Mick Ronson and the spider in my kitchen

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 .

Barging to go

https://drive.google.com/file/d/15jr_1uTn2rkQQheavazutT1XIKgrd04l/view?usp=sharing

Merrily ,merrily...

Not rowing, but Canal Narrow boating is not an exclusive club. Spouse and I now know a thing or two. This is not strictly true as spouse and a colleague once took four  children round the Cheshire Ring when he worked for Social Services forty years ago. He remembers that one child fell in the canal , and he hung  the boat on the cill .

See my language is now becoming techno boatspeak. I now know what a paddle is, a windlass, a chamber and that one sails on the right hand side, and that ducks may have thirteen ducklings . I know many of the places along the Staffordshire and Worcester canal from Great Haywood to Debsdale lock and back.

It took me one week to work out how locks work , whether we are sailing up higher terrain, whether the narrow boat coming towards us is actually a moored boat , and how to make a cup of tea when going in a lock when the boat may hit the bankside and mugs spill .

 I now know how to

• Wind a paddle up (this may be very strenuous)
• Let a paddle down (this is never strenuous , but one needs to remember to keep the rachet safeguard on)
• Fill the water tank,remembering to keep the business end of hose clean and away from ground)
• put the windlass always back in same place by bow doors
•  see that what looks like black paint maybe thick black oil
• spot an approaching lock
• Always shut bow doors in an ascending lock 
• How to dry wet cushions and carpets 
• call to person at tiller that  a boat is approaching (wave a map at them , calling doesn't work)
• spot the rope marks on bridges, left when boats were hauled by horses
• Sleep on a a bed like a 60cm wide plank 

I now know one can easily last a week without "Neighbours" and "Pointless" and even without the daily Newspaper whose crossword  punctuates each day .I now know that a child bookworm may read 10 books in 5 days , and that two under tens can easily play on top of a double bunk for 2 hours without making a mess or using any toys except paper, pens and imagination.

I know that I never want to eat another chip . Whilst canalside pub meals are a rare daily treat , the Staffordshire  publicans need to discover how to serve more imaginative pub grub. The one exception was the Manor House Pub at Whittington , who not only let us dine in our own Tudor chamber, but did a Cauliflower Steak ,sounds boring , but was a delicious Veggie Main , cooked on a grill and served with a brilliant sauce.

I didn't read a single page of my book , Spouse managed much of Clayhanger , his themed choice for Staffordshire. I could not really move from my place on the bow watching the canalside Vegetation, the Mayflies , the Ducks and the Gardens of the posh and poor alike. I must have been making the tea when we went past the famous garden of John Massie of Ashwood nurseries , but my sister videoed it .

Favourite Lock ,Bumblehole just south of The Bratch

Addendum 

Spouse & I stayed 2 days in the Premier Inn on the Stone Road, Stafford before joining Family party  of Nephew and wife, and two children , and my sister, at the Anglo Welsh Boatyard. We thought Stafford was a great place , the people loved their town and using our bus passes  to town managed to see The Ancient High House,the two interesting churches   great coffee stops and learn the meaning of the Staffordshire Knot .

My Good Friday & plot updates

Bernard's Old plot , now mine 

If you are a person who prays , please pray that the pigeon I accidentally allowed to hop in to St Oswalds Filey, hops out again in to the churchyard tomorrow. We have had to lock the doors on him for now as we finished decorating the church for that wonderful celebration Easter, the highlight of the Church year.(Update ,the pigeon did indeed hop out this morning .Deo Gracia.)

I am home now and listening to the Verdi Requiem on Radio 3, I love my Good Friday music, I had Part 1 of the Messiah at lunchtime when I had a quiet hour after going to the plot :

There I had  to collect greenery and cut all Barbara's Tulips and Daffodils from the plot next to me. She is always happy to give them to the Parish Church to use, and I'm very grateful. I had been asked to do an arrangement in yellow and blue to look natural and like the countryside in memory of the dear father of Liz who runs the Parish Office. My Cheshire sister who has been in Filey all week celebrating her imminent 70th birthday was commissioned by me to collect twigs. She brought an enormous bunch of sycamore, willow and beech twigs to me on Wednesday . They are the perfect symbol for Easter, as good as Eggs . I had a dilemma with the yellow part of the brief , as the 5 stems of Ranunculus I ordered were very small flowered . I should have ordered 20 stems. I wanted them to look like buttercups in the wild. I did pick masses of yellow flowered Woad from my Dye Bed. Daisy Dot *can have the rest , if it stands well and lasts and is yellow enough it could be a useful addition to the flower palette . I want to cut most of the flowers off as it seeds everywhere and I don't think there is much of a call for a lick of woad these days.

