my street, cottingham road. campus is farther on (west).
my alleyway off of cottingham, newland park ave.
main lawn, front entrance: east.
main lawn, front entrance: west.
main walk, north.
-e
pics n' things!
10.03.2008
the immediate area
my street, cottingham road. campus is farther on (west).
my alleyway off of cottingham, newland park ave.
main lawn, front entrance: east.
main lawn, front entrance: west.
main walk, north.
-e
pics n' things!
a quick note on oddness
i'm at my favourite pub yesterday, Ye Old White Harte, having a pint and doing some writing. the main room is a warm, old and quiet place populated mainly by those who appear to be locals, older folks and businessmen in suits taking extended lunches. it's windy and cloudy outside, brisk as fall sets in on the yorkshire coast. i take my place next to one of two crackling fireplaces in the Harte, the one closer to the bar. friendly conversation floats lazily around the old wood and seeps like smoke over pints of Deuchars and London Pride. there is a handcarved Theakston brewing sign that has been in the same place since the 1881 remodel of the building and most of the furniture is from even earlier eras.
it's not easy to find, the pub. one must wind through Hull's old town streets, as narrow as one would think before passing by a small covered alleyway. there is a steel gate that sits open at all times but one has to think that all of these buildings were built up and up and around, the architects occassionally forgetting about the gathering place. i feel safe here, comfortable that this is, physically and mentally, almost as isolated as i could be.
until i hear a brash greeting from across the room. it sounds like the type of man who, when you see him coming, you look busy. when he talks to you he is either chewing gum, wearing sunglasses inside or jangling keys or change loudly in his pocket as though to provide an irritating percussion accompaniment to some spoken word performance from hell. speaking loudly with his wife by his side, a 50-something american man strikes up conversation with an englishman regarding the upcoming presidential election. the victim asks who he is going to vote for and, proudly, he announces that McCain is the only vote for himself. and it's not because Obama is black.
thank god, i say to myself, because that would just be rude. my own sarcasm makes my blood boil and i have the instinctive urge to burn the place down so this conversation doesn't go any farther. so no more damage can be done. i see two gentleman at the bar turn their shoulders away from the direction of the conversation and take sore sips at half-pints of Guinness. i want to apologize but i say nothing. the american man showers the pub with his opinions, occassionally asking his wife if she agrees with him. yes, quite is her response most of the time. i shudder. he proclaims that they're from indiana, a red state in the middle of the "liberal fortress".
fortress? what is this, a cowboy comic?
instead of speaking up and inflaming the situation, i let the man keep talking and asking his wife to agree with him. i let him keep thinking that he was the only american in the room. i let him do this. no, i just couldn't say anything. i felt the need to protect this place from such displays. for my own good, don't ruin this for me, asshole. this is my pub. and then i realized i was thinking exactly what he must be thinking.
-e
pics n' things!
it's not easy to find, the pub. one must wind through Hull's old town streets, as narrow as one would think before passing by a small covered alleyway. there is a steel gate that sits open at all times but one has to think that all of these buildings were built up and up and around, the architects occassionally forgetting about the gathering place. i feel safe here, comfortable that this is, physically and mentally, almost as isolated as i could be.
until i hear a brash greeting from across the room. it sounds like the type of man who, when you see him coming, you look busy. when he talks to you he is either chewing gum, wearing sunglasses inside or jangling keys or change loudly in his pocket as though to provide an irritating percussion accompaniment to some spoken word performance from hell. speaking loudly with his wife by his side, a 50-something american man strikes up conversation with an englishman regarding the upcoming presidential election. the victim asks who he is going to vote for and, proudly, he announces that McCain is the only vote for himself. and it's not because Obama is black.
thank god, i say to myself, because that would just be rude. my own sarcasm makes my blood boil and i have the instinctive urge to burn the place down so this conversation doesn't go any farther. so no more damage can be done. i see two gentleman at the bar turn their shoulders away from the direction of the conversation and take sore sips at half-pints of Guinness. i want to apologize but i say nothing. the american man showers the pub with his opinions, occassionally asking his wife if she agrees with him. yes, quite is her response most of the time. i shudder. he proclaims that they're from indiana, a red state in the middle of the "liberal fortress".
fortress? what is this, a cowboy comic?
instead of speaking up and inflaming the situation, i let the man keep talking and asking his wife to agree with him. i let him keep thinking that he was the only american in the room. i let him do this. no, i just couldn't say anything. i felt the need to protect this place from such displays. for my own good, don't ruin this for me, asshole. this is my pub. and then i realized i was thinking exactly what he must be thinking.
