“Trees, how many of 'em do we need to look at?”

A few years ago I noticed that the two elm trees on Nelson Street were going a bit patchy in the foliage ... oh no, I thought at the time, not the dreaded Dutch Elm Disease again ... still hope for the best I said to myself with no real expectation ... so it came as no great shock or surprise to find that they've recently been removed. Just two more casualties in the long running decimation of millions of these trees across this country and indeed the world.

Here's one of the beautiful beasts back in 2016 just starting to show signs of distress recorded, as it were, for posterity.

Elms produce hundreds of thousands of these 'seeds' every year from what I heard and read not one of them is fertile ... all English Elms are genetically identical clones (brought here by the Romans along with rabbits and pheasants, gratias vobis ago), which doesn't help things if you are looking for a disease resistant variety.

OK I admit I enlarged and fiddled with contrast on this to see how many rings I could count; somewhere around 170 was my best guess which puts our young elm here around 1850ish which would fit in nicely with the opening of the Corporation Pier for the ferry to Lincolnshire.

Where there's muck ...

I'm much too young to have any knowledge of the great smogs of London but I am old enough to remember when each house in the land burnt coal and the fuss and bother of the clean air legislation that meant we had to change to smokeless fuels: coke at first (which was a bit like having a mini blast furnace in the living room) and then later converting to good old North Sea Gas. I think all towns and cities in the in the UK are now smokeless zones however East Riding of Yorkshire has no smokeless zones at all so in Cottingham there are still the odd one or two coal burning houses pumping out the vile reeking smoke. It's amazing the intolerable, acrid, throat stinging stench from one coal fire and yet I don't recall this from thousands of coal hearths when I was a young lad; that was just how things were then. So no, I don't miss the old ways, the days starting cold and freezing as the fire obviously had gone out over night and wouldn't "catch" unless a sheet of newspaper was held over it to pull a draught up the chimney, the ashes needing carrying out, the regular delivery from the coal merchants, the sweeping of the chimney every so often to stop it catching fire (that was fun though, for a young'un, watching the brush poke out of the chimney with a cloud of soot), really cold bedrooms with ice on the window in winter, no central heating, no double glazing, no instant hot water, the singular joy of a frozen toilet and so on... I'm feeling a cold shudder just writing about it (but that could be because it's only 14C outside) ... give me a nice, efficient, clean gas boiler with instant central heating any day. But I digress ...

It was not just the bronchi of every living soul that were covered in a patina of soot and tar but the buildings were coated in grime, some with centuries of soot, as well. You might imagine that after nigh on fifty years of clean air these buildings would all be sparkling and for the most part you'd be right but ... well there's always one isn't there? This reminder of how things used to be is 46 Whitefriargate. It was originally a bank built in 1904 and despite, or maybe because of, its sooty grime it is Grade 2 listed. Now imagine, if you can, every building in every town similarly coated, ... no wonder old films were black and white ...

Well, you know what thought did?

...Followed a muck cart and thought it was a wedding.

I seemed to have timed my arrival in town on Saturday for the ceremony of the emptying of bins, an event designed to draw in crowds and reassure folk that the City of Culture will not be overwhelmed by litter. So it was that I followed this muck cart , sorry, stately urban refuge collection and recycling vehicle, up the sunny delight that is Jameson Street where it posed  in front of the now empty BHS store, an almost iconic Hull combination.

À propos  the empty store the council , last I heard, had asked for tenders and plans for demolition. Whether those plans have to include keeping the mural I  know not; the council has said it is its intention to keep it. I won't tell you what I'm thinking because you know what thought did ...

"Your patience and cooperation is appreciated."

"This is your decision. The government will implement what you decide."

                                                                                        Her Majesty's Government

Leather, I read, is the appropriate gift for a three year anniversary and a good strong leather tawsing would sort out our dozy elected representatives fine and good. Three years of prevarication, horse trading, Parliamentary shenanigans that I've never seen the like of before and still somehow, to no-one's real surprise, the UK is still in the EU. The record from the illiberal, antidemocratic Remainers is stuck, "Leaving without a deal" would be a catastrophe, the world would stop spinning and the sky fall in ...but of course there is no deal that they could accept not even the watered garbage offered by Mrs May. The record of our so-called "Brexit means Brexit" government is one of supine surrender to the stubborn mules of the EU. So the delay saw the farce of this country participating in the EU Parliamentary elections where the Bexit Party, a mere couple of months in the making, got twice as many votes as the next two parties put together. (Somehow this was seen as a tremendous victory for the Liberal Democrats who, it goes without saying, are neither liberal nor democratic.) 

Now two Prime Ministers have been consumed by Brexit and a third is about to be chosen in an arcane process involving only members of the Conservative and Unionist Party. This appears to be accompanied by  merry and bloody hatchet jobs in all the media on the leading contender's private life, make stuff up, report scurrilous lies, you name it, it's open season on Boris Johnson (I could almost feel sorry for the overweight old Etonian sybarite, almost...) He just so happens to 'promise' to leave the EU, come what may, on October 31; ah promises, promises ...