 The gone to seed Kale flowers are in the arrangement as well . One year I did a splendid arrangement of cabbage leaves in St Os in late summer , all different shades of green . I came to water it the next day to find it had all been eaten by the  caterpillars I had overlooked on the undersides. I checked the Kale this time albeit early for Cabbage Whites. Today , gloriously sunny , my plot was full of Peacock Butterflies enjoying the rich nectar of the Wallflowers and Dandelions, Why do some gardeners so hate Dandelions?

I've not had much inclination to blog in the evenings  recently as I have been too tired or absorbed watching Hews Nursery on Utube.  In the mornings my head may be full of things which will make a riveting read but I often fall asleep as soon as I sit down after supper.

I have been going up to the plot nearly every day since January .Time stand still there. I set off as beloved is watching 'Neighbours' at lunchtime. In January when its dark early I'm only there a couple of hours, but as the days lengthen I get later and later. Here I explain that my allotment partner of 6 years has given up . I have now another piece of ground to cultivate so have been getting Bernard's plot into my NO DIG system  by covering every bit with cardboard and straw, and putting woodchip paths everywhere. I explain . The No Dig gardening system is just as its name , one doesn't dig . BUT neither does one walk on the beds, so they are narrow enough to garden from both sides, hence the paths. I did not have many perennial weeds to remove first , as Bernard was a meticulous ridder of Marestail and Couch grass. I am up and running now on my new piece of ground , most of my seeds in the greenhouse are seedlings and potted on , my Sweet Peas 

Sweet Peas in !

are in , my Second Earlies and Main crop Potatoes are sitting happily under their straw on top of the wet cardboard, and I'm about to get planting the Climbing French beans in their modules. My hot beds are still hottish, and the trays of Tagetes will soon be hardened off. Tesco have theirs for sale already out the front of the Filey Store, but I always wait until Kathy at Filey pets and gardens has hers out .

Filey Parish has been supplied with Chrysanthemum' Blooms' for many years , lovingly grown by a member of the St Os congregation . Blooms are perfect for the Brass Vases at St Os as they may last for weeks. Peter gave me a few of his stock plants and I have grown them now for two years and am getting better at the routine. Peter is giving up growing so many , and several of us are trying to keep the supply going . This year I'm taking it more seriously and might even become proficient enough to grow blooms large enough to pass for Peters. I have bought some plugs from Thompson and Morgan and Beloved has potted them on for me to take up to the plot tomorrow for the greenhouse. We did as it said on the leaflet and brought them in at night whilst gradually hardening them off . The ones already in the greenhouse from the cuttings I took in January are looking good too, Peters progeny . I don't believe I just said all this . Five years ago I thought Chrysanths were the most boring plants on Gods earth after Begonias , but I am being seduced.

*Daisy Dot is our local Florist

Bankside with Grandma

Doing Bankside

Its 10 years since I saw my first Banksy . It was in Israel

and was a definite political statement, and even from the coach window was recognisable. Ten years on and Banksy is very much main stream and market worthy . Now with a celebrity status even Secondary Schools deem the artist of note and encourage pupils to discover his work and appreciate it . One such is my grandson Reuben . When I told him about the Banksy on Scott Street Bridge, Kingston upon Hull, he asked if I would take him to see it. 

We had a great day out from Filey , taking the train to Paragon is always good for boys who travel to school in a coach, and everywhere else by car . They however are both walkers ,every weekend they go for miles with their parents on the beach at Cayton, Scarborough and Hunmanby Gap , BELOVED  only slow strolls with the Sholley these days to get the paper, or collect his medication.He potters around quite happily without us, always spurred on by the prospect of Neighbours at lunchtime so we left him to hold the Filey Fort.

WE walked straight to the Banksy on Scott Street Bridge. Its not much of a sight now that its been vandalised, preserved and covered with perspex, as its lost its integrity . THE one in the war torn West Bank has more about it . I won't go on here about the lack of care of the Brits for the man made environment when the gift of a Banksy arrives. Its just as easy to say that any graf is destructive. 

