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

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 !