-e
pics n' things!
9.28.2008
a few photos
here are a couple photos i snapped yesterday. a couple of us international students, who have been here for a week, got together and had a picnic and a day down in city center. tres bien!
apparently there is a massive wind turbine in hull.
myself and danielle, the other student from WWU
this is in hull city center. the beautiful pale building behind everybody is the maritime museum. continue past the museum on the right and you'll eventually walk into old town and towards the white harte.
from left: eliza (italy), eleonora (italy), beto (mexico & my roommate), amanda (malta) and georgia (italy)
on the steps of the new flat.
cheers. more to come.
-e pics n' things!
apparently there is a massive wind turbine in hull.
myself and danielle, the other student from WWU
this is in hull city center. the beautiful pale building behind everybody is the maritime museum. continue past the museum on the right and you'll eventually walk into old town and towards the white harte.
from left: eliza (italy), eleonora (italy), beto (mexico & my roommate), amanda (malta) and georgia (italy)
on the steps of the new flat.
cheers. more to come.
-e pics n' things!
9.26.2008
White Harte
To elaborate.
i am experiencing a not so strange sense of displacement, like water pushed out of a puddle by a large rock. i don't feel as though i would be any drops taking part in the violent splash but rather more like a ripple across the surface that touches the other bank and soaks into the dirt, blending peacefully back into its surroundings. the drops in the violent splash are friends i've known to jump head first into a country without knowing much of its language. they didn't travel to study through a school but instead to study through their own means, to perform their own cultural surgery. sometimes they were thrown out of their puddle and landed with both feet on the ground and sometimes the sutures from the surgery were never healed right and the trip came off quite wrong. i am not a drop, but a ripple. smooth and gliding across the surface waiting to come in contact with something solid so as to gain a foothold. i am waiting, in a sense, for the feeling that i belong to this community - waiting to blend into the surroundings.
i am, also, violently aware that these feeling are completely natural.
additionally, i can't find a cup of coffee to save my life. shops are more than happy to brew me an americano (leading to many cups of undesired and just-quite-exactly-not-satisfying bean squeezings). but finding a cup of damned drip coffee is impossible. i feel like moses, here. the difference being that i haven't found a cup of coffee worth waiting 40 years for. that's the only difference. between me and moses. in this circumstance. right. lots of similarities.
but i digress.
keeping in mind that i wish to feel more connected to this community, yesterday danielle and i went downtown to the city center. after grabbing bangers & mash for lunch at an awfully modern sidewalk cafe we decided to pay another visit to the white harte. dissapointed in my first trip to the pub, i felt a return to glean more first hand history would be prudent (and by "dissapointed" i mean "it was so great i wanted to go back"). the waitress recognized me and poured me another deuchars without my saying so. beautiful, i think. the taps are perfect - they're real taps. two massive, firm, smooth pulls are required to fill the pints and when the foam settles the nozzle is put just below the head and a small top-off pull is taken. it sounds silly but you can tell attention has been paid. the young woman asked if we were new to the area. i said that yes i was, a student at the Uni, actually. a history major, even. she inquires if we have had the tour of the building and, like the fucking idiot that i am i say no, but i did a report on this bar before coming (i neglected to elaborate making me look like a 10th grader). but that would be rather fantastic.
after two pints we were approached by an older gentleman, perhaps in his 50s, in a nice suit and tie wearing a wool topcoat. would you like to have a poke about the place? so this wonderful man shows us around and explains that events set in motion in the White Harte began the english civil war. he goes on to show the room that the parlimentarians were in when the decision was made to raise the gates of the town and not let the king in. it turns out the man lived at the bar for a year and works for Hull City Council. wow. i got some community right here for you, my brain sez to itself, how you like them fucking apples, sherburne?
so we drink. and chat. and drink. and chat. and smoke cheap castella cigars. 8 hours later i find that his name is patrick o'malley and, on top of his duties for the City Council, manages the Harte. his friends buy shots and before i know it danielle and i are surrounded by james, tony, craig, alan and others,raucous jolly friends of patrick's buying rounds and discussing world affairs. patrick and i get into a protracted discussion about world war ii and he was very interested in my 499 thesis from last spring regarding wartime Soviet propaganda.
at midnight danielle and i get a cab back to our respective flats and so ends one of the most beautiful evenings i have had in as long as i can remember. a cool, clammy evening in the smallest, most lush beer garden that is crammed across the smallest alley i've seen from one of the most historically important venues in north england. smoke floating up, though the tree branches, mixing and playing with the dense fog setting in. ahh. england.
i feel like my ripple is absorbing into the damp banks. (take that out of context and you have yourself some kind of strange ass sentence.)
also, what kind of "prepare'd" traveller wanders and stumbles across an ocean and forgets his usb cable? damn you apes!