The Bankside Gallery has to be understood . Artists are provided with designated Permission Walls, which like everything may be abused, as in the Preston Road site, now probably gentrified up as another Gallery Site. I cant see any reason not to paint on derelict houses. HCC waits for years before seeing the housing needs, and finding money to renovate existing stock, the graf is a useful wake up call to a Labour Council .(IMO)

Reuben took lots of photos, he's good at that, .Zak hung around patiently asking intelligent questions. I Walked them to the great walls in Air Street , dodging huge lorries trying to park on the corner near the small graveyard. This all added to the urban feel, as Bankside is not a cosy Gallery with seats and the smell of freshly ground coffee around very corner. It is edgy and a small part of the day to day industry that is going on around it. Men in high vis jackets hang out the front of engineering plants and car yards enjoying a fag and a break . We saw no one else walking around looking at the paintings. WE  were the odd ones out . The spray canned ones fitted in mostly well, because we expect to see them in all cities, and railway sides, but we never expected them to be SO GOOD, SO CLEVER,SO DIFFERENT or SO INDIVIDUAL.The boys had their favourites obviously, MANUKO was a tag to look for, and this one was great!

Air Street I think 

Time for a drink , this grandma knows teenage boys have hollow legs, and their mother will be furious if I let them have fizzy drinks, so we had a very sober milk and sausage roll in the Kingston cafe. Its loo I must say , across a yard with a key was better than the Station Hotel, and a thousand times better than the station ones .

So we crossed Chapman street bridge and got the 10  bus to Queens Gardens.

The next part of the Art walk was for me a denouement . The pseudo Banksys are just that, PSUEDO. Boys liked them though , especially the Mary Poppins with the Lidl bag, which Zak spotted immediately . 

Time for a late lunch in the Omelette, still better than all the fancy new  places opening up , and home on the train  to the land that time forget , Geriatrica on Sea OKA Filey.

Saltaire next I think !

NB Ray . WE had the boys for the day as the parents were back at work and they did not go back to school until the next day . This was done on 7th Jan , Ive only just written it up. 

Stoneferry to Wilmington downstream

Stoneferry Bridge ,Kingston upon Hull

Wainwright  does not have the monopoly  on walks . I expect that more people have done the River Hull walks over the centuries, even though judging by the rat run from Stoneferry to Wilmington in 2019 most are travelling in fast car . 

I travelled downstream on Monday along the banks of the  River Hull as close as I was able , without being accused of spying, industrial espionage  or looking for  a  wild swim  mudbath. Actually I  never saw any one else on foot apart from a thinly clad Hoodie and a woman with a pushchair . Its not really good for walking , as when  crossing the road to look for places to take a photo, or look at the river , one dices with death. Only at Wilmington, the end of today's river route does one get a Crossing Place with a press the button and wait for the green man.  It really is the industrial heart land of Wincolmlee.  At the end of the walk, catching a look at the fantastic new plant that is Energy Works  crossing Cleveland Street was no joke.
  I am so out of the urban loop. I was even fascinated by the cohort of youths , hiding up a cul de sac , with  new motor bikes and no helmets taking  turns at  shared wheelies out into  the busy road , and trying out their revving .

I had always wanted to have a good nosy around Stoneferry Bridge and see if theres anything left of the house where my 19th Century Family lived until they emigrated to New York in the 1890s. The house was razed to the ground in 1944 by German bombing. every time we drove over the bridge in the 50s the remaining stones would be pointed out to us, but now I cant even remember which side of the Bridge they were, except they were on the West side of the river, and must have been near the Waterworks where my GG worked being the Chief Waterworks  Engineer . As the Waterworks stopped pumping water in 1891, and the site wound down completely by 1901, I now see why my GG needed a new job .

The Stoneferry House

The bridge seen today is the new bridge, built in the late 80s. I came back home to Hull to visit the family home in Sutton and found that my remembered bridge had gone . 

I was enthralled  to see the film about the day all the bridges over  the river were lifted, on 22nd  September 2017. I watched it in  Beverley Library , Beloved was waiting , not very patiently  . 

I have now walked over 10 of the 13 bridges(not Scott Street, obviously). Next walk I will do the remaining ones, and am hoping that I get some company for this one, Stoneferry to Kingswood.

The walk downstream  from Stoneferry confirmed all that I had expected and more. 

