratching their heads (and other bits) for hours until some bright spark pipes up with "Didn't there used to be a dairy nearby?". And so it came to pass.

The weekend in black and creamy white is over here.

Hanse Day

Hull likes to have a little party every now and again in and around High Street celebrating its past whether Georgian or in this case its links with the Hanseatic League back in the middle ages. Whatever is celebrated the result is folk dressing up in period costumes and lots of stalls selling mediaeval pancakes and so on. The guy above was telling a story, a fairy story about a girl spinning straw into gold who marries a king but who must guess the name of the imp who helped her else he'll take her first born child away....but you know how it is some people just can't keep their big mouths shut: "tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow, I'll go to the king's house, nobody knows my name, I'm called 'Rumpelstiltskin'" (and yes, we all what that means, thank you)

He was good at telling his tale but I guess the kiddies already knew the ending; they looked terribly bored ...

The apothecary's hat kept coming off in the wind.

A small replica of a trading boat.

Some Hanseatic high fashion.

Riverside rubble

I think we can say the old Clarence Mill is now gone, well it ain't coming back. But where did those nice trees spring from ...