Trumping the Queen

It was, back in the early 1980’s, just a bit of harmless fun. 

If we attempted the same today we would, for certain,be shot on sight. 

Giggling a bit, as excitable 17 year olds are prone to do, a group of us made our way up a steep grassy bank and there in front of us was the splendour of the Humber Suspension Bridge. 

It was a mass of activity on the eve of the formal opening ceremony by Queen Elizabeth II which was to take place on 17^th July 1981. A grand civic event it was to be. 

After all, the structure was the longest single span suspension bridge in the world , a major feat of technical and civil engineering and deserving of accolade and acclaim. 

Work had begun way back in 1972 with the North Tower completed some two years later on the hard chalk bed rock of the Humber Bank. The need to establish the South Tower in a caisson to counter the shifting mud of the river meant it was a further couple of years before the task of spinning the cables to support the box road sections could begin. 

The sections, prefabricated on shore and then floated into position took from the autumn of 1979 until the following summer to be lifted and fixed to allow the road surface to be laid. 

Although the visit of HM The Queen was to be the highlight of the £90 million project the bridge was actually useable by traffic in June 1981 as a test period. The infrastructure features of the visitor car park and Toll Booths were well established and from the former we had started our stunt. 

Only one of us, all still at school, had a driving licence and use of a car at that time and so Dave, his real name, being that person was the natural choice to take centre stage in what we had planned. 

It should also be said that Dave was the only person with access to a formal dinner suit or tuxedo and although this was his fathers it was a reasonable fit. 

In a bid to tidy up for the ceremony the concourse in front of the north tower booths was littered with building materials and stray vehicles of contractors and the Bridge Board but this provided good cover for us. We were also out of the line of vision from the futuristic Control Room Building which was an advantage against detection. 

Like a well oiled machine we all knew our roles. Two of us attached the stringy ends of multi coloured cotton bunting to respective sides of one of the booth lanes and Dave, with his Mother’s best dress making scissors, made a ceremonial incision accompanied by a short speech along the lines of “God Bless the Bridge and all who cross over her”. I was not sure then as now whether a bridge is of the feminine gender. 

The fourth member of our clique took a few photographs as a permanent record of the event. 

Dave does the deed

We must have looked very dodgy and furtive but at no time were we approached or challenged by anyone of authority. This accentuated our feeling of elation and success although in truth we may just have been one of a succession of students with the same prank idea and that the Bridge Staff,  tired of being distracted ahead of the Royal Visit,  just turned a blind eye to our adolescent behaviour. 

The whole thing took just a few minutes but (sadly) forms one of the most satisfying moments of my otherwise very conventional and boring teenage years. 

As far as I know the official ceremony went off well but then again not surprising as our dress rehearsal will have ironed out any potential difficulties that the Queen may have experienced on her and the Bridge’s big day.

Best of One Last Soul. Giro D'Italia 1987 (35th Anniversary)

Today sees the final Time Trial stage of the 2022 Giro D'Italia. I thought I would just re-issue this piece from a few years ag. It is hard to appreciate that the events happened 35 years ago. 

The clash between Stephen Roche and Roberto Visentini at the 1987 Giro d’Italia (The Tour of Italy being one of the three major tours including Le Tour de France and The Vuelta Espana) remains one of the most-talked about conflicts at a Grand Tour. What made it more striking however was that they were on the same team.

Roche’s subsequent story is familiar to all cycling fans. It was a momentous year for the Irishman who completed a very rare triple of the Tours of France, Italy and also becoming World Champion. This feat was only achieved by one other, the dominant Eddy Merrckx and arguably in a very different era of the sport.

Behind the history making Roche I have often wondered what became of Roberto Visentini?

It seems that even today, he’s still angry about what happened.

It may be one of the longest held grudges in cycling history.

I was initially under the impression that the handsome and charismatic Visentini was a bit of a poster-boy in his home country. We have all come across similar characters in other sports who just seem to come and go.  However, having read about him more widely he was obviously incredibly talented as a junior rider, winning the Italian championships in 1975 and later that year adding the Junior Worlds title to his Palmares.

Three years on, at the age of just twenty, he turned professional for the Italian Vibor team. Many talented juniors have found the transition to the professional level demanding, but it didn’t appear to have been difficult for the man from Brescia.