• The Bankside gallery additions were great  and I love that they are works in progress. One has to keep crossing the road to get the scale of the graf.  It is so unlike being in the Millbank Tate where a picture of Gordale Scar , taking the whole of a  gallery wall may be viewed sitting down from 20 metres away on a comfy stool . This gallery  is  raw , and not comfortable , not quiet ever, as traffic speeds  past . It took me 5 mins to get across the road here at 11am long after Hull  rush hour.***
• The mud of the river was as fascinating always, gloopy and thick and brown , colouring the water a silty mid #hex873600 . Any child, or adult like me ,
  
  would relish safely paddling in its deep promise of squelch and danger .They have glass bottomed boats in Bermuda, I would pay to go on a zip wire across the Hull in secure waders dangling just above the river. The river is tidal to at least Beverley. What a contrast from the clear water of Barmston drain which begins near the Scott Street Bridge. Friend tells me that American servicemen used the drain for swimming in the war, and staging was built to make it easier at the drain sides. I know that at Hempholme and Wansford the Hull is clear as a bell, where the tides no longer reach. My father used to fish there for grayling and trout  in the 60s. 
  
• I loved the heaps of detritus all along my walk, piles of iron work ,ready for a skip and lucre,  soil, mountains of brick dust and concrete and my favourite of all this collection of wood, looking as if it had been specially curated for an exhibition. Is it driftwood lifted from the river, or parts of trees long since felled? I loved it 
• The scenic views were just as picturesque as any of Ben Lomond from Luss IMO.

  

  looking upstream from Exhaust Centre 

  

  British Extracting Co silo from Wilmington Cycle track 

  
  
• One learns plenty about the not so changing face of industry. Here amongst old signs reminding me of the advert on yellow lorries SAM ALLON DEMOLITION , fresh in my mind again from the 50s and 60s are many firms whose business is in Demolition, and Recycling as it has always been,HERE  Hidden behind high fences and ordered in neat rows seen at best on Google Earth are the 21st century sorters and scavengers , money in muck ,and brass from nowt firms who labour relentlessly to clear and tidy with truck load after truckload, though at present many don't have to move an inch from the banks of the Hull . The amazing looking new facility ENERGY WORKS looks up and running , but it isn't . It is going to take lorry loads of Hull Rubbish destined for landfill , & turn it in to ELECTRICITY . Here's HOPING !
  

• My 1961 book is a gem  .Published to highlight and attract more industry and development to Kingston upon Hull it does nothing but show me that we are still producing many of the same products . The Fishing Industry might well have gone , but Hull is still making PAINT, PLANT and PRODUCTS FROM OIL MILLING , and it can be seen along the banks of the river to this day.
• 
  

Was the paint made here?

***I have yet to do my post about my walk with my grandchildren  just look at the art . This will follow. Today's walk finished with lunch at the Wilmington Cafe after walking the old cycle track across Wilmington Bridge. I caught the 10 bus opp Energy Works back to town

the great Wilmington Cafe

#thisisameadow

Not breakfast, but start of HOTBED in greenhouse

Are you sure your meadow is a meadow?

You might well wonder

You might not guess of what this is a picture.

I've been to York today to a wedding. It took weeks of monumental planning for C and I just to go as guests. We live an hours train journey away from York . The Church , St Michael le Belfry is only a ten minute walk from the station.

Yet we know we  have a condition called Don't go anywhere muchitus.

Since we received the invitation we have been busy .

 We spent no time at all booking the Premier Inn in Blossomgate for two nights.We thought it would be good to go the night before so C would not have to rush, and stay the night after the Service , as it was New Years Eve and the fireworks on the river should be good. 

This plan lasted for a month, and we realised that there would be no trains on New Years Day* , so we planned a trip to Scarborough Station  to see if it was feasable to get to York and back in a day around the wedding times without having to drive in the dark if the car was left at Seamer in the morning . 

This plan also lasted a day , as we realised we didn't want to take the car to Seamer at all but would use the bus to Scarborough and have a taxi back .

This seemed a good plan . 

We had abandoned the overnight stay before the wedding as we didn't want to carry any luggage to the church . Here I explain . If we go away for a week we take as much luggage as we do for 1 night , the constant being pills, pills, pills, slippers, warm sleepwear, bottles of Tonic water for prevention of gout, Fibregell sachets, Horlicks sachets, spare pillowcase so as not to soil the ones at Premier Inn, torch, spare glasses, library books and spare shoes in case feet hurt .We also have a condition called Geriatric Obsessive Compulsive Disease , and have forgotten that we once used to go Youth Hostelling with a back pack , so also have a condition called Sporadic Memory Loss.

