Saturday 4 April 2020

Streets filled with cars, please advise ...


Cars are odd things when you think about them. They're not cheap to buy at least new ones aren't, they're not cheap to run (petrol and tax and insurance and maintenance and so on). They represent locked up capital of several hundreds if not thousands of pounds per unit. And yet and yet for 95% of their useful lifetime they are just left on the side of the road; little heaps of private savings slowly rusting in the Norfolk rain. Odd but then there's nowt so queer as folk as they never say in these parts.
This is George Street, King's Lynn where it's infinitely easier to walk down the road than on the pavement. These houses are 2 up 2 down terrace dwellings from the end of the 19th century, workers cottages they might be called by those who never work. Go through the front door and you're into the front room; they have no gardens, just tiny brick walled backyards leading onto a back alley. It is a popular street for young families of mainly immigrant (Eastern European) workers. It's not bad housing by any means, with central heating, double glazing and fitted carpets they can be cosy little kennels, trouble is people aren't dogs (for the most part).
I'm trying not to think what a deep circle of hell it must be being "locked down" on this street (for no good reason) and tomorrow the first really warm day of the year is forecast and with the temptation of the Loke Road playground and the Long Pond so close by.

Friday 3 April 2020

Les vaches qui dansent

OK it's happy laughing Friday as my old dad used to call it and we're not dead yet, well not quite. Bring on the dancing cows ... They're not mad, you just can't hear the music.

Merci à Margot.

Thursday 2 April 2020

...the spirit of perpetual negation

                             ...for all things that exist
Deserve to perish, and would not be missed—

Wednesday 1 April 2020

The Little Etons

The Government finally realised what many had been saying for so long that all of its schools were totally useless so they shut them, just like that, overnight. Now, says the Government, folk can take their feral brats and teach them at home in front of the TV or some internet device. So I give you the little Etons and Harrows of north Hull, each a busy hive of pedagogical activity where the wonders of the world and its many intricacies are laid bare to the ever receptive minds of youngsters. Attendance at these educational establishments is enforced by the local police who demand to see your hall pass should you be wandering the streets without a reasonable excuse.

The theme day for this first of April is "school". 

And before anyone says whoah! there's ghosts in the picture I know, it's what happens with iPhones doing panoramas. 
This is Greenwood Avenue, Hull looking towards York Road and Ellerburn Avenue. It's an area notorious for petty anti-social activity such as chucking bricks at buses and robbing pensioners, on a good day you can play spot the drug dealers; the sort of really nice area that looks a lot better from a distance.

Tuesday 31 March 2020

Red bike and blue



Unwanted bikes make for colourful flower displays (eventually) or so says Hunstanton. I'm supposed to be stuck in a house a hundred and more miles away so my view rightly doesn't count for much.

Monday 30 March 2020

Escapism


I mentioned at the start of this month how Henry Le Strange built a very successful railway to get folk from King's Lynn to Hunstanton, well thanks to 1960s profligacy that line no longer exists. You'll have to find other means of escape that's if the CovidNazis will ever let you out of your house again. Above we have the neatly decorated KL station still pretending it is run by British Rail (Queenie regularly uses this place and they haven't told her about denationalisation) and below all that's left of Hunstanton station where the trains ran into the sea...


Here's a little something extra, a relatively young John Betjeman (younger than me, let us say) taking us on a day trip from Lynn to Hunstanton. Look, listen and learn not least how to pronounce Hunstanton and Snettisham. A different country in so many ways.

Sunday 29 March 2020

Triple tattoosies


On the first Sunday of Operation Domestic Internment I thought that, for want of anything better, some tattoo parlours might fill the gap until tomorrow. Above from Hunstanton has a fine pun and skull. Below from King's Lynn is just showing off but somehow does not overcome the sleaze, I mean a red door off a side street off London Road... definitely as it should be done.

And finally who has the bad luck to open up just days before the current outbreak of stupidity? Good job he hadn't got too settled in. But "Angry Badger"?  What's that all about? This one is just down the road in Hull and was the site of the short lived "Killer Kitchens" enterprise ("Kitchens to die for at slashed prices"!) ... some might say places have a doom on them.