Fly into the light

Ella Street, Hull

My left foot

Here's one of Margot's photos of irises on Ella Street and me waiting patiently and not quite out of view in the background ...

Fat Larry's as was

Fat Larry's if I remember right sold second hand CDs and that sort of stuff a few years back. This corner block including the shop next door was known as Pools Corner selling anything second hand, TVs, bikes, furniture and lots of  fishing gear as I recall. They ran a cheque cashing scheme as well. I may have bought a TV from there many, many years back (I've checked with Margot and yes we did, says herself, it was the one that went pink! Hmm.). Well Fat Larry is long gone and Pools Corner is now Ella Street Social Club.

Astonished brickwork

Ella Street (or at least its residents' association) has a thing about birds, there are bird tables along the length and little model birds attached to street furniture, I've posted about this a while back (here). What I didn't know then but have found since is that this avian fix has extended to putting up little quotes from literature with a birdy theme. Various authors from Wordsworth to Poe were chosen. Anyhow this being Hull and reason being what it is I suppose they could not escape the Larkin effect. At least this is one of his more cheery verses, yes I know it's difficult to believe. 

And while I'm on about old baldy, some of you may recall the fibre glass toads that decorated the town a while back on the celebration (there is no better word for it) of his death some 25 years earlier, well wait five years and suddenly it's thirty years since his death and a reunion of toads is planned this year along with a very large inflatable toad to hang over the town centre. You know a dead Larkin is the gift that keeps on giving ... It's a culcher thing, innit!

This is on the wall of the Jewish cemetery at the far end of Ella Street and close by that delight of modern architecture that I posted the other day .

You want the whole picture and the whole poem? Surely you do, it's really not that long, honest.

Coming 

On longer evenings,
Light, chill and yellow,
Bathes the serene
Foreheads of houses.
A thrush sings,
Laurel-surrounded
In the deep bare garden,
Its fresh-peeled voice
Astonishing the brickwork.
It will be spring soon,
It will be spring soon—
And I, whose childhood
Is a forgotten boredom,
Feel like a child
Who comes on a scene
Of adult reconciling,
And can understand nothing
But the unusual laughter,
And starts to be happy.

Philip Larkin

Jack Kaye Walk

Jack Kaye Walk connects Ella Street and Goddard Avenue. If this bridge or tunnel looks a bit odd for a footpath that's because originally the Cottingham Drain ran through here until it was culverted and turned into a  path. This place used to attract the graffiti artists and that was frowned upon now it's been 'decorated' by a 'community' group and that's OK. Jack Kaye ran a shop on Ella Street that has since been pulled down and is now housing. There's a plaque that reads "Jack Kaye, Epicurean Grocer served the Avenues area 365 days a year from this shop here 1947 to 1998" seems a bit OTT for a corner shop proprietor but maybe he was special.

Ella Street

Ella Street is the kind of street where they paint trees with crows on the pavement and adorn the bollards with little birds. Where plants grow in drums and in little raised beds with birds painted on them. Where trees have ribbons wrapped round them and birds are fed from cast iron bird tables. And a black and white cat sits on a wheelie bin. It's a real nice street ...