#Hull City of Culture 2017 (two) Yes, I was made in Hull !

I am poised, Credit Card ready,  Family pre-warned , Family agreed, Family poised for when at 8.30 am on ticket release day  I shall let Hull Know that we want tickets for the Firework Display on January 1st which kick starts the #Hull City of Culture 2017 big time.

In fact this City of K U Hull Girl has planned a 3day City visit for the family , the London Born, the Scarborough Born, the Oldham Born and the Kingston Upon Hull born . My sisters and I are really going to say ,

COME BACK TO OURS !

Ive been blogging about Hull since my first tentative post in 2006, when I was working using Dial- up and had not even got a Digital Camera let alone a smartphone. 

I'd only been able to use the internet since when  in 1997 each classroom in school was given a Computer .  I even remember the Head coming to me one morning and saying he'd just discovered a wonderful search engine called Google! We used Yahoo before that . 

I was  started on my journey to computer literacy  in Hull too. I've just found my certificate certifying that I'd followed a programme of study in Introduction to Information Technology  at Humberside University campus in June 1997 . 

So nearly 20 years later I find myself with a houseful of devices , Plusnet, 2Macs, 2 PCs, an old netbook, a Raspberry Pi and a second career as PA to Computer illiterate family members.who receive e messages on my email account.  The Grandchildren, however, who have been using my devices since they  could reach the keyboard for Jeux Poisson Rouge are now disappearing upstairs to the office and returning with imovies they've done on the Minimac. I find compositions on Garage Band in my Files and they've moved on from Minecraft to Utube and they are leaving me behind with their expertise . Each time  I open my MacAir  a new login dialogue box will be there under mine to allow  MinorMayhem  or Rooreviewer to log in . 

My G grandfather would have seen these

The #Hull City of Culture is the first time for me then that a whole year event  is being organized using the best of  the  technology of DIGITAL AGE . I applaud you ! Yes it was great that even here in the outpost that is Filey ,(once in the East Riding) , Look North , from Leeds  was featuring #Hull2017 on 22nd September, all the forth estate seemed to be shouting Hull , and my pride just swelled and swelled.  #fb and Twitter posts from the Hull Daily Mail and #Hull2017 kept appearing on Social Media . I was well informed.

So Ive bought tickets for The Hypocrite,( I'm looking now at the woodcut of Sir John Hotham on my office wall), with the delightful miniature of Hull in the corner ,heading this post .

I've opened my account ready for Firework Tickets, booked the wonderful  Premier Inn in Tower Street and am going to bed hoping that at on the release  morning the website will just let me on before I start another  busy day .

Made in Hull, I certainly was, 70 years of my HISTORY . I'm thinking of registering an interest in the Community Brand,  after all I want to do my vicarious bit  for the 47 models . 

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)

Entrepreneurs of Hull , read this ! #Hull City Of Culture

In my mind Ive never seen this in the Science Museum . I must have done , but never read the label and realised that it was the very one that was flown by Amy Johnson to Australia, D.H.60 Moth 1928 G-AAAH Jason.

She is a famous daughter of Hull, and many of us learned about her thrilling flight as we were at school just after the  2nd World War. Hull people needed a heroine then , just as we do now. I've been to Sewerby and seen the exhibition of her personal artefacts donated by her family .

So today I read in the Times that the Science Museum has refused to lend the plane to Hull for the City Of Culture 2017 event . Their reasons are all very sound, just as Hulls reasons for borrowing it are very sound. This debate will no doubt run . I wait to see comments on the Hull Facebook and Hull and East Riding  pages, which are THE place to see what Hullesians really think. IMO. AS a rider here I say that Philip Larkin might have been a great poet, but SON OF HULL HE WAS NOT. 

So to you organisers of festivals and entrepreneurs of Kingston upon Hull's City of Culture 2017 event, make something of this!

Hire a large warehouse or Shop  down Humber Street:

• Make a Lego replica of the Gipsy Moth (Span 8.84m (29’) Length 7.16m (23’6”)
• Make a cardboard replica of the Gipsy Moth 
• Make a CAD of the one in the Science Museum , they cant object to that , display on giant screen
• Order very small, plastic models of the Gipsy Moth (in a local Plastic Factory ) to sell 
• Make a film , a Biopic starring locals , and involving students doing Media Studies
• Have a competition amongst local Schools to write short stories about Amy Johnson , or Play Scripts. Arrange for the best to be performed in the exhibition Venue, filmed or shared on u tube
• Get your 8 year old grandchildren to design a Minecraft Aviation game , or adventure 
• Get a Listening Project going like the one on BBC radio 4 where people of Hull aged 80 can talk about Amy Johnson, Aviation, travelling by Air, doodlebugs etc

There I've given you a start !Get Going NOW

Hull City of Culture 2017 (one)

The first of occasional blog posts ,  a contribution to the preparations of my home city as it becomes 

the UK City of Culture 2017 

I'm going to be kind about Kingston upon Hull. The City of Culture for 2017 is just my favourite City north of the Humber , west of Leeds and south of Newcastle. I have known it for 68 years and 8 months and 17days. I love its potential and I love its blatant  cheek. Its so needs to be City of Culture 2017 and most of all its people  need to stop complaining about the City Council, the fat Cats owning derelict land, the state of Edwin Davis's, the bad Town planning of the 1960s and 70s and just RISE ABOVE IT and start being positive.

