Come up and see us sometime...

I've had a great weekend so far; very busy both in the garden and in the house doing just bits and pieces but achieving a great deal. As Saturday and Sunday has been so productive, and my wife is decorating my son's bedroom on Bank Holiday Monday, I thought I'd just nip onto Google and check 'things to do on a Bank Holiday.' It just took 0.23 seconds to come up with 119,000,000 (one hundred and nineteen million) hits. See the screen grab to prove it.
So, as it's an impossible task, (at an average of 30 seconds scanning the average site to decide whether it's the sort of information you require) it would take me over 113 years without sleep to scan all of them by which time I will no doubt be passed bloody caring what to do on a Bank Holiday weekend. So thanks Google for not helping a great deal. I've read a news article today (and for the life of me I can't find it now) that says there is a new rival to challenge Google who will make searching more relevant to what the searcher wants. It says it will revolutionise searching - hooray, hours of searching saved.

I've decided to go and see my parents and take my son who's learning to drive with me - just going to have a leisurely day. Where I live, in East Yorkshire there's plenty to do generally. We are within easy driving distance of the coast and three towns of Bridlington, Hornsea and Withernsea and if you like it a bit wilder, Spurn Point is isolated but splendid for coastal walks, bird watching and bracing air but dress up because except for high summer, it can be chilly with sea breezes. If the sea is not your gaff, the countryside is beautiful. It's not mountainous or anything, but green, lush and pretty and plenty of it. The iconic Humber Bridge is good to stop off and see and it has some great vistas.

The Humber Bridge south bank tower (click to enlarge)

For non-seaside places, Hull can be a bit disappointing for things to do with a few exceptions. The best attraction is The Deep with its sea life aquariums, that's good for half a day. There are some museums, Wilberforce and the Street Life museums are good and interesting and some of the architecture around the city centre is okay. If you're into ice skating it has an arena as well as a climbing centre. Other than that - it's just like any other city with its 'same-old, same-old' production line standard food outlets, cinemas, City Hall, theatre, bowling alleys and shops, providing of course the recession hasn't hit you in the pocket and you can afford to do these things. Hull is simply in need of regeneration - full stop.

The Deep, looking like a shark peeking through the concrete, (click for larger picture)

Beverley, an ancient market town is cool and great to walk round with nice shopping areas and weekly merkets, plenty to see and you'll have read my blogs about the Minster. Driffield is a lovely wolds country town and good to walk round. Indeed either round Hull or anywhere else, the best plan is to walk. The East Riding of Yorkshire Council has lots of planned walks, long, medium and short, details of which can be obtained and in Hull there is a city centre 'fish trail.' In Pocklington, there are the magnificent Burnby Hall Gardens with extensive lakes, manicured gardens and one of the biggest collections of water lillies in the UK I understand.

Burnby Hall Gardens (click to enlarge although this may be a little pixilated - it was a large file)

So there we have it for now - only a snapshot of the East Riding of Yorkshire, if you're ever thinking of visiting the area, let me know and I'll give you some tips.

Finally, there may be worse off places to visit: "It's a ghastly place. Huge gangs of tough sinewy men roam the valleys terrorising people with their close harmony singing. You need half a bucket of phlegm in your throat to pronounce the placenames. Never ask for directions in Wales Baldrick, you'll be washing spit out of your hair for a fortnight."
Rowan Atkinson on Wales, Blackadder.

Chat soon

Ta-ra!

Ten things to do on a Weekend

It's the weekend and with only two days, what can you get up to to make it a satisfying use of your own time - I've made some suggestions below. I looked for some suggestions on the net and the results were not promising. One site suggested in it's top ten: Visit a planetarium; Take a Barista Coffee course; Take a defensive driving course; Test drive your dream car; Visit a day spa; Visit a theatre or opera; Take a coach tour; Book a last minute hotel room; Have a posh picnic; Visit an old friend.

Wow. There's an emerging theme there: you have to have oodles of spare cash or live in a larger city and have servants at home to do all your work. So I thought of the top ten things I might think about doing myself (wife in bed because of her shift work):

Visit The Deep in Hull - cheap and you don't have to use your brain and jostle with the occasional little bad tempered brat - cost - negligible;
Visit a book shop - browse at leisure in a quiet atmosphere and watch men sneaking peaks at erotic novels pretending to have a serious literary interest - don't have to buy anything;
Have a nice coffee in a book shop cafe - couple of quid for a coffee and earwig the nearby conversations to see how the other half live;
Put the clothes in the washer - don't mixed coloureds and whites on a hot wash - cost - already bought the tablets which have turned into powder and spill on the floor the minute you tear the strip seal;
Tumble the clothes you earlier put in the washer - no immediate cost just a huge electricity bill at the quarter end - don't forget to clean the fluff filter and place it in the carrier bag which already has three months worth of pubic hair and fluff;
Clean son's bedroom - Don personal protective equipment, recover 6 side plates, fourteen corners of mouldy bread crust from sandwiches, eight glasses of pink coloured liquid with floating furry mouldy things and 37 assorted single socks from around the room, all different - cost? Five years off your life through worry in fear of what you'll find;
Wash the car - Good exercise and plenty of fresh air on a spring like day - find dents in door where some uncaring bastard has opened their door onto your pride and joy - cost? Previous good temper;
Buy a lottery ticket - learn from last time: attempted to buy a lottery ticket only to find I'd forgotten my wallet and only had 93p in change;
Read the paper - 50p to read depressing investigative journalism, find out what who is doing to who in soap operas, take a sneaky peek at the agony aunt's page for a bit of spice and complete all the crossword clues except one - there's always one;
Cup of tea - the Yorkshireman's best drink of the day - relax and enjoy!

Chat soon

Ta-ra