The large cool store is closed ...

Last Saturday (May 4^th) Marks and Spencer on Whitefriargate closed after nearly ninety years of selling "cheap clothes/ Set out in simple sizes plainly/ (Knitwear, Summer Casuals, Hose,/ In Browns and greys, maroons and navy)". Truth is that M&S has been on its way out since well before old Larkin went to the inevitable. There were rumours that the store was somehow bribed not to leave Whitefriargate when St Stephens was built a decade ago. Whatever the truth the customers no longer "leave at dawn low terraced houses/ Timed for factory, yard and site" and haven't done so for generations. I haven't bought anything from M&S this century, certainly no clothing ever. Their food store became pretentious and much parodied (This is not just tosh; this is M&S  tosh ...)

 

Perhaps, though, it's not too late for a blue plaque commemorating Larkin buying his kecks at Markies ...oh,  and writing "a silly poem about nighties" .

The building with its classical columns and bronzed shop front was designed by Jones & Rigby in 1931~ish when M&S were in competition with Woolworths not only for sales but in shop design. Woolies (always a much cheaper store in price and attitude than M&S) went to that great administrator in the sky eleven years ago during the 2008 evenements. There's a wee Viking boat on the top which I've shown before but a second look won't kill you.

Those who seek more about the architectural history of Marks and Spencer's  stores could do worse than take a peek at this link.

SOMETHING must be done ... but what?

This collection of 15000 plastic bottles (Tilly the Turtle, the happiest turtle in the world) was on display at the University last year, (Septemberish if I recall rightly and to go with the British Science conference). The message was simple, the seas, beaches and all open spaces are being filled with plastic garbage and, it goes without saying these days, SOMETHING must be done about it. So there's a sweet little "Plastic Pledge" (redolent of the days of temperance when the evil drink was going to ruin civilisation) where folk forswear to use plastic anything (cups, drinking straws (haven't used a straw since I could hold a bottle and drink out of it), shopping bags... well, you get the picture) and if they must then they will reuse it until it turns to dust and then they will recycle (or quite possibly eat) the dust... (Recycling plastic produces microbeads which are quite possibly even more insidious but we don't want to spoil the flow...) You have to admire young folk, so full of enthusiasm, so easily led to despair over their own futures.

The other day the Scottish Government (that is what it calls itself)  introduced plans for a 20p a bottle refund scheme and it can only be a matter of time before the UK Government does likewise. They have after all to be seen to be doing SOMETHING even if that SOMETHING is horribly expensive and quite insignificant compared to local council's own bin collection and recycling schemes. A scheme to reduce single use plastic bags by charging did reduce them considerably but now so-called "bags-for-life" which cost more and are supposed to be re-used are becoming as big as problem as before as folk, being folk, just forget to re-use them. 

So, then, I think everyone is agreed we must do SOMETHING ... now, moving onto the next item on the agenda ...

Déjà vu in black and white

Surely, says meself to meself, I've shown a barge going up the river before and to be sure this very selfsame little boat, sorry ship, Swinderby, was posted way back when life was all so simple. And as is the way of things when you poke at them I find yet another barge doing the upstream adventure. In my defence I like the clouds and the mud in this picture ... and it was taken sometime back and if I don't post it now I never will.

I know it's only Wednesday but The Weekend in Black and White is here.

You are HSBC.

Ironically this corporate BS from HSBC (stuffed with idiotic clichés from the dark days of the City of Culture) is no more than seventy yards from the branch it closed down just a couple of years ago; and it is  not even in Hull ... and it's oh so tasteful; diving off the Humber Bridge has become a way out of Hull for a few desperate folks lately.

Similar diversions from the criminal nature of HSBC are being pasted all over the country with equally emetic, gobshite being proclaimed. They are said to be too big to fail and might be too big to jail but do we really have to put up with this patronising garbage? Can we not have a little truth? Maybe something like ...

More than just the local bank ... you are the rancid stench something far, far bigger. You are the go-to guys for the drug cartels, terrorists, murderers and embezzlers. You're not an island, you conspire globally in Ponzis, rigging markets, tax evasion, fraud, foreign exchange manipulation ...you "violated every goddamn law in the book". You are HSBC.

(The "violated every goddamn law ..." quote is from Jack Blum, attorney and former Senate investigator.)

Democracy in action

Voting yesterday for two local county councillors and two parish councillors. We get to do this every three or four years I'm not sure which. It really makes very little difference which monkey sits on the Council; I think the old Athenian sortition or selection by lot would do as well but in these enlightened times we must have universal suffrage so voting it is ... The result? Well, for the very few that care, the Tories won  (they always do) but Labour were wiped out completely for the first time ever (serves them right). 

In three weeks time we go at it again, this time for the European Parliament. You'll recall the result of the referendum on this tedious EU issue so the prospect voting for something the majority do not want to even be in has brought out the "Brexit Party" once again to "put the fear of God" into the mired political status quo. (I shall vote for them, there is no logical reason not to). Let the good times roll ... sorry, I meant to say let the people decide ...

Burnt 'umber

"This must be Thursday.  I never could get the hang of Thursdays."
                                      Douglas Adams  The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Now here's an odd thing to do with memory and and all that jazz. I clearly remember coming home from school at lunchtime and listening to the Hitchhiker's Guide on the radio at home with my mother. But as it was first aired in 1978 and I was 21 and living in the Big Smoke by then this could not possibly have happened... I much prefer the memory to the fact ...

Honesty

Lunaria annua

Being the sort of gardener that likes to let things sort themselves out, (no point in fooling with Nature because, as someone once said, Nature cannot be fooled) I find a lot of these nice purple flowers cropping up in all sorts of places at this time of year. The well tempered cultivator might well call them weeds but I call them welcome additions to my small patch of land. You might not recognise the flowers but I'm pretty sure you'll have seen the transparent seed heads in floral displays. There's also a white variety and even a pinkish one but today, being the first of the month, is all about purple.

Honesty is the English name for this plant but other cultures have a more mercenary name, money plant, silver dollars, Judas coins and (my  favourite) La monnaie du pape being just a few choice alternatives. Botanists call it Lunaria annua despite it being a biennial ... whatever its name if you just leave it alone it'll settle in nicely, my kind of plant.

And honesty being best policy means that I must own that Margot Juby took these pictures.