A fungal infection

Everything has its 'day' these days from poets to smiles and even cats. So it should be no surprise to learn that today is UK Fungus Day when all things mucid and mycological are celebrated. There's a truly irritating video "celebrating the importance of fungi in every aspect of our lives" here. My knowledge of fungi identification is somewhat limited so the the most I'll say about the two specimens I've posted is that they are both bracket fungi, probably a Ganoderma of some some sort, and they can't be doing those trees any good at all.

A load of codswallop

I don't know about culture (that's probably not come out the way I meant it) but I do know there's a tidal wave of propaganda filling the streets of this incomparable town. And, as any student of physics should know, a wave moves nothing forward but simply shifts stuff up and down often causing destruction as it passes through. Anyhow the hunky hipster fisherman dressed in waterproofs and a sou'wester doing something unspeakable to a dead cod has surely got to win some sort of award for camp cliché of the year. More of this please!

Smile, damn you

I was going to say that today, unlike yesterday, is poets day but then I find that October 7 is Happy World Smile Day! Spread that Joy so it comes back and hits you in the gob.

The weekend in black and white is (thankfully) smiling at us from here.

"A Rumoured City"

Today is National Poetry Day. Yeah, my reaction was 'so what' as well. A whole day of poetry really? ...wake me when it's over. Hull lays claim to being a city of poetry so I thought I'd post Margot's poem about Hull written a few years ago when she used to be a "Hull Poet"; she's given up on all the tomfoolery of poetry, as she calls it, these days. Anyway here goes; it's one of her more cheerful poems, there's hardly any blood in it all ...

 "A Rumoured City"

This is where the poets come to die;
like elephants in their legendary graveyard
they leave their bones, their teeth, but nothing
so rare as ivory.

You know all the stories...
Two of them shared one wife:
one tried to sell his gold tooth, being thirsty:
another drowned in marriage and normality:
a few fled in panic and never dared look back.

You think of it as human, this city.
You think of it as a woman -
decked with flowers, crannied with docks
whose waters have a female, secret smell.

At first she seems to beckon,
to offer you the freedom of her byways,
to twine her streets around you
in a mistletoe embrace.
But her hosts are dependant on her;
they cannot escape, they forget to try,
they learn to love her as she drains them.

Her choice of iconography betrays her.
Here at the place where her heart beats hardest
two copper statues, corroded green -
one a bare-breasted Amazon
threatening with a lethal trident;
the other sexless, nameless, hooded
and draped like death's unbearable face.

You penetrate the vampire streets;
twilight coils you in its caress.
You think of giving it another year
since the city seems to fit you like a glove
and the docks possess your imagination
when sunset shows them brimming with blood.

                                                       Margot K Juby

A Rumoured City was an anthology brought out some thirty five or so years ago; a collection of stuff (some duff some not so duff) by the then "new poets from Hull", a few of them are dead now or left Hull years ago. A Hull poet, it seems, does not have to live in the place. You can get a copy from here but it'll cost you at least £82! Ouch!

Final resting place

Usually fly tippers choose a secluded spot, a back alley or a country lane say. The depositors of this unwanted bed chose the entrance to Spring Bank cemetery on one of the busiest roads in town. Is rubbish dumping at long last coming out of the closet and into the mainstream?

Middle of the road

I know it's been a while since I mainlined you with visions of orange barriers so you're possibly feeling mild withdrawal symptoms. Fear not these colourful additions to the townscape will be around for quite a few months more. We are promised completion in December and then again in March next year. Yeah, I know, two completion dates in case one makes you sick.

Demolished

It would be remiss of me to allow you to gain the impression that it is all abandonment and decay in the City of Culture, by no means is that the case, oh no sirree! Here the old ambulance station is  being gently pulled apart. The car park, too, is coming down if it doesn't fall down first. Roper Street, parts of Osborne Street  and much of Waterhouse Lane [1, 2, 3, 4, 5 ] are also if not already down then soon to be levelled. Since there was no plan to use these old buildings then by all means knock them down and build afresh. But what to build? The fallout from 2008 put an end to Princes Quay's planned expansion. So what to do? "Hmmm I know", says a bright spark at the Council (I'm in a generous mood, we all know there's very little brightness in that place), "let's borrow, oh I don't know, about £36 million and build an arena for "bands" to perform and businesses to hold conferences and such like, (other cities have them so why not Hull?) ... and lets put it where access will cause maximum disruption to traffic, and let's make it too small, and let's make look like a giant yellow slug erupting from the ground and let's force it through planning after it's been rejected and and and ... let's call it, oh I don't know, something like, erm, Hull Venue; how about that for an idea?" See I told you it's not at all doom and gloom.

These delightful images "borrowed" from the Hull Daily Mail.