Showing posts with label Ferensway. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ferensway. Show all posts

Tuesday 8 September 2020

In other news


... and also with the passing of the years there comes a dropping off, a lack of interest, a failure to be aroused, I suppose it was inevitable and I'd heard that others have suffered similarly, it's nothing to be ashamed off I'm told and that there might be treatments for it, have I tried resting and maybe finding something to take my mind off it?  ... but really I'm not that bothered any more, free at last as someone once said. Nope after what seems like a lifetime of doing it regularly, everyday without fail,  sometimes two or three times a day especially on Sundays (the day of rest!) I really can't do it at all now ... well I suppose it's not the end of the world. I can live without reading newspapers or watching the news.

Thursday 30 January 2020

Sorry! Not in service

This is Hull: Unique. Lively. Historical. Exciting. Friendly. Colourful. Cultural. Artistic. Limitless. And Sorry! Not in service.

The other day we went for a bus home at the bus station or Hull Interchange. We had, we thought, just missed our bus but as we entered the bus station we could see our bus waiting in a massive queue of buses trying to get into (and out of) the bus station ... we had reckoned without the power of the Hull time shift which magically slows down time to match the user. So it was that our bus was some ten minutes late getting into the station and though we boarded immediately it took some twenty minutes to leave the station. The journey home though was rapid, there being no traffic on the roads by that time. The driver as we got off (or debussed as some have it) apologised for being late ... well no worries, mate and thank you driver!.
So what was the cause of this town wide disruption? ... a small accident on one road; that's all it took to feed back and gridlock the whole town for a couple of hours. This was not a one-off event it happens two, three times a week, sometimes two, three times a day.  A survey recently made the town to be the fifth worse in the country for road delays despite being nowhere near the top five in size, I think it's about twentieth. Still this being Hull no doubt someone is working to take the place to the top of the list ...

Oh and while we're on the subject of Hull and mildly silly ideas ... the town council has just written to the Government to ask it to allow it to try out a Universal Income scheme. You might not have heard, it's a scheme to give everybody Government money (£100 per week is the sum mentioned) regardless of need. Yup sounds stupid, is stupid;  which is why the idea got cross party support in Stupidville.

Tuesday 31 December 2019

Improvements

It seems that 1970s browned glass windows (some call it 'gold' but some is fools) that give photographers such nice reflections are somewhat passé and doomed to the poubelles de l'histoire. So I mentioned the windows on High Street a while back (in passing I'll mentioned that the company involved with that has just gone into liquidation ...) and now plans have been made to change the windows on Europa House on Ferensway to bring them up to date or whatever the excuse is. Still given that the place has never been fully used since 1975 and was sold recently for less than the price of a good new car (£12,000 was the price since you ask) a change might be a good idea. 

You want to know what it might look like? OK here's the picture from the local paper, just don't tell anyone I borrowed it.


I have to say I think this is an improvement ... it's brighter, lighter and there'll still be some reflections.

Thursday 21 November 2019

The Feel Good Legacy


You can if you like just look at the picture of the pretty lights on Ferensway and move on. I'm going to prattle on about the City of Culture and stuff like that so if that bores you terminally press on to better things ...

