Ferme la Bouche

After all the insanity and national nonsense written about our fair city in the last few days, me and Dee decided to make a heroic attempt to rescue Hull's reputation with a trip to its better assets, which bears no relation whatsoever to the whingey neo-new-build cluster cul de sacs on a flood plain that have been bleating about being ignored in the national press this week. Incidentially, if the lost city of Atlantis did turn out to in fact be an earlier prototype of Hull and have shops like Booze & U, Hair By Karen and Dream Doors, I can imagine an awful lot of disappointment. Nah, we went to the Ferens to see the incredible installation by Benin artist Romauld Hazoume. La Bouche du Roi, a piece resembling a slave boat that sailed out of Liverpool for the African west coast in the 1790s, the artist had used petrol cans to represent the slaves transported to the States and Caribbean, together with a moving film of life today in the country. It was all beautifully lighted and stark in its realisation. We then ventured outside for chips from Golden Fry, got starred down by an Iraqi kid on a chopper, watched erratic drivers indulge in road rage and saw an errant boozer trying to vault a wrought-iron fence into a bakery. Same Hull there then.
Now back at Club Thoresby and wincing through Live Earth. Why oh glam rock why does climate change have to be represented by Jimmy Blunt, Graham Norton and the Durannies. Oh, if only the Tour de France commentators could be providing the ad-libs. We might get closer to some sort of perverse truth about the whole shoddy televised nonsense.