City of Culture &Donkeys on the green..

Donkeys on the green and Dogs in Filey Churchyard , have the same effect on Betsey Trotwood and the writer. 

Some things incense me . I always find people with their unleashed dogs in the Churchyard every early morning when I arrive before 9.30am to attend to the flowers. Carefully worded requests are cheerfully and blatantly ignored by parishioners. 

Barmston Drain Clough Road

Recalling a recent trip to the soon to shine City Of Culture I found myself being narked by things that are so avoidable and solvable .
I'll post  positive pictures first .

• The Joy of Barmy Drain OKA Barmston Drain. Walking to the huge Household Warehouse in Clough Road to meet Sutton sister I walked from Newland , leaving the bus at the tantalising Lidl.  Barmston Drain is still a bit of the country in the City. There were no shopping trollies and bicycles in this bit, and it promised riverside plants , waterlitles and ducks , or seagulls pretending to be ducks. That was on a very gray January morning , and it brightened my mood.

Look whats still selling just Breadcakes in Hessle road

• Breadcakes are known as Baps in Filey, but they'll always be Breadcakes to me. Aunty Alice in the (Sutton)village used to send me to Mackmans on the corner of Church Street and College St , after it was Lassies, to get a couple of breadcakes. She had a neat way of slicing each one across about 3 times and filling (after buttering with the butter warming by the coal fire) with ham in one layer and Philadelphia in the next ,then cutting each breadcake into 4 for our tea. It was her version of the Club sandwich which she had eaten when she lived in New Jersey with Aunty Kathleen Bruce in the winter of 60/61. We were to benefit greatly from her sojourn in the colonies. She introduced many new things in to the Bruce diet, and family culture and we are often reminded of how beneficial it is when someone who has lived only in Hull is able to realise a wider world is out there if only for 6 months .

• Oh the tiles ! Hull is full of Old Pubs ,often in dire need of restoration where the tilework is just Stunning . Forget the Georgian Society , and start thinking how to preserve all the wonderfully decorated buildings of whatever age 
•  Firstly The Windmill Pub Witham Description: Windmill Public House

Windmill Pub Witham 

Grade: II

Date Listed: 21 January 1994
English Heritage Building ID: 387859
OS Grid Reference: TA1071229284
OS Grid Coordinates: 510712, 429284
Latitude/Longitude: 53.7482, -0.3226 
 and the pubs in the

• Conservation Area around the Old Town .A lovely restoration job seems to have been done on the Green Bricks Pub, and its still a pub

 I noted the ceiling in my  old bank, Yorkshire Penny Bank at the very end of Savile Street,  now a popular CaffeNero. Thank God for the History lecturer at College who used to keep saying Look Up !Look Up!  I find such treasure above the many changed shop signs  in all urban streets  and shop interiors when plaster board has not lowered the ceilings. I don't really care if the Windmill Pub becomes a Greasy Spoon or a Cash Converter Shop as long as the workmanship and design of the tiles is kept . Coffee Shops from banks are perfect recycling .

Caffe Nero oka YPBank Savile Street Hull

• Now for the GRIPE

Seated area next to Lidl and across from Asda

I took the bus to Lidl , not the Beverley High Road one but the Hessle Road one. The Hessle Road is one of the most historic roads in Hull , skirting as it once did the Fish Dock , St Andrews. Closed to shipping in 1975 as the Fishing Industry moved out of Hull as practices changed , the Hessle Road still remains as the homeground of thousands of families whose fathers, grandfathers and sons and brothers once did business on the great waters *. 

This is a great area of the Culture of Hull , and I hope that the most is made of it from what remnants  here and in other dock sites remain.

Lidl and Asda ,those monuments to the buying habits of  Supermarket Shoppers nationwide are not high on my list of Public Spirited members of the community . 

Here you see  the detritus of the 21st Century man on the Bayswater Omnibus. We are all to blame ! Councils do not employ men and women to pick up litter, parents do not seem to instruct their children to refrain from dropping litter and those with addiction Habits have not got the inclination to be tidy or sometimes even clean. The homeless would not sleep here, and because I did not have any strong gloves I darent not even pick the cans in to the bins (many metres away ).

I would expect that Asda an Lidl who thrive on the spending of punters like me who get the bus just next to this quagmire of filth ,would really help the community by DOING THEIR BIT. It would take 1 employee 30 mins wearing Strong Gloves and carrying a black sack  to clear this up, even if they had to do it every day . 

I ask You Lidl ,and I ask you Asda 

could you spare  someone from your store for 15 mins a day each , pay them top rates it's a dirty job , and see if you can make your little bit of the CITY of CULTURE  a little more pleasant and more CIVILISED 

*Psalm 107 v23 

They that go down to the sea in ships, that do business in great waters;”
King James Version (KJV)