Wednesday 26 March 2008

Yet Again, Hull Freezeth Over...

I'm up in Yorkshire at the moment, spending a few nights in bucolic Richmond after a weekend in the slightly edgier environs of (Kingston-upon-) Hull. I've only ever been to Hull in the sliver of December that falls between Boxing Day and New Years, those ambiguous days of belt-burst lethargy, and it has always been absolutely freezing on these occasions. I thought I'd surprise the gods of Hull and Holderness (William Wilberforce? Clive Sullivan?) by coming at a different time of year, but they were one step ahead of me and laid on a White Easter of 'sharp snow' and gritter wagons.

On Easter Monday, we went to Withernsea, Hull's coastal annex, where we froze on the beach and ate fish and chips. I haven't Flickred my photos yet: soon. After doing the obligatory tour of the amusements- Withernsea amusements are an exercise in psychopathology- we went to the lighthouse which is, unusually, inland. Rather than being enclosed in its own stairwell, the staircase to the light wound around the inside wall of the tower, allowing me to experience a higher threshold of vertiginous anxiety than any I've previously known. I felt like I was trapped in a Borges story. It didn't help that the people I was visiting the lighthouse with weren't so cowed by the drop and kept on leaning over the rail with their cameras. I thought I was going to throw my own over the bannister.

We went back to Hull in time to catch a gig by The Fall, who I've never seen before. This probably deserves its own write-up when I'm feeling less logophobic, but I'm willing to say that I was both delighted and surprised by the show.

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