AN EERIE EXPERIENCE

kerryevans1
Jan 11, 2017
5 min read

2nd January Jake has departed after the New Year break and my plan is to drink in everything Made in Hull has to offer today. I plan on an early start. I wake up near to 1pm exhausted from preparing a New Year Feast. For a change I manage to catch a taxi into Barton to make up time. It’s so cold I will have to buy some gloves when I hit Hull. A short wait for the half hourly 350 bus to Hull and I am at Stand 30 Paragon Bus Station. I walk up towards the bus and train station entrance to the Information Booth. I want to make sure I have not missed any events. A volunteer asks where I am from and as I am out of town hands me a leaflet about Old Hull and skirts around the issue that aside from Bowhead at the Maritime Museum and the light shows projected on buildings, there is not much new to see or do in Hull this week. She senses I am disappointed and says she must write a leaflet on pubs to explore in old Hull. I don’t have the heart tell her I have frequented all of them. So I head for the Records Office to do some research on my whaling book. The building is near to Hull’s New Theatre which is undergoing a revamp at the moment. I love this part of the city. I sit and have a sandwich in a green overlooking the theatre. Two men are erecting scaffolding at the front. Sadly it will be some time before I am watching anything here. To the left of the imposing Victorian structure a modern wing is appearing. I walk along the side to the Records Office as it is beginning to spit . To the left I see the crumbling façade and the a blue and white modern renovated section which doesn’t seem at all in keeping with the area. To the right are a cluster of Georgian Houses including a Homeopaths with gild edged lettering on the windows which has now been smashed. Walking into this region used to be like going back a 100 years in time. Now with the sounds of diggers going back and forth, girders being hammered in and 21st Century architecture rearing its head, it isn’t the quiet corner it was. The Old Gentleman pub on the corner still looks the same thankfully. I get stung for £5 in late returns I never knew I had accumulated and ask about arranging to see collections of old whaling ship logs. My novel The Hanged Man of Grossness is about right whale fishing in Greenland with Hull and Shetland based crews, and I want it to be authentic. In the 1700 and eighteen hundreds Hull was the second most important whaling port in Europe. I recognise the guy behind the counter from the last time I was here. “I’m not sure I like the changes to the New Theatre. I liked the old one” I said to fill time while he us re-

registering me. I had lost my library ticket. He smiled like he agreed but did not want to ruffle any feathers by saying so. “Yes but I saw them struggling to get equipment in for Starlight Express. The old design couldn’t cope with what is needed to stage a large show today”. He had a point there. I had been to see David Essex with my daughter Chloe about five years ago and watched speakers and fun fair rides being hauled through the same side entrance I just passed passed. These old theatres are architecturally grand but inaccessible to many. “What’s all the building behind the Resource Centre?” I ask. “A new Sixth Form College” is the reply. I sigh. I used to be able to sit in this centre and get lost in whaling books in a quiet little patch still in the 1800’s. Since Trinity House Naval School had moved from the centre of Hull these modern eye saws were springing up. The Academy had retained the old uniform with the navy blazers and brass buttons, but yet another link with the Sea was being severed. What I love about Hull are these spots which are snow globes of a rich fishing heritage. Today I am trying to get the feel of what it was like being at sea for long periods. I seem to empathise more with the hunted than the hunters. I swell up looking at pictures of polar bear cubs with nooses around their necks being dragged off icebergs to their demise. Before I know it 2 hours have passed and I hear a fog horn in the distance. It is after 4pm. I take out some books and walk into town. I stand near the Queen Victoria statute and wait with the quickly growing crowd. I get talking to a grandma Ivy from Preston while we wait to see the light instillations that bounce off the walls of the three grand buildings in the Square. We talk about the fireworks and how her Granddaughter filmed them from a garden in Preston on the outskirts of Hull. She insists her relative shows them to me. The people of Hull are so friendly. She does so happily. We get in conversation while we are waiting. The Granddaughter is a freelance journalist. The lovely lady I am talking to had lost her Dad at sea before she met him. When the clock beamed on the buildings gets to 10 everyone starts the countdown. It is like THE BIG BANG all over again. It feels quite eerie. There is a half moon surrounded by mist. Just before it got dark I watched staff in mini fireman like lifts making final adjustments to the sound systems which reach up to the sky. But when the show starts it is just like you are the only one here living the experience. I like this approach to culture. Not high brow. Accessible to all. A plane rudder appears. Images of war and Hull Fair and the music scenes Hull is famous for. I feel like I have been part of a movie set. Simulated smoke and fires from the top of epic sized buildings. Sirens and flood lights which make me feel I need to find an air raid shelter. Men lost at sea falling as star shaped souls into the waters. I’ll be speaking to Ivy about that later. The giant logo of Made in Hull appearing at the finale in a burst of fireworks. I am proud to be from here and well I’m not! So how must the people of Hull feel? So I ask the people of Hull what they feel. “It is bringing different parts of Hull together” is one reply.