Tuesday, April 18, 2006

Here Today, Gone Tomorrow

Yes, that place on the left really is the building that sucks the life out of me. Mail Towers, Hull's very own News Pyramid, an architectural anomaly stuck in the period in which it was built, a building containing lots of blonde advertising sorts, Paddingtons pregnant girlfriends, newshounds, hacks, snappers, far too many executive car weilders, press room folk that do real work, Tommy Tuttle: Legend of the Post Room (sadly, despite the superhero status, his conversational subject matter is restricted to franking machines), jobsworth security guards and a fair few desperate souls like me. It's real name is Blundell's Corner. Named after the corner on which it stands, which, I'm assuming, was named after a bloke called Blundell. Doesn't the place look dull? That's not an optical illusion. And see that American Gothic-style evil looking sky overhead? That's always there and, occasionally, when the editor is attempting to whip his troops into a frenzy, there's the odd hurricane swirling around and about that kerazily designed roof. Inside? Why, it's a hotbed of activity. It's news. It's lively. It's frantic. The air-con is fucked. Most of the men are grey or balding or beared or all three. Or young and good looking and homosexual. Most of the women are pregnant. That there is the news desk. See those two people in the background? They're probably setting the news agenda, working out how to serve the community or how to be a better breed of media gatekeeper. Or, maybe, talking about who's shagging who. You see, people that work at newspapers don't do much outside of work. Apart from each other.
Luckily, I get out of the office enough so as not to be driven completely mad by all this. Tomorrow, for instance, I'm off to the races for the afternoon. On other occasions, I calm myself by admiring Hull's dramatic and ever-changing landscape. It's not just fish around here, oh no. Sometimes, it's chips too. And concrete being poured non-stop. And new shopping malls. And big cranes. And blokes in hard hats and fluorescent bibs. And signs announcing that we're Stepping Up, Going Places, and that we're moving from Wasteland To WOW! If only slogans could make a city, we'd be the best motherfucking place on the planet.

4 comments:

Tha BossMack TopSoil said...

excellent

David said...

very good, if a little surreal for the rest of us in the building - reading it feels a bit like an out of body experience.

The misplaced apostrophe in the word "its" ("It's real name is Blundell's Corner")however sent shudders through my spine.

I think you should sit down Dave, and spend some time thinking about what you've done. You've let yourself down, you've let me down, and you've let the rest of the class down.

Anonymous said...

I like horses
Best of all the animals
I Like Horses
They're my friends.

Dave W said...

Aw, shoot, please don't send me back to Paul Hartle'ys apos'trophe class'. Whoever said you were spineless was wrong, anyway, David. Now, please enable comments on your blog so we can have some reeel fun.