Monday 11 November 2013

Little bit of culture, innit.


As the excitement reaches fever pitch for Hull's City of Culture bid, the Minister of Culture, Communications and Creative Industries ( yeah, I didn't know there was one either) paid a visit to the city today to see for himself what exactly is what. So on a suitably grismal day he was touted round all the sites and glad handed by all those who hope to gain something from this potential crumb from the master's table. These street adverts have cropped up recently promoting a new cultural guide . I don't know what good all this does and somehow the cynic in me says that the award will go north of the border to bonny Dundee; there's a referendum on Scottish independence to win after all ... but life is full of little surprises and we await the decision on, I think, the 20th of this month. Ooh the excitement of it all ....

Sunday 10 November 2013

The next Tesco?


By neatly not quite appropriating the founder of Tesco's slogan this discount store on Holderness Road should go far, possibly as far as Hessle Road, you never know ...

Saturday 9 November 2013

The Eagle Has Flown


Thirty or more years ago I once spent two evenings in this pub. The second visit was to confirm the sheer dismal horror of the first. Even after this length of time I shudder at the thought of the back room of the Eagle, as it then was, a place akin to a waiting room to Hell. Maybe my memory exaggerates the Dickensian squalor and the pallor and hopeless despairing looks of the two or three other silent drinkers but I think not. The years passed and the Eagle became the Tap and Spile (I still don't know what a spile is and don't know anyone who does) and then, by sheer laziness, the Tap. I never went back. Passing the place the other day I saw that instead of selling beer someone was trying to flog furniture, I hurried on by ....

Thursday 7 November 2013

Knotty problem


Something of a problem has arisen as my computer has broken down, needs a new power supply. So until  I get that sorted I´m down to borrowing an Android contraption which is completely unsuitable for any rational person. It may be a while before normal service is resumed.

Wednesday 6 November 2013

Put a little sparkle in your life


It was Bonfire Night, Guy Fawkes Day or whatever you want to call it. Somehow, I don't quite know how to describe this, there seemed no enthusiasm for this ritual waste of money. I blame the last government's prissy stupid fireworks laws finally killing off a four hundred year tradition of stupidity and daftness that lead to many injuries and so on but there was a satisfying cleansing of the air. It's amazing what the smell of spent gunpowder can do to a neighbourhood. Now only those with money to burn can afford to celebrate a so-called terrorist's failure. Me, I've got a packet of sparklers from 2007 to burn...

Monday 4 November 2013

The Bumblebee Phone Box


OK the deal here is that the local phone company have painted a phone box outside their HQ black and yellow and adorned it with antennae to look like a bee. This is to honour a local lady, 91 year old Jean Bishop, who has been collecting for charity for as long as anyone can remember always dressed as a bumblebee. The box was unveiled in mid-October and I took this picture a day later by which time the antennae had been broken off and stolen. It's sometimes hard not to develop a Manichean outlook ....

Friday 1 November 2013

All Saints' Day


A church tower is a beacon to direct the faithful to the house of God; it is a badge of ecclesiastical authority, and it is the place from whence the heralds of the solemnities of the church, the bells, send forth the summons. Let no one imagine that a tower is a superfluous expense, it forms an essential part of the building, and should always be provided in the plan of a parochial church.
Augustus Welby Pugin

I thought there had to be a reason for these things that pepper the countryside, there I was thinking they built them for the view. But then again this is Pugin speaking and he was a distinctly odd fellow. Here's the tower of All Saints church in Driffield built around 1450. As I mentioned earlier the church was revamped by Gilbert Scott in the 1880's when eight additions were made to the tower, not to everyone's delight. The church's own website says of them "The eight pinnacles at the top, 110 feet from the ground, also elaborately panelled, are somewhat unsatisfactory and heavy in appearance:...which gave them a distinctly debased type of crocket decoration". Still it's an impressive pile of stones for all that.

Today, the feast of All Saints (somehow I don't think that'll ever include me), is also City Daily Photo's theme day with the subject 'Heights'. See what others have got up to here.