We did get to Scarborough eventually as C likes to go to the Barber there, our bank has moved there and we do not have a manned station in Filey , and although I am very good at getting train tickets online usually , just sometimes we prefer to use the services of a real person behind a desk at no extra charge.We did really well at the station , the booking clerk was excellent and we got first class tickets From Filey to York single, and York back to Seamer single (thus avoiding a long wait , and knowing that no 1 daughter or son in law would pick us  up )  for less than the cost of petrol .We don't have Watch every penny syndrome as we don't want to save up for a care home.

So we are all set for the wedding . I would have forgotten to cancel the Premier inn but a week ago I had an email saying that the lifts would not be working , and as we had booked an accessible room we might like to cancel . Thank You God .

Today Spouse was up dressed and in his Wedding Suit at 6am for our 9am planned  departure . He had worked out the best way to walk to the station, a 5 min walk for me , and a 20 min walk for him . We could have had  a row about the route to the Scarborough platform avoiding the footbridge, but for once I said nothing . Usually I let him go off first and meet him on the platform , but today I knew he would appreciate an arm. He was already anxious about getting to the church for 12.00 noon  to allow 30 mins for the Bride to be prompt.

 I checked the trains were all running using the Live departure apps.

WE enjoyed the scenic ride from Seamer to York , the sun out and shining on the Derwent, and the ruins of Kirkham Abbey , the ridge and furrow looking suitably medieval on the west of the track , the river high and the train on time into York .

The rest of the day was just PERFECT .

Have you guessed the picture at the top of this post ?

I have a condition called Smart Phone going to run out of charge Anxiety Syndrome. So I was delighted to find a 3pin plug under my wooden kneeler in my Church Pew. Thank You God . You do supply all our needs.

* WE WERE WRONG

Treading water

Tagetes  minuta

I'm not letting this past growing season move on to the season of treading water and sparing the watering can ,without praising Tagetes minuta , and hoping that everyone who is a gardener and reads this post will grow some next year .

It masquerades as a bog standard French or African marigold when it germinates .

Rule 1 , always label your seed trays . This one grows and grows  and grows and a rogue one amongst a neat border of the bedding marigold will not become obvious until about June when the municipal ones are behaving as they should . In my case ,I grow the latter to keep the border edge obvious on my no dig beds. I just don't have time to manicure edges.
Rule 2 Remember how tall T.minuta may grow. This year they are over a metre high, whereas the T.tigers eyes are about 19cm.

 Rule 3. Read the books on Companion Planting . I like Bob Flowerdew's simple  The Companion garden .You will discover that T. minuta is reputed to repel COUCH GRASS AND BINDWEED by exuding noxious secretions from its roots , or that's  the gist . I cannot see how any one on Filey Allotments then could do without it . I spend hours in February and March trying to dig out all the subterranean runners of Couch Grass. I delight when a huge piece comes out , and try to get every little bit out , but its still rife in the boundary edges of my plots. Next year I am going to plant serious borders of the giant annual, hoping to create windbreaks and artillery .
Rule 4 Always spend time making sure your allotment guests smell T minuta. It is highly and pleasantly aromatic.




T minuta November 2018





Its treading water at the moment too. The winds and rain are very rough today . I've been up to the plot in the gales to see if the roof is still on the shed and if the T minuta has all fallen over, it is and it hasn't .

I go further up stream

The Northern Rail Strikes on Saturday have done me a favour . Needing to be in Kingston upon Hull by lunchtime and having 3 hours to use wisely before meeting Hull Sister I head off river bound from a quicker than train journey on a National Express coach .

Soon I will never again use these 50s handles .They are on a shop I have known all my life as Hammonds OKA House of Fraser whose CLOSING DOWN POSTERS have upset the windows since last night.

Hull sister has told me about a POP UP ART Gallery around Scott Street Bridge. I now know the way, my senses are responding to my hometown , 53 years since I left it. I cross FreeTown way , and see again the Albion Pub, once a lurid pink , now back to a respectable yellow , and on to Scott Street bridge , and my first glimpse of the Graf Art .

