Talkin' bloggin'...

Perhaps I should go through every entry and delete the expletives - tomorrow morning (at around 11.10am) I appear on Radio Humberside to talk about blogging and, who knows, maybe some of the nice listeners will come along and pay the blog a visit.

The taking of photographs and videography by the public in Hull's wind tunnel-cum-shopping mall St Stephen's has been banned on the advice of Humberside Police, on the grounds that such happy snapping could all pose a terrorist threat. You'd think that terrorists might work in a slightly more sophisticated manner than whipping out their low-res Motorolas, maybe choosing instead to look at widely available plans and elevations such as these or the ridiculous amount of images that have already been taken before planning their bombing campaigns. Apparently, photography will be allowed if the photographer in question has 'legitimate reasons'. Ask yourself "why do you take photographs?" and I'll bet the answers you come up with, for the most part, sound a bit silly and not in the least 'legitimate'. Yes, St Stephen's is private property and they can do whatever they want, but life just gets dafter, eh?

Reading: Yukio Mishima - Spring Snow

I wanna know have you ever seen the rain...

Ah, what a wonderful Christmas. Presents and good times galore. Hope yours went well too.


But back to the business of moaning and groaning...

When I first perused Hull's new shopping experience St Stephen's, I thought I'd started to lose the plot. Here was a retail development that reckoned it brought the High Street, well, indoors, under the cover of a zillion sheets of curvy glass. Which lends one to believe that the weather won't be joining you as you nip in and out of H&M, Game and the mighty Tesco. Yet, as well as being underwhelmed by the amount of retail units that had been let back in September, I could have sworn, as I mingled with the madding crowds, that rain was hitting my body. The shopping continued and I marked the odd rain drop down to my ever-muddled brain playing tricks on me.
Just three months on, though, and it would appear that the rain was indeed entering this steel and glass structure. Today, a small army of chaps in flourescent jackets were mopping the slippery shiny floor like crazy demons. They don't build these things like they used to, eh? I do hope it came with a guarantee.

The bear truth...

Friend phones me to arrange a meeting while I'm out on the lifeboat. I phoned back and left a message: "I know it sounds like some crazy Billy Liar style fantasy but I couldn't pick the phone up when you called because I was on a lifeboat not far from the North Sea." Quite possibly the only time in my life that I'll ever say that.

Walked through Hull's fancy new transport interchange. A strange young man was battering seven bells of shit out of a public telephone as two security guards watched him and then turned their backs. "You're doing a great job there, gents, ignoring someone who is deliberately damaging a piece of equipment right before your eyes. Are you going to stop him?" "Have you got a bus to catch? Go on, get on it," was the rather disappointing response from this chocolate fireguard pair of uniformed imbeciles.

Hull's retail renaissance is certainly picking up pace. Not only the st but, brace yourselves, a brand spanking new mega-sized Home Bargains in the city centre. Quality, as the youth say.
And now this, a new store for Goodmawe Bears. Which is, surely, worthy of as much publicity as the local meeja can throw at it and, I expect, all Hull bloggers will be putting up their own posts. Goodmawe Bears are 'Hull's leading bear specialist'. Which you can't really argue with. I know of no other bear specialists around these parts and, should I ever need any specialist knowledge if, say, I'm fighting a bear or getting a bear to dance, I now know who to turn to.

Tags: lifeboats, Hull, St Stephen's development, bears

St...st...st...stuttering start...

It's finally open then. Well, I say open, the actual St Stephen's shopping centre - sorry, mixed-use scheme's - open, but there's a distinct lack of, erm, shops. True, there's a few leading names up and running but there's also a lot of retail outlets still having the finishing touches added and quite a few units 'under offer' or still up for grabs. Which is all a bit anti-climatic. I can't say that retail excites me sufficiently to start frothing at the mouth just because we now have an H&M, Zara and Build-a-Bear to call our own. I don't care for a Gala Bingo taking up so much prominent floor space. I've been in enough large supermarkets to not even bat an eyelid at the sight of another Tesco.

Nice and bright and airy it may be but St Stephen's lacks anything close to the damp patch of sexual excitement-inducing WOW! factor. It has the distinct look of a building designed by an architect with a bezier curve obsession and a drink problem. Which, at £200m, is something of a shame. According to the HDM, and I'm sure they're right, 40,000 people turned up on opening day. With that kind of footfall, it would have been nice if there'd been more to be impressed by - as it is, the gun's been jumped by a couple of months. They should've opened in November. And this from one of Hull's biggest fans - I want everything here to be great, the best, better than everywhere else. As it is, st is all hype and talk and brand and not a lot of substance. Yet. Fingers crossed it will play a part in Hull's renaissance.

Tags: Hull, Ferensway, St Stephen's development

St...st...st...st...st...st...

There's some new branding in Hull. It involves two letters: st
These two letters are being used to good effect. You can highlight that a new retail and leisure development is a new start for Hull. You can prefix Stephen's with a st or suffix High with a st. And, erm, loads of other stuff. It's like, wow, everything round here's gone st and st is going to take us to a higher state of consciousness. st is like a new drug around these parts, we all need our fix of st and before we know it the Pride, Freedom, Belief, Change banners will go and st signage will replace them, and all Hull residents will be fitted with st implants. Every instance of st gets the st treatment: 'some of the largest units available in the city centre', 'accessed by new stations for bus and rail' and 'more than a shopping destination' the st Stephen's development website screams, just in case we haven't got it yet. What does st say? We're simply the best. Or, just maybe, we're the shittest at coming up with anything that transcends the usual bullshit marketing that short-sighted visionary creatives dream up between polishing the lenses in their Alain Mikli glasses? Here's your logo, get the large cheque in the post as quick as you can. st? Let's be honest: It's sterile, stupid and stinks.
Anyway, despite my unhealthy cynicism we're all getting behind this new development. Not because centre manager David Laycock has asked us to, on the telly, no less, but because we fancy doing a bit of shopping in a big greenhouse, pretending, as we meander through the 18m wide mall, that we're in a High st. You know, the High st that we killed off when we built these fancy glass-encased shops. But it was worth it, cos we also get a new cinema multiplex to go with the others, a low-budget hotel and 2,500 service industry jobs. Whoopee! As for a new start, shouldn't we have finished the other Hull first before setting about inflicting a new one on the country?

Meeting about the play. Fruitful, infectious enthusiasm in the room and all bordering on the very exciting. But much work ahead as I wrestle with the shape of the ruddy thing. It's a mismatch - the play, if it were a wrestler, would be The Undertaker. Whereas I'm a chancer climbing through the ropes in a pair of ill-fitting, baggy Y-fronts. I need to get my hands on some allegorical steroids.