The Golden Eagle

I've shown the Eagle on the corner of Coltman Street and Anlaby Road a couple of times before (here and here). The place has long ago given up on being a pub like it once was and had fallen on hard times as they say. Well now it has been converted into flats, though I did hear a story that a small pub (with micro brewery?) might open on the ground floor. Whatever happens the place now looks a million dollars, with new windows and all painted up with the eagle (that they really couldn't remove, now could they?) given a fresh golden coating. It all looks really good. 

Yankee Meal

Here we are on Hessle Road the noted culinary centre of the City of Culture. To tempt your palette with some fine American fare there are pizzas of various hues, Donner kebab, Hamburger (with or without a scrumptious cheese topping) and Frankfurter ... all with French Fries to go. If all that seems just a little too American they do sell a spiced chicken dish described as "Southern Fried", must be some novel Home Counties recipe ...  

Seriously though the place has great reviews and if this is the kind of stuff you like then this is the kind of place you should try.

Delights of Dovedale

There I was idly going through the curate's egg that is Twitter when I came upon the postcard from the past (@PastPostcard) titled Delights of Dovedale. Dovedale? The name rang a bell, where had I heard it before? Turns out Dovedale is a National Trust owned valley in Derbyshire noted for its Peak District scenery and the hundreds of  thousands of tourists who flock there each year.  But that wasn't where I 'd seen the name ... Our delightful Dovedale is a not so pretty large barge that spends a great deal of time just tied up, slowly rusting on the Hull mud. As far as I know it's not noted for anything much other than being posted in this blog a while back. Maybe if it stays there long enough the National Trust will take it over.

Le Chat Noir

This little black cat turned up a couple of years ago and looked just like another little black cat that also roamed these parts a few years earlier who was called Nipper because he would be all smiles and purring then give you a nasty nip if you weren't lively enough to get out of his reach. So this guy became Nipper for lack of imagination. Nipper I hasten to add is not our cat; all our cats have died so he's spotted a gap in the market hasn't he? Nipper just appears and makes himself at home in the garden, on the back of the sofa or on the bed if you let him. Nipper never seems to go home save when it's raining. He may look sweet but he can catch birds, well one goldfinch will sing no more that much I know, and mice. If Nipper is your cat and you haven't seen him for a while he's probably asleep out the back behind the pumpkins.

Nipper is appreciating Black Cat Appreciation Day even if no-body else is.

The Prudential Memorial

I must have seen this plaque close by Queen Victoria Square hundreds of times, seen it, walked over it, gone about my life and then the other day finally I stopped to read it. Such a small thing, such a terrible story and, to me, a better memorial than the gaudy thing just along the street.

A Good Wall Spoiled

There's a craze to paint murals in this donkey's ass of a town. You've got a few square feet of blank  Victorian or Edwardian brickwork doing no harm to anyone and it just can't be left in peace; it has to be coated in some "artwork". We've seen it on Hessle Road and other places and it's creeping all over the place. There's even a plan to paint houses on Spring Bank in gaudy colours just because some layabouts want a grant from the Art Council or the stupid Council and they have nothing to offer the world but vandalism dressed as "community art". The themes in this case we are told were suggested by primary school children because, as is clear to any fool that has ever breathed, uneducated, uninformed 5 to 11 year old youngsters are a positive fountain of inspiration and objectivity. So the four corners of this unfortunate bridge on Chanterlands Avenue have the above garbage (Aim high, never give up, pshaw! How often young children come out with such phrases ...), a sporty theme featuring two unknown sporty people celebrating  sporty events from before many of the children born, a badly drawn collage of Hull images (including Larkin's Toad an image familiar to all Year One intake children at all primary schools) and a long "Eco" thing involving a whale, an octopus, a shark, a large green turtle, some penguins and a polar bear oh and some floating plastic bags to remind us all what sinners we are. (It seems youngsters have a very depressed view of the world and quite possibly think it is all doomed) Quite what all this has to do with Chants Avenue I haven't a clue. It's just plain old fashioned prattery. Worse though; it is condoned vandalism, a good wall spoiled.

This squat little building was once a gents' urinal now closed because of Council cuts ... which leads me to ask  who will pay to maintain this tosh because in a couple of years they'll all fade and date and you can never go back to the nice, cool red Victorian bricks that just did their job and harmed no-one.

And you can imagine the whimpers of condemnation when someone came along and put up their own shitty little "artwork"; without permission (shocking!) not at all in keeping with the theme (The horror, The horror!). I do not recall this bridge ever being 'tagged' like this before they decorated it with their murals ... Well, as ye sow, so ye shall reap

Everything comes to him who waits.

Have I mentioned that in this one-horse town there are two bus companies? Well the other day we had all-day-tickets-to-ride from one company, let's call them the red company. So  we sat down and waited the arrival of one of their nice red buses. After fifteen or more minutes I'd taken the above picture, we'd talked about the drunks and drop-outs that used to hang around this bus stop and the church opposite, about the guy who jumped off the roof of the building on the right and then we twiddled our thumbs and peered up the road to see where our bus could be ... but  nothing but blue buses arrived. I mean five blue buses arrived, like they were having some kind of blue bus joke. I was all for giving up and walking. We weren't going far, just four stops down the road but we had tickets, it was the principle of the thing ... So, anyway, we set off to walk and, well you know what comes next .... not fifty yards on a big red bus goes sailing by. 

The weekend in black and white will come if you wait long enough.