All mod cons ...

Cor there's posh! Most Hull folk still have to wander down to the corner pump with a bucket ... Cottingham houses have their own private wells.

Gin School

I don't know how these things work; I'm talking about fashions. Now a few years ago you couldn't give gin away, it was mother's ruin, the tipple of the well-oiled sot. From the 1920's through prohibition, to the end of the fifties, if Hollywood is to be believed, anyone who was anyone was fuelled by lashings of gin disguised as a dry Martini.  I must admit that on a hot afternoon a large G & T with ice (and a slice of lemon if you really must) can be a delight,  though by the end of the last century it was really not the drink of choice for the young get up and go types (like what I wasn't). A couple of centuries back, though, it was the patriotic duty of every loyal Englishman to drink pints of gin daily (Think Hogarth Gin Lane, "drunk for threepence, dead drunk for sixpence" ) and none of that nasty French brandy, thank you very much. So it should come as no real surprise that gin is now flavour of the month again or should I say flavours of the month since the plain old juniper berry infused distilled liquor is just a bit passé. Now the thing is 'artisan gin'  made and sold at great expense with any flavour you can pop into the still. Can I tempt you to a rhubarb gin? No? How about plum and vanilla? or strawberry and cream? perhaps a herbal rosemary and thyme would appeal? Cheese and onion, anyone?
Here some enterprising soul is clearly trying to catch the wave in full flood and you can make your very own little bottle of gin to take away and cherish ...cheaper by far to buy a bottle or three or four but then you won't be learning anything.

Oh look we are rapidly approaching World Gin Day ... Saturday 8^thof June 2019.

Green and Blue

I've mentioned before that Cottingham has a fair few splendid trees so I thought I'd post some again because they are still splendid and other things goings-on in the world are somewhat less interesting. This grand old specimen you've seen before but that was in its winter attire; it's a near neighbour of that red beech I posted the other day.

Sweet Williams

Picture by Margot K Juby

Round the corner from the Duke of Cumberland sits this quietly unassuming public house named officially as the  King William the Fourth; a mouthful for anyone so known universally as the King Billy. Now I've only just found that the William referred to here was the fourth, no-body remembers Billy IV. Everyone knows Will I (the Conqueror or Billy the Bastard, 1066 and all that, a good thing), Willy II (aka Rufus, died (murdered?) while hunting in the New Forest) and then our Glorious King William the Third ( the King Billy; the great deliverer, who gave us our freedom, religion and laws) but William the Fourth who he, when all the dust is settled? As Margot succinctly put it  "He's the Gordon Brown of Kings"; poor sod, forgotten by all save the sots of Cottingham. 

... and the fading flowers are, of course, Sweet Williams, not, as some north of the imaginary border, call them Stinking Billies (ragwort actually) and besides the Stinking Billy in that case was William, Duke of Cumberland (Butcher Cumberland to some who knew him well enough to suffer) and, as I say, he lives round the corner.

William is such a sweet name, dontcha think?

Fill Your Boots

The news earlier this year that the town centre was to lose a pair of Boots¹ (here on Prospect Street and later on Whitefriargate, yes poor old Whitefriargate is to lose yet another store!) was tempered somewhat by the announcement that a brand new, size 16, mega Boots was to arrive in St Stephens. The new store duly opened a few days ago with "huge queues" (who queues for the opening of a new chemists shop? Do they pay them like opera claqueuers to wait from dawn with bated breath for the doors to open? Do they put off buying their Germaloids until the big day? Just what is it that makes these people tick?). So ... anyway, in this town,  the score is two lost and one found ...


¹ Boots, or Boots Alliance, formerly a large and well liked UK pharmacy and retail company bought by Swiss private equity and later sold to Walgreens of the USA. Now just another retailer with too many stores and not enough customers. And, after some atrociously poor customer service, at another Boots, I never go in this place ... I'm sure they miss me.

Blue

I suppose that at my age I should have grown out of imagining a blue liquorice allsort whenever I see this blue flowered bush. But there you go I lack will power. For long enough I called it the liquorice allsort plant but now I know it as Ceanothus, some call it the Californian Lilac (but never in my hearing). Wikipedia, that ever reliable fount of information, tells that, in far away foreign parts, the plant is sometimes known as New Jersey Tea as the leaves were used to substitute for tea during the time of bloody fratricidal civil warfare now known as the American Revolution (actually I know it as the American War of  Independence (starring Mel Gibson), when did it become the American Revolution? And why wasn't I told?). No doubt a consequence of imbibing all that ersatz brew is that 'blue' now has the opposite political connotation in the US of A to here in the land of dopey Tories. And finally, speaking of Tories and the blues;  to lose two Prime Ministers looks a lot like carelessness. 

Hurray , hurray the end of May,

All our troubles have gone away!

The Duke of Cumberland

Margot was saying, just the other day, that the sign on the Duke of Cumberland in Cottingham was looking a bit faded and unreadable. Well that is no longer the case with this fine sign letting the world know what's what. A few other things like a new doorway and a fresh coat of paint, have seen the old place transformed after a brief closure. The place is due to re-open today with new management, (actually old management returning) so good luck to them.