-e
patrick o'malley's four steps to perfect beer:
1. cellar temp of 50℉
2. clean lines from the keg or cask
3. the pour - leave the glass to settle happily after two or two.5 pulls and put the tip just in and top off the beer.
4. a good brew - not in your hands
pics n' things!
i am experiencing a not so strange sense of displacement, like water pushed out of a puddle by a large rock. i don't feel as though i would be any drops taking part in the violent splash but rather more like a ripple across the surface that touches the other bank and soaks into the dirt, blending peacefully back into its surroundings. the drops in the violent splash are friends i've known to jump head first into a country without knowing much of its language. they didn't travel to study through a school but instead to study through their own means, to perform their own cultural surgery. sometimes they were thrown out of their puddle and landed with both feet on the ground and sometimes the sutures from the surgery were never healed right and the trip came off quite wrong. i am not a drop, but a ripple. smooth and gliding across the surface waiting to come in contact with something solid so as to gain a foothold. i am waiting, in a sense, for the feeling that i belong to this community - waiting to blend into the surroundings.
i am, also, violently aware that these feeling are completely natural.
additionally, i can't find a cup of coffee to save my life. shops are more than happy to brew me an americano (leading to many cups of undesired and just-quite-exactly-not-satisfying bean squeezings). but finding a cup of damned drip coffee is impossible. i feel like moses, here. the difference being that i haven't found a cup of coffee worth waiting 40 years for. that's the only difference. between me and moses. in this circumstance. right. lots of similarities.
but i digress.
keeping in mind that i wish to feel more connected to this community, yesterday danielle and i went downtown to the city center. after grabbing bangers & mash for lunch at an awfully modern sidewalk cafe we decided to pay another visit to the white harte. dissapointed in my first trip to the pub, i felt a return to glean more first hand history would be prudent (and by "dissapointed" i mean "it was so great i wanted to go back"). the waitress recognized me and poured me another deuchars without my saying so. beautiful, i think. the taps are perfect - they're real taps. two massive, firm, smooth pulls are required to fill the pints and when the foam settles the nozzle is put just below the head and a small top-off pull is taken. it sounds silly but you can tell attention has been paid. the young woman asked if we were new to the area. i said that yes i was, a student at the Uni, actually. a history major, even. she inquires if we have had the tour of the building and, like the fucking idiot that i am i say no, but i did a report on this bar before coming (i neglected to elaborate making me look like a 10th grader). but that would be rather fantastic.
after two pints we were approached by an older gentleman, perhaps in his 50s, in a nice suit and tie wearing a wool topcoat. would you like to have a poke about the place? so this wonderful man shows us around and explains that events set in motion in the White Harte began the english civil war. he goes on to show the room that the parlimentarians were in when the decision was made to raise the gates of the town and not let the king in. it turns out the man lived at the bar for a year and works for Hull City Council. wow. i got some community right here for you, my brain sez to itself, how you like them fucking apples, sherburne?
so we drink. and chat. and drink. and chat. and smoke cheap castella cigars. 8 hours later i find that his name is patrick o'malley and, on top of his duties for the City Council, manages the Harte. his friends buy shots and before i know it danielle and i are surrounded by james, tony, craig, alan and others,
at midnight danielle and i get a cab back to our respective flats and so ends one of the most beautiful evenings i have had in as long as i can remember. a cool, clammy evening in the smallest, most lush beer garden that is crammed across the smallest alley i've seen from one of the most historically important venues in north england. smoke floating up, though the tree branches, mixing and playing with the dense fog setting in. ahh. england.
i feel like my ripple is absorbing into the damp banks. (take that out of context and you have yourself some kind of strange ass sentence.)
also, what kind of "prepare'd" traveller wanders and stumbles across an ocean and forgets his usb cable? damn you apes!
-e
patrick o'malley's four steps to perfect beer:
1. cellar temp of 50℉
2. clean lines from the keg or cask
3. the pour - leave the glass to settle happily after two or two.5 pulls and put the tip just in and top off the beer.
4. a good brew - not in your hands
pics n' things!
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