I have enjoyed Graf Art for years , but especially since Eurostar drew in to Gare du Nord in 09 and  first took real notice of the Graffiti and started looking for tags.  The difference here in Wincolmlee was that artists were openly working using spray cans and rollers and paint trays , with surprising purples and blues as if someone has found left over paint cans in the garage from the 60s. 

On to Air Street , for the next room of the gallery . I found a little graveyard, St Mary's Sculcoates, a little oasis of green amongst the rat run streets and emerging wall art. Its a timeless corner considering that everything around it is changing by the day .

Why had I never seen the fantastic bridge over the river that is Wilmington ? Now just a foot bridge , but once I'm sure the Hornsea Line must have come this way. I digress here as nostalgia kicks in , and I remember that I could see the trains from to Hornsea miles away across the the flat Holderness Countryside from our house on a small rise, Riseholme  near Sutton . How thrilled were we children when we saw our first Diesel speeding by near Swine!

Air street is as far as I went up stream today , I enjoyed the walk back even more as I kept to the Bankside, and found another bridge , Chapman Street Bridge , a swing bridge for Road Traffic this time. I would have followed my nose to Cleveland Street , a road I knew well in the 1960s, the route of the 37 bus from our village into town , past the Oil and Cake Mill and the Ropery with the eponymous name written in a vast piece of rope several metres high . Who can forget the awful smell from the Mill when the wind blew the fumes to Saltshouse Road ?

When I got back to Scott Street not an artist was around. I had met the Project Manager. It must have taken lots of RED TAPE to get the permissions in place for the Impromptu but hopefully permanent and evolving Bankside Gallery up and running in the months since my last walk . I hope it doesn't get sanitised and lose its rough edge . I hope no Chain Coffee shops or Gin Lounges will think to open near Rix Truck depot , but everyone will use the Albion and the Bankside Cafe .
Next time , I'm starting at Air Street and walking to Stoneferry, where my Great Grandfather , Benjamin John Elder Bruce , lived at the Waterworks House on the Sculcoates side of the River with his wife and children .

I saw some other Art too in Air Street , a deliberate attempt at print making , of the sort found for many thousands of years  all over the world. I liked that too .

Neptune Street

The only Old bit of Neptune Street we could find

I like it when Hull sister needs someone to accompany her to a hospital appointment . She always wants to be there in good time and we invariably have time for some positive exploring  before I get one of the very two hourly trains back home. This time we were finished  by 09.15 , we had a leisurely coffee and decided as we were so near Albert Dock we would have a stroll to find the beautifully named Neptune Street . 

In a former post  I described the day I went looking for Rose Downs and Thompsons . I had in my mind that it was where my grandfather Benjamin John Elder Bruce had served his apprenticeship in 1894 to 7. I imagined him walking to work from Stoneferry as a young man .

My mistake surfaced when back home, I realised  it was Amos and Smith not Rose, Downs and Thompsons. I found Neptune Street , the address on the indenture document on Google Maps , and I am now untangling my mess.

So sister and I passed the end of Hessle Road and under the Clive Sullivan Way underpass, by Smith and Nephews , formerly in Neptune Street , which Google Maps soon found for us. Here in heartland industrial Kingston upon Hull , once the throbbing riverside gateway to the Baltic via Wilsons  , the fishing grounds and the nearby homes of all the decky-learners  we couldn't find any trace of Amos and Smith .We did find some old walls and an empty  Victorian redbrick possibility . Hull sister and I wandered as far as we dared , the street framed on one side by Albert Dock side, behind a no-go Barrier with a man in a hut , and an embankment which promised dock water on the other side , and a derelict shuttered 70s factory on the other we knew we could go no further . Sister and I were glad when a lady in a car leaving the only industrial unit around  drew up and asked us if we were lost , 

"no "we said "but tired "

and she ran us all the way back to the City Centre when we explained we were looking for Amos and Smith which closed in 1961 . 

I've discovered that the Victorian building was the remains of the Goods Yard bringing coal to Albert Dock on the Hull and Barnsley Railway , to the Neptune Street Depot. From 1968 it had been the site of Drapers , responsible for  desolation and destruction as steam locomotives were dismantled for scrap . Of Amos and Smith we then had found NOTHING . I can't even find any pictures in Google images. A visit to the Hull History Centre would suffice, but my mind has moved on .