Just the other day there were reports on local TV and in the local paper of the final evaluation report by the University of Hull on the year 2017 and the City of Culture and what , if any, its long lasting benefits might be. I've tried to find a copy online but failed so what I'm commenting on is second hand, might not be accurate, indeed may be a pack of stale tosh but that never stopped me before so here goes. 
The picture I get is one of desperation. For example nearly 80% of the "visitors" to "events" in 2017 came from either Hull or the East Riding neighbourhood, of the other 20% I bet a fair few came from Lincolnshire just across the Humber Bridge. Less than 1% of visitors were from abroad. It seems that, despite being the "national" UK City of Culture, they now claim that the year of culture was to be a local thing, aimed at Hull folk and they never intended to be aiming to attract a foreign (or indeed national) audience, well that was at least one measurable success they had. This was local culture for local people we now hear ... well more on this below.
It's claimed that five million people came to Hull to see the "events" but this figure cannot be anything but a guesstimate (or, as I call it, an outright lie): I came to Hull several times during the year, I "saw" some of the "events" but I was there to do my shopping and would have been there in any case much like many of the so-called "visitors" from Hull and hereabouts. I can only assume I was counted several times as a "visitor". It was not so much a case of "Let's go see the big thing in Queen Victoria Square" as "Oh look there's a big effing big thing standing in my way, and what the F*** is it doing there?". Surely passive (or irate) "visitors" like this cannot count, indeed should be counted as a negative visitor ... and anecdotally I should add I did not notice more folk in town during the year. I admit, though, I was asked once by a tourist where Humber Dock was ...
Still and yet there's the glorious legacy, as they like to call it. It seems those who volunteered to be part of the show did, on the whole, think it was positive for them. How nice for them I'm sure; but then these were only a few, a very few out of the many thousands who live in the place. Young people apparently were not too impressed by it all with mainly 50+ year olds attending most of the offerings. Also youngsters at school apparently missed out and continue to miss out due to curriculum requirements (shame, indeed, that their educational needs should take priority over this cultural hogwash).
Surely all that money has left something behind, something tangible ... (I love that word! tangible!) Well it seems there was a 1% increase in tourist spending in 2018 over 2017 but then inflation was ~2.5% so that actually is a decrease in real terms ... There have been some hundreds of millions of public and private investment spent in the town in the past six years but the best the report can say is this could "at least be partly attributed to the UK City of Culture" or maybe it is partly due to this splendid blog or who knows? ... like I say : desperate.
Now, look around the town: has it got better? Are the shops full of wealthy customers eager to keep the local economy thriving? Hardly,  they're shopping online or going out of town to Sheffield or York. The photo shows the old House of Fraser shop, Binns, as I call it draped with lights but it shut back in summer (I'm told it will open as an "artisan food hall" whatever that is ...) and there are dozens more shops like this some empty for many years.
There is apparently a legacy organisation, with the absolutely ridiculous title of Absolutely Cultured ("core purpose is to put culture and creativity at the heart of people’s lives to drive Hull’s ambition and aspirations.")  that is described as "vague in terms of resources, responsibilities and modalities of implementation." which is I take to be a polite way of saying they haven't got a clue ... I can say I've heard of it but cannot see anything that it has actually done and its website hardly inspires.
Ah but culture is not to be measured in such crude financial ways, the benefits to the people of Hull are intangible, some might say. They get a boost somehow from all this publicity, they get to feel good, to have pride in their city. Hmm well in 2018 4% fewer Hull folk felt better about Hull than in 2017. I guess those who took the £32 million or so that was raised, the out-of-town installation makers, the out-of-town providers of torch lit parades (Continentals do such a good torch lit parade, don't you find?), the strange out-of-town American guy who took photos of hundreds of naked folk on the streets of the town (for a big fat fee, of course), the gangly out-of-town oik who was in charge and the out-of-town journalist whose sole qualification seemed to be that she went to Hull University once and was second in charge (for oh so reasonable a fee) I bet all these and so many more out-of-townies who selflessly had to force their snouts into the trough (again the fees were reasonable)  are indeed feeling a lot happier about Hull.
Let us, therefore, seek the cultural legacy elsewhere since it clearly ain't here, mate.

Tuesday 2 July 2019

So it's probably my fault that ...


If you have a super-duper memory you will recall seeing the self-same store way back in 2012. Back then the threat was of redevelopment, I cannot for the life of me recall what redevelopment was threatened other than that it had been put on hold ... permanently it now seems.
Now the name above the door says House of Fraser but to me this is Binns  as Binns it was when I first came to Hull. (I'm a Binns boy , there was a Binns in Hartlepool from whence cometh I and as a very, very bored child I was dragged round Binns so...bloody Binns it is, OK?) To real Hull folk this is, of course, Hammonds (v 2.0 the rather fine classical original was destroyed in the last European/Worldwide ding dong). Whatever you call it I  haven't bought anything here since they stopped selling the coffee I liked (back when I used to drink coffee) last century.
So it's probably my fault that ... this place is closing down soon which will add to the number of empty shops in the town centre. Or it would if the Council actually reported empty units properly instead of devising a cunning plan to mislead folk as to the true situation. I won't bore you with the details; it's the usual trick of counting what you want to count and then claiming things are just dandy. You know the drill by now.






Thursday 1 March 2018

The play's the thing ..


I'd be a right old hypocrite if I could tell you anything about this play that was put on last year at the over endowed new Spring Street Theatre, sorry Hull Truck Theatre. Something to do with that old Hull meme of stopping the anointed king entering Hull (with its arsenal) at the start of that ridiculous bloody civil war. I did not go see, I know nothing about it; it may have been the dramatic non plus ultra de nos jours for all I know. I did however like the advert from a few months ago and now I have the opportunity to share it..

The City Daily Photo theme for March is "Play"

Wednesday 10 January 2018

Work for idle hands


A while ago the local School of Art and Design teamed up with a bus company "to transform two double-decker buses into modern masterpieces".  Well here's one of those "masterpieces": a bus decorated with the hand prints of folk from the town. The other bus I'm told "features landmark buildings from across Hull and quote from the city's residents" but I can't say I've noticed it.

Thursday 14 September 2017

Squee!


You know how I like the Council and greatly admire the wisdom of  its ways. Well this week I learnt that in order to minimise disruption caused by long overdue roadworks the Council have wisely chosen not to do this work at weekends and at night but rather on Monday through Friday from half sevenish in the morning until six thirty in the evening. This has, quite fortuitously, caused some truly beautiful tailbacks and gridlocks; reports of three minute journeys taking an hour and all those marvellous delays and hold ups that make life in this beautiful city so bearable and make me love Hull City Council more and more each day. And as there are to be five more weeks of this I feel like giving them a big kiss! Mwah! Mwah!

