Wednesday 31 May 2017

Wanna buy a bank?


I've shown bits of this building before but for some reason never the tout ensemble. This was until recently the HSBC bank on Whitefriargate. Imposing old pile isn't it? The usual outlook for buildings of this nature is to be transformed into a bar/club/restaurant and perhaps given the HSBC connection something with a little Mexican/Columbian flavour might be appropriate. They could called it El Cartel, just a suggestion.

Tuesday 30 May 2017

Some rusting steps


At the back of the Uni connecting one concrete sixties building with yet another is an elevated walk way and being elevated it needs steps. These are those steps.

Monday 29 May 2017

Say it with flowers


At the entrance to the Uni the Botany Department shows it can grow a few plants.

Margot probably wants some credit for taking this; how hard can it be to push a camera button?

Sunday 28 May 2017

Big Boy


We have a pair of crows nesting nearby and every year at this time of the year they go just a little crazy. Nothing and I do mean nothing is allowed to fly anywhere near their nest. Chief object of their passion is a herring gull that has given up the nautical life for one of municipal scrounging. His poor life is hell just at the moment; no rest even if he's a couple of hundred yards from the nest and I wouldn't fancy being pecked by that beak. It'll all be calm again once the fledglings appear in a few weeks

Saturday 27 May 2017

Woodbine Cottages


This little terrace of houses is on Endyke Lane in Cottingham. Endyke Lane (with a y) is not to be confused with Endike Lane (with an i) in Hull though the latter is an extension of the former. Looking at old maps it seems that the old name was Endike Lane and the Cottingham end only became Endyke after Hull built the North Hull Estate in the late 1920's. I wonder if this was not some desire on Cottingham's part to distinguish itself from the council house plebs down the road. So now you know the y of it...

Friday 26 May 2017

Old Chestnuts


It's that time of year when the Horse Chestnut trees send forth their floral delights. These contrasting specimens are on the corner of Newland Avenue and Cottingham Road but you can find them spread all over town. Only the white ones produce conkers of any usable size. For some unfathomable reason these are sometimes known as Buckeyes in America ... there's even a fetid buckeye which sounds truly delightful.

Margot took this.

Thursday 25 May 2017

L'homme d'hier


I freely admit my ignorance of Antoine Marie Jean-Baptiste Roger, comte de Saint-Exupéry. You can't know about everyone, nor should you be expected to. I gather, after a quick look see on Google, he was of some import. Still I don't see why the uiniversity took so much against him that it removed a rather large version of the above inscription from the courtyard behind the library and replaced it with this piddling thing that seems to be covering up some utility port in a flower bed that you would quite easily miss. Below is how the old feature looked taken from the 2008 University report it's been replaced by a giant comma. Clearly pauvre Antoine is no longer flavour of the month.