I've been watching the billboarding as one comes into Paragon from all other stations in the country. There we have it. For like Bristol and Oban one can only go into Kingston on Hull on the train . The Scarborough to Sheffield train goes into Hull and out again . A hundred and 20 years ago Hull was a thoroughfare for migrants from Baltic States, and  my own economic migrant Great Grandfather,  Benjamin John Elder Bruce . Having been Chief Waterworks Engineer for the City of Hull in the 1870s he  took all his large family to New York in the 1890s, with the exception of my grandfather who was an Engineer on Wilson line .(Later Ellerman Wilson Line). The platform for Migrants travelling through Hull to Liverpool is still there at Paragon Station. 

My credentials and right to speak -

• born in Albert Avenues Ingarvie Nursing home before the NHS. Brought into the world by my aunt , a Midwife who volunteered and gave her time freely to help her sister peri and post natally . Born in the year that saw a huge rise in births after the war . 
• born as eldest of  a family of 5 who rented a small flat in Marlborough Avenue, rather than live with in -laws in a city where bombing had razed to the ground all social housing on a scale never seen before. 
• born into a City still reeling from the devastation and trauma of years of war whose only consolation was that it was known, though never allowed to glory in being ,just A city on the East coast
• Educated at Cavendish Road Primary School and the innovative and bold Scheme tried but failed called, Greatfield High School with 3 schools on campus, Newton Hall. Shakespeare Hall and Elizabethan Hall
• Nurtured by a local family , encouraged, and affirmed. A child taken to the New Theatre to see Opera and Ballet in the afternoon matinees.
•  Taught to appreciate the local area, from Holderness to the Wolds and walked round Old Hull and shown interesting pre war remnants .
• A teenager  who spent Saturdays going to the Library in Albion Street and the City Hall for the Halle and had a season ticket for  Hull Choral Union, whose best friend's Dad worked at Reckitts and had read more books than I'd even heard of and could talk on any subject .
• A young person who discovered Ferens Art Gallery in the days when the cafe was upstairs, and  coffee out in Fields was a treat , and who was not allowed to go to the milk bar (I ask u!) near Whiting and Pitts where all the incrowd of the 6th form went  or the Locarno where everyone else went . 
• Someone who has lived away from Hull and returned to appreciate it , having an informed perspective

I left home as soon as I could,   and went alone to work in London , getting a flat with a girl from college who I barely knew , and worked , married and lived there for years . A City of Culture I really know about , I return to the Capital as often as I can . I know what Kingston upon Hull could be as a Culture Hub. London it will never be, why would anyone want it to be something its not ? Its a unique , historic, gutsy city, and I'm going  to give it some encouragement of of my own  over the next 13 months  before 2017. 

Larkin Statue
Hull Blitz
Toads and Larkin
Weekend in Hull

Hull Blitz-a city on the east Coast

Aunty Alice had to wear this homemade ID tag all during the 1939-45 war in case her body had to be identified.

Brown paper strips were still stuck to the pantry window even in 1986 when she died and the house was sold. 

An incendiary bomb did once land on the huge communal front lawn *and so as all the glass in the house was shattered and  had to be repaired, the family- Grandpa , Grandma, unable to walk  since 1930, Aunty Alice , spinster of the Parish , housekeeper, carer, cook and chief bottle washer,  were all evacuated to Market Weighton to the vicarage to sit out the war, but they did  return after a few months to Sutton.  My father worked for Hull Corporation Telephones and spent the war fire watching in Sutton at night having worked all day cycling round the docks doing telecommunication type things and hoping not to set off unexploded bombs  with the vibration of the bike. The air raid shelter was a reinforced dining room , as grandma was not mobile. My whole early years were coloured by stories of the war in Hull, and more especially its effect on a household.It was always drummed in to me that Hull was only ever called 'a city on the East Coast' and that a wider world just had no idea of the devastation.


*http://www.rhaywood.karoo.net/pics/maps/_8.gif
http://www.hullblitz.org/

Have looked at these 2 sites and cannot verify the heresay from my Aunt, (who died 1986) Will talk to aged parent (91) tomorrow and see if she knows where the bomb dropped. She is all there and half way back and will remember what she was told. She , born in Birkenhead , spent most  of her war in the WAAF in Gloucestershire and Worcestershire and married my father in 1946.

Amendment


Mother said that there was a bomb and bomb blast. The family of Grandma, Grandpa and Aunty Alice did indeed go to Market Weighton for over a year. Father remained at Church Mount,and the maid was kept on to keep the house  clean and presumably do laundry . She did not live in , but came in every day. Father was in charge of the Sutton Telephone Exchange(corner of Holderness Road and Mayberry Ave). In the evenings he had to Fire Watch at the docks, and keep the telecommunications going on Ships.

HULL CITY OF CULTURE -ALWAYS HAS BEEN

Toads and Toads Revisited

I wonder what Philip Larkin would have said if he knew that giant fibreglass toads were to be placed around Hull. Thankfully Hull City Council has thought better of making money out of the dour but fascinating librarian. Larkin 25  has been however organized and is running until December.

 Now this Bridteacher has always loved poetry, and has to confess that she has never read much Larkin. This is going to change. I am going to put it right. So I am going to read Toads, and Toads Revisited very carefully . 

Larkin I'm sure ,with me would  not have been   interested in statues and model toads.  He was by all account a taciturn and singular man who needed no approbation in such a vulgar way. 

We never lived near each other in Hull, as I moved from Marlborough Avenue in 1953. We knew the same streets, and Pearson Park.Larkin lived in My Childhood Hull.  Infact my Great Grandfather designed the fountains in the Avenues , and so I shall be searching the poetry for any reference to the victorian monstrosities  now well loved by those looking for anything arty that survived the bombing (when most of Hull didn't).

will be Hull City of Culture 2017, as has always been !