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| Mural of Mick Ronson in Greenwich Avenue ,Kingston upon Hull |
There has been a spider sitting in her web for 4 weeks in my kitchen. I'm not moving her , she can enjoy her new home with me. I am a Bruce after all and have always loved the apocryphal story about patience . Backend for me , always comes with Spiders, Green tomatoes, clearing my allotment and a backward look at the recent School Holiday.
We've not been away , but we've enjoyed being with family and friends who have been in Yorkshire for their Summer break , and loved having the boys around the corner having their freedom from school . If one lives in a Seaside Resort like Filey the streets are swollen with slow visitors, slower Coach party day trippers who just want the shops, and thousands of Dog Owners with packs of dogs for whom this town and Country Park is heaven .Grandsons and I became trippers recently. Reuben asked if he could see the new Banksey in Hull . Hull Live is good for this, the Facebook or Twitter pages for the Hully Daily Mail. Everything about Hull is easy for us, the buses are frequent, little cafes on Industrial sites do great cheap food for teenagers, Even their loos are always spotless. We found another great one in Spyvee Street , the RSV cafe tacked on to a Plastics Company , and just near the Graffitti we had come to see, a signed Preg not a Banksey but just as good.
The boys and I look unlikely pedestrians in the very busy rat run back streets . I love all the use of space, the wild flowers posing as weeds and love being in streets whose names I've known all my life and never visited.
Who can go past the Old Windmill Pub and not love the decorative tiles? I hope its renovated , even if it becomes an Airbnb or a Caffe Nero , doubtful with its location but a shame if its demolished. The Mick Ronson Gable end mural was great . A son of Hull , and my sons in law, both guitar players knew all about him. I had not even heard of him , but I'd much rather celebrate him than Philip Larkin , a much hyped resident only of Hull, whose dark poems are too gloomy for me even if the language is well crafted. Id rather celebrate the more upbeat and positive poetry of Sean O'Brien or Shane Rhodes if words need to do Hull a favour.
The Social Media promoting the popular Culture of Hull since 2017 has helped me a lot to focus on my home city. The pop up works of the Bankside Gallery are for me an outdoor joy for the eyes. Reuben wanted to go back to see the area around the Scott Street Bridge and Maizecor, Just a short walk across North Bridge from Spyvee street , and even watching the pigeons in the unloading bay eating up spilled maize meal captivated us all in a surreal moment . I am thankful for teenage boys who still like simple things.
I wanted to see the permission wall houses of Preston Road, but Twitter helped here with more updates, and I had a comment from @DaveHarrison telling me that most were now demolished.So we just took a ride anyway so that I could see the site of my old School, Greatfield just off Preston Road. Hull sister obligingly drove us all from Greenwich Avenue to Hemswell Road before driving us to Spyvee Street . The school gates are still there , just as they were in 1959 , one road to the Bicycle shed entrance, and the main gates for staff cars and pedestrian pupils wearing caps and berets . Detention from the awful Miss Nuttall for any miscreants with bare heads, Oh! I was scared of her !
The huge Greatfield site is now home to HULL KINGSTON ROVERS whose Craven Park ground has moved from Holderness Road to Preston Road . I do hope it has an all weather pitch. The clay soil of our sports fields were sodden in the wet ,with huge lakes of sitting water, and sheer ice rinks in winter when below zero. The whole school would be out sliding on the ice , watched over by all the staff , including the head, all wearing their academic gowns. How I wished we had been able to take photos then , but those were the days of my best Brownie 127 , certainly not for school .