I've just found all Grandpas ships papers, for the Apprentice went on to be a Ships Engineer , sailing out of Albert Dock with the Wilson Line on the Baltic run and 4 times to the USA . He started on the Toledo , built in Hull in 1881 and ignobly scrapped in 1908 all 1900 tons of her .

Sound onions and Tomatilloes

Tomatilloes

'Sound onions ' used to say an advertising sign on a stall in the Northcote Road vegetable and fruit market where I did all my shopping 50 years ago on the way home from work in Belleville school in Wandsworth. 

Fresh from Teacher Training, in own rented flat in West Hill Road off the Merton Road , a 39 or 77a bus ride away from work near 'the Junction' I soon learned that I knew nothing at all about vegetables, or cooking or Afro-Caribbean culture or what 'halal' meant : all so different from my East Riding home, and my Ripon College. 

I came from a village where the bus to town came three times a day , but on time, to live in an urban village network where the buses came every 10 minutes. Sometimes three  buses had just been at  once, so there was a 20 min wait , but  one could get a train to the Festival hall on the South Bank in five minutes and so be from kitchen to Lionel Rogg or Jacques Loussier in half an hour after a busy day at school . Flatmate and I used to go about twice a week to concerts , and every Saturday to Galleries and Museums and shopping down the Kings Road . The shopping for fresh food was  done every day , and the variety of produce was as much a novelty for me as the buzz of 60s London.

Szechuan pepper tree

It is  the Northcote Road street market that I mourn most when I  travel around London now, on great buses with my Old Lady pass, to Museums and Art galleries , but no more street market now in the Northcote. 

Filey thankfully still has a Greengrocer where I buy all my fruit and veg that I don't grow on my allotment , but nothing will ever replace the  didactic experience of encountering Yams , Sweet Potatoes, Plantain and even courgettes for the first time.
In Mrs Gaskell's Cranford of 1850s , oranges were a rare novelty, the rich landowners grew them in Orangeries, in World War 2 a scarcity of bananas led to the death of our family Parrot, and a lemon was a luxury . There seem to be no fruit or vegetables  not be imported into the UK now. We get one variety of Aubergine, grown in Spain ,in our local shop, but in street markets of Leeds and Bradford I see many varieties . I see Chickpeas and Gogi  berries, we are growing both, but the highlight of spouses summer is that the Kiwi vine he planted 25 years ago is finally fruiting in the Filey windy climate after a really hot summer. We have 2 Szechuan pepper trees, one now 30cm tall ,from a 5cm plant which arrived mail order in February. This one in the back yard is doing well , better than the one in my cold frame on the plot.
Always heartened by an article from the RHS magazine of 1990 ,which I keep on my Gardening bookshelf , I am delighted that the Okra plant given me by friend Ann C is doing well in the heat. I, like the author of the article 28years ago , have never managed to bring my plants to fruit . The irony of this years success is that although I still make curry , we have gone off the taste and consistency of Okra. The rest of the article is concerned with the production of Horny cucumbers which in 1990 could be obtained as seeds from Chiltern Seeds, now no longer it seems . Though an oddity , they have not been discovered yet as a Superfood. Not so the Cucamelons, being feted online this year. Dear friend in Wensleydale gave me 2 plants. They are rampant around the greenhouse and bear marble sized mini melons. We don't rate the taste , superfruit or not , so I've pickled them with a recipe from James Wong.

Every year I write notes for the following year . last year I wrote
 'do not grow more than 3 Courgette plants' 
and so I didn't . Three have been more than enough. I will write next year, belt and braces,
'do not grow more than 2 courgette plants'
I am picking 4 every day , so Chutney production is in progress , using the tomatilloes , hot chillies, the poblano Chillies and the courgettes . My original idea was that we would eat Mexican recipes from Rick Steins BBC  TV programme . Another bright idea bites the dust , as we have not fancied lots of hot food this summer, and spouse and I tried to like the  breadcrumbed Poblano Chillies stuffed with cheese and deep fried , but they are an acquired taste . The Poblano chillies are not as exotic as they seemed on TV, and deep fried cheese is only one step away from a deep fried Mars Bar in our fat free diets.
As for sound onions, I only realised today the significance of the phrase, for this year my onions on the plot have not been sound, and neither have those of my neighbour on the next door plot . Many have saddleback ends , from watering after a period of prolonged drought . Next year I will not water at all , or will water regularly . I shall put a note in my book .