The other guy, Jeremy Hunt, or Mrs May in trousers, campaigned to remain in the EU and now mealy mouths vaguely about leaving, hints at a second referendum (by all means bring it on!) and has a surname that is often the subject of Freudian slips ...

Three years ago today the people of this country, participating in the largest democratic exercise in the history of this country, voted by a clear majority to leave the EU. The government said, in a pamphlet delivered to every house in the land, "This is your decision. The government will implement what you decide." So, as the old song says, "Why are we waiting? Why, why, oh why?".


A Pedant's PS shouldn't that be "Your patience and cooperation are appreciated." ?

Summer in the City

Six years ago, almost to the day, I posted a collection from a trip round town on a Saturday afternoon. I thought maybe it could be time for a sequel, update, repeat call it what you will. There was plenty to see, as last time, but later, when I got home and watched to local news on ITV, I realised that I'd 'missed' a 'party' in Whitefriargate celebrating the birthday of murdered MP Jo Cox ( I'd noticed the seats and folk sitting around but ignored it ...had I known I would still have ignored it anyway, there's a creepy and creeping use of this woman's death as a weapon to try to silence dissent. She is portrayed a some kind of saint whereas she was in fact just another Labour/Remain MP whose politics I do not support and never will.). I also missed a gathering in Queen's Gardens by trade unionists still trying to get folk to think that unity is strength and passing on the age old messages of the labour movement... good luck with that on the first warm Saturday of the summer ... and Summer in the City was what the really quite talented young busker above was singing, he must really like the old tunes from last century ...

Mickey™ was posing for selfies and trying to sell twisted balloons

The youngsters' steel band was playing Johann Pachelbel's Canon in D which goes surprisingly well on steel drums; it does however go on and on and on and on ... and then stops for no apparent reason, a relief to all concerned.

A wee bit of faintly ridiculous quasi phoney Scottish cultural tosh was ignored by the oh so discerning passers-by ... they know their Culture when they see it.

The indoor market that two years ago I posted as being empty and deserted was heaving, it seems every pitch or stall has been filled with large variety of enterprising businesses. It was good to see  and a bit like old times.Let's hope it can continue.

Quite a lot of places had little yellow elephants displayed and outside a pub on Trinity House Lane a lady was wearing a plastic yellow elephant on her head, (out of respect for her privacy/sanity I did not photograph it). Seems it was Yellow Day in Hull and that's as much as I know or indeed want to know. 

And finally, before I go, there's this ...

Does your local news get read by someone who makes you want to throw yourself under a passing train or bus just for shits and giggles? Mr Levy... what can I say after watching this one-time 'actor' and disc-jockey read the news on the local BBC for what seems like a lifetime? ... he ums, he ahs, ums and ahs, ums and ahs ... he speaks with his mouth shut, he mutters, he mumbles, he puts accentuation in all the wrong places...  he thanks us for being there each evening,  and, ever so politely, thanks us again for "tuning in" (tuning in? Poor old soul, probably thinks he's still on the wireless.); he looks like he's lost a pound and found a penny ... and thanks to the iniquity of the British television licence, the vile regressive TV Tax,( soon to be reimposed on 75 year old pensioners), we all pay his wages whether we watch him or not ... and do you know what? Hundreds if not thousands like him and think he's doing a grand job... de gustibus and all that jazz.

Nunc pro tunc

Ah the old injunction: learn from the past ... but whose past are we to learn from? Historians being human beings like ourselves tell tales like us and have to pay their bills like us and so write their histories not with any degree of impartiality or objectivity but to put bread on their table. They'll twist the past to fit the present (and vice versa), make up a glorious past, tell and sell outright lies just to suit their own or their master's ends ... so perhaps the only good lesson, then, to learn from the past is caveat lector.

I came across this inset just the other day. It's in the newly-laid-two-years-ago paving stones close by the ... well I won't say where it is, I'll see if any one else has spotted it in Hull. It's an odd, easily overlooked, small thing and I can find nothing about it from the usual channels.

"92) Spot the koi carp in the old dock next to Princes Quay"

Pictures by Margot K Juby

Last year the local paper ran a piece labelled: "The ultimate Hull bucket list: 101 things to do in the city before you die"; the sort of cut and paste job they do when there's no news in June. Anyhow, apart from finding that I'm now quite ready to kick that bucket having done nigh on all the things on this list, lurking down there at number 92 is "Spot the koi carp in the old dock next to Princes Quay"... no picture accompanied this just a reassurance that "They are in there. Honest." ... like there is any difficulty getting a photo of these beasts, easy peasy you'd think. Except I've tried over the years with different cameras, different times of day, polarising filter, you name it... getting nothing that was anywhere near good enough. So when Margot said she'd have a go with our new Lumix I was not hopeful, "It'll never work", I said, "You're wasting your time ....", I said ...

So how did so many big, prize carp end up in Princes Dock? Well I've heard two stories: one was that they were taken from Queen's Gardens pond to give them more room to roam (seems unlikely). The other was to control the algal growth and flies next the to Princes Quay shopping centre (seems a bit more likely) ... what ever the reason the Council did put over 1000 fish into the old dock back in 2010 and they seem to be thriving on algae, flies and bits of naughty children thrown in by desperate parents ...