Monday 14 August 2017

Fun on Ferensway


A bit of skyline on Ferensway with the St Stephens on the right, the arches of Paragon Station and the new coffee hut which, on closer inspection, seems to have no appeal whatsoever.

Wednesday 2 August 2017

A place to rest


The rather silly Boer War memorial on Ferensway makes a nice perch for a sea gull. I think he improves it tremendously; I'm  thinking of calling him Steven ...

Saturday 22 July 2017

Going up fast


I last posted about the new "swanky" hotel on Ferensway back in April when it looked like this. Since then the rooms, which consist of prefabricated boxes, have been slotted in and now the exterior cladding is going up. At this rate it should be ready just in time to miss the end of the year of culture.

The Hull Daily Mail has redesigned its website and so doing seems to have made unobtainable pages from the old site. As a consequence the many links on this blog to the HDM will probably not work. I don't know why they've done this, I'll ask them what's going on but do not have high hopes.

Thursday 20 July 2017

Flor'ull clock


If the C of C can spend a small fortune on silly Hull puns then I'm making no apologies for this. The design of this years display is, of course the logo for the culture fest that you may have seen here or here and rightly ignored. Oh look, is that the time? must dash ....

Sunday 4 June 2017

Classical Beauties


The Royal Hotel on Ferensway has joined the jamboree with these pieces of pseudomarmoreal pulchritude. Nothing says 'culture' better than a scantily clad lady with a jug.


Monday 15 May 2017

Sign something simple


You can't have a year long bean fest without some promotion and as with all advertising the less you mention the product the better. Whoever was paid a no doubt substantial fee to come up with these instantly forgettable catch lines has learnt that lesson well... Here's a couple of the many enigmatic messages festooning the town.  When I'm bored I might post some more.



Tuesday 11 April 2017

Swanky


I mentioned last year plans to build a new hotel on the site of a former dance hall/disco/nightclub/knocking shop on Ferensway. Well it's up and growing. This picture was taken at the end of March but it's going up so fast that it's probably open and taking its first visitors by now ... I'm told it will look like this when it really is finished. The local paper calls it "swanky"; I think that's sounds pretty close to what I would call it.

Sunday 2 October 2016

Vacated


This month's theme of 'abandoned' could have been designed for Hull. It's like shooting fish in a barrel (did anybody ever do that?). Staples had been in this store on Ferensway for donkeys years, the place was always empty and almost never had what I needed and if it did it was way too expensive. Anyhow Staples has moved to a slightly smaller, slightly more out-of-town site on Clough Road (along with the Police, the Fire Brigade and old Uncle Tom Cobley and all ...). This building joins on to the empty computer store I posted a while back making a seriously large vacant ex-retailing space in the centre of town. Maybe it can be filled with 'culture' of some sort for next year's bean feast...

Monday 6 June 2016

Lexington Avenue is no more


On this cleared site sometime in the late fifties or sixties was built the Mecca Ballroom known rather romantically as the Locarno, a place for stately ballroom dancing. I'm told the Kinks once played there and looked totally out of place. As times moved on it became Tiffany's, a nightclub, a place to go after the pubs had closed to 'dance' (in reality to keep on drinking). I recall nightclubs of the seventies with their glitter balls and extra loud disco noise and groups of young women standing or jiffling around their handbags on the dance floor. Ye gods! What dreadful places! As the seventies slid ecstatically into the Thatcher years Tiffany's became Lexington Avenue (LA's to the cognoscenti), and I'm afraid by then I was too old to be allowed in (I think I've been too old for most things in this life but we pass along on that). Reports of drug taking (No, really?), drunkenness (who ever would have thought?) and antisocial behaviour (well those were the days) drifted past my eyes in those days but I didn't care and I guess neither did anyone else. The place used to be absolutely heaving on weekends ... and then well, autre temps as they say. It closed several years ago and stood empty as is the well known style in this town. Now with la culture approaching and an alleged shortage of hotel rooms in steps Hilton Inc. to pop in a 167 bed hotel. They'd better get a move on.

Wednesday 11 November 2015

More Larkin about


Another sign on the via dolorosa that is the Larkin Trail, this on the doorway of the Royal Station Hotel


You are dying to read the poem he composed to the Royal Station Hotel aren't you? Oh yes you are ...

Friday Night At The Royal Station Hotel

Light spreads darkly downwards from the high
Clusters of lights over empty chairs
That face each other, coloured differently.
Through open doors, the dining-room declares
A larger loneliness of knives and glass
And silence laid like carpet. A porter reads
An unsold evening paper. Hours pass,
And all the salesmen have gone back to Leeds,
Leaving full ashtrays in the Conference Room.

In shoeless corridors, the lights burn. How
Isolated, like a fort, it is -
The headed paper, made for writing home
(If home existed) letters of exile: Now
Night comes on. Waves fold behind villages.