It's a Hull thing

Patty: a concoction of mashed potato and sage covered in batter and deep fried; sometimes served with chips which are potatoes also deep fried and scraps which are bits of deep fried batter. Often served in a Patty Butty which means the patty comes in a breadcake with butter (the health conscious leave out the butter).

Breadcake: a small round piece of bread  sometimes known as a bap or barm cake or stottie or bun or  fadge or whatever other dialect term meets your fancy.

Obesity Table: one of the few leagues that Hull tops [ 1 ].

This toad, known for some reason as the "Hull Poem Toad" was part of the Larkin Toads thing from a couple of years back. It's not on food shop, oh no, it's on a shop selling doors on Anlaby Road.

Lurkin' Toad

If you're taking a short cut through the cemetery and get that feeling of something not quite right it might just be that giant toad that you glimpsed out of the corner of your eye ...

The Weekend in Black and White is here.

Mr Toad meets Gandhi

Seems this toad has found its way across town, a short hop you might say, into the Transport Museum's gardens with convenient access to a suitably large pond. A much more tranquil site than next to the Arc building on Castle Street where I last saw it; and peace, as someone once said, is its own reward.. 

Toad revisited

Those of you unfortunates who have never been to Hull will not have had the pleasure of encountering the local accent. This makes  phone sound like fern, home like herm and toad like....,  well I leave that to your imagination.

There are 40 of the things and I promise I will not show each one.

Now for something toadally different

They have arrived! Forty glass fibre, gaudy painted toads. At points throughout the city and even beyond these things have been deposited to amusement and bemusement. Opinion is divided between welcoming them as a bit of lively fun and seeing them a total waste of time, money and effort.
They are part of the Larkin25 todo that I mentioned some time back. Inspired by the poems Toad and Toad Revisited, they manage to make physical what is only a metaphor and in so doing illustrate the stupidity of public relations stunts. Philip Larkin used toads as an image of the drudgery of work; fitting then that one of these noxious things should be placed outside the local Jobcentre.

Toad of Toad Hall

The Larkin toads were auctioned off a few weeks ago. This one obviously landed on its feet in a fine house in Cottingham.

The Wicked Witch of the Wych

Here's another set I should have posted last year before the grand ennui set in. You might recall an old dead tree being reshaped in Pearson Park and you might also recall me saying there was another dead tree close by that might be available. Well most of last summer someone was busy with a grinder transforming that tree into a mix of faces and animals.

We happened to be passing this tree and saw the guy at work; he stopped and made some kind of hand gesture indicating "would I like to come up and have a closer look?" So after much struggling ( I have the acrobat skills of a hippopotamus ) I eventually got onto the scaffolding and took a few pictures.

"What did I think this was?" asks the guy, "A clown?" says I  having in mind Punch and Judy. He was not impressed, "No, it's a witch! And why would I put a witch here?" he asked (it was beginning to feel a bit like the Spanish Inquisition) I shrug, "The tree was a Wych Elm!" he says with a gleam in eye ...

Here's the nice guy with grinder and  the skill to make things appear out of the wood, his name is Julian Barnard and his work was for the Trustees of Pearson Park. He was given a brief of “poetic” (Philip Larkin's old lodgings are directly opposite and the toad figure is again another Larkin thing) The piece, which is now finished, has the title Whispering Sweet Nothings.

Hull History Centre

I showed you the other end of this building a few weeks back and frankly I hadn't given the place much thought 'til I took a little walk around the area and stumbled across this opportunity for a reflection shot. The building stands in a small garden and the trees are turning a delicious golden hue.
There's also a big yellow toad but you can see that here. 

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

National Poetry Day

I've just found out that the first Thursday in October is National Poetry Day. And since I also just happen to have a piccy of  Laughing Boy Larkin's old place complete with slate plaque and glass fibre toad I thought the two would go nicely together. Now Larkin when he first came to this place thought Hull was "a frightful dump" "smelling of fish" but as the years rolled by and there was clearly no money left in running down the place Hull became "… a city that is in the world yet sufficiently on the edge of it to have a different resonance’. Personally it's still a dump but both Larkin and the smelly fish have gone so it's not all that bad.

Reflective Colours

Oh no, not another toad! I thought I'd seen the back of these critters until I came across this little dazzling beauty outside the Arc building on Queen Street. It's part of last year's 'Larkin with Toads' ballyhoo. The artist is Sue Kershaw who has a website here.

Before these toads drive me completely mad I must tell you the Larkin with Toads scheme was voted the "Most Remarkable Experience in Hull and East Yorkshire" and was also the winner of the Yorkshire Tourism Event of the Year award. Enough, that's it; no more toads ....

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

Some Hull stuff

The Prospect Centre is having some work done on the lift and to protect Joe Public boards have been erected and to hide or brighten up these boards these decorative Hull based adornments have been added. So clockwise from the top right: Amy Johnson seeming to leap from England to Australia; a footballing tiger representing the local football club, Hull City aka the Tigers (though this year I'm told they are playing like pussy cats), a fisherman with what appear to be laughing cod (clearly a Mickey take of the Hessle Road mural), and finally a not very convincing and somewhat puzzled Philip Larking (as the Daily Mail recently called him) with a toothy toad. There's another panel that I couldn't photograph (on account of there being a stall in the way) with rugby players on it but I reckon you can have too much of a good thing.

There are more Monday murals here.

Going, going, and soon to be gone

Oh dear, I read the just other day that the charity that runs the Arc design centre [ 1 ] otherwise known as (take a deep breath) the Humber Centre for Excellence in the Built Environment has been forced to close due to lack of funding. Practically before you could blink the 'building', which consists of five upturned caravans (see below), was up for sale by auction and sold off for £21,000. Given that it originally cost £750,000 that's no small amount of money gone down the proverbial. The buyer now has to dismantle all this and find somewhere to put it all back together again. 

The sparkling toad that used to sit outside here has already hopped it but then it is Spring and it probably has others things on its mind.... 

Hull Entrance

It'll soon be that time of year when the youthful hordes descend again on the Cottingham Road campus to take up again their ascetic life of study. The Uni likes to boast how many of its graduates are in employment (95%, if I recall right) but will not disclose just what that employment is; be it a burger flipper or CEO of Tesco. This Summer's political hoopla means that it has now provided this poor nation with two deputy leaders of the Labour Party (keep that quiet). The University may have many secret drinking clubs with  bizarre toad rituals; I wouldn't know about that; this is not Oxford after all.... Anyway to any freshers reading this nonsense a warm welcome and remember to move down the bus when standing ...

Space Hopper

It's a toad, of course, but from a different world. This one landed outside the station and is showing the signs of having come into contact with many alien hands. 

  

 

Pearson Park, Hull

 

 There's a vogue nowadays for philanthropic intervention in public affairs. This is not a new thing, in 1860 Zacchariah Charles Pearson donated a few acres of land in west Hull for a public park. Good for him you say; well up to a point. You see he kept a ring of land surrounding the park for his own speculative building venture and got the people of Hull to pay for a park in the middle. His business and political acumen left him when he led a doomed venture trying to run guns and ammunition to the Confederacy in the US civil war; he lost everything and ended his days practically penniless in a house on Pearson Park. I have a vague memory of some Confederate followers tracing down his grave in Springbank cemetery and renovating it, but that may just be my mind going.

The top picture shows the lake and a Victorian hothouse/conservatory which has a few fishes in tanks and some birds in cages. The colourful blob on the right is, I'm afraid, yet another toad. Below is a detail of the obelisk memorial to old Zacc.

 

Albert

Albert has had to wait six years for his appearance in this blog due to a slight aversion on my part to anything batrachian. It's been three years since my last toady post so allow me a small indulgence while I clear these old photos out of the waiting list. This fine fellow squats (he may have hopped off by now; it's been a while!) by the entrance to the Pearson pub on Princes Avenue. If you have no idea what Hull's Toad fixation was consider yourself lucky and count your blessings.