He was entered into the Giro in his debut season, and finished in an incredible fifteenth place in addition to winning the best young rider title.

The following years would see him go from strength to strength as he continued to improve on his General Classification  position in the race, as well as winning a number of stages.

He also claimed victories in the major events of the Giro del Trentino and Tirreno-Adriatico, amongst other events.

In 1985 it looked likely he would win the Giro d’Italia, having worn the pink jersey for nine days. However, he had to pull out of the race before the end due to illness. Finally, in 1986, he would win the race overall, beating the likes of Greg LeMond and Francesco Moser.

So, he returned in 1987 as defending champion. But among his team mates on the Carrera team was Stephen Roche, who was in the form of his life. He had just won the Tour of Romandie and amongst an impressive early season had won or placed well in major races.

Visentini had also been at the same events but Roche in his book "My Road to Victory" claimed that the Italian had given no help to him or the team and had not really performed himself. Team management at the 1987 Giro decided they would start with two team leaders but before and during the early stages of the race there were lots of arguments between the two in the battle for supremacy within the team. An Italian on an Italian team and riding on home territory would always be better supported and Roche sensed that Visentini was the golden boy.

In the first week of The Giro, Roche was in the leader's Pink jersey and carried it for a total of 10 days but with no help from the pro-Italian element of the Carrera Team. After a crash, injury and resultant lack of confidence Roche lost the jersey to his Co-Leader and as far as fans and the media were concerned the race was all over.

Roche seized his opportunity to win the race on the fifteenth stage to Sappada. Going against team orders, he attacked early on a descent and was away with two other riders.

The Team Manager (Directeur sportif)  Davide Boifava drove alongside in the team car and  told Roche to stop the attack, but he continued on. Behind, there was the farcical sight of Carrera team chasing their own man. They were quickly exhausted and did a deal with another Italian team to chase Roche down.

It was a gamble that just about paid off for Carrera who recaptured the break but on the final ascent yet more aggressive riding from the Irishman saw Visentini losing over 6 minutes. Roche managed to take over pink by five seconds from Switzerland’s Tony Rominger.

Visentini, his chances of a repeat victory gone was livid afterwards, as were the Italian fans.

Despite receiving extreme abuse from the tifosi over the last few days, and a threat to his lead from Erik Breukink, Roche hung on to win the race overall by nearly four minutes from the Scottish climber Robert Millar.

Roche's main allies were team member Eddy Schepers and his faithful mechanic, Patrick Valke. Their respective roles had been to protect Roche from his own squad or any risk from roadside attack from Visentini sympathisers and to ensure that his bike was not sabotaged. The Italian press called Roche a Judas and with his colleagues being referred to as The Rebel and Satan respectively.

Roche left the Carrera team at the end of the 1987 season. Visentini stayed on but he never won another race. He continued to compete for another three years for a number of smaller Italian teams, but his heart was not in it any more. He retired from the sport in 1990.

The Italian was interviewed a number of years later about his career, and despite the many highlights it seems he still cannot shake off the events of the ’87 Giro.

He admitted it was the biggest disappointment of his career.“Being attacked by opponents was normal, but it was my team mate and I could just not stomach it, I sometimes lost to star riders like Moser and Saronni, but I never complained. Roche’s attack was unacceptable.”

He wasn’t just unhappy with Roche though, but with the team manager Boifava too.

“If the captain is in the lead, the team must help him. Roche, however, attacked me. But the real crime was by the team management; clueless, heartless.

Visentini's reaction to the management was extreme.  “At the end of the race, I went to Davide Boifava with some plastic bags containing the bike which I had sawn into pieces.”

Asked about Roche’s assertion that Visentini had declared before the Giro that he would not go to the Tour de France to help the Irishman, he said it was “All excuses to deflect blame after what had happened.”

In fact, Roche had known early on in the Giro that Visentini had booked his holidays for July and would not therefore be available to offer to help Roche win in France in return for handing over the Giro without any fuss.

Visentini ended up pulling out of the '87 Giro anyway, having broken his wrist on the penultimate stage.

By this time there was some grudging acceptance in the Carrera ranks that Roche was the best rider in the race.

Best of One Last Soul- At the end of the Pier

 Hornsea is a small and genteel seaside town in East Yorkshire. 

In the mid 1800's it had a resident population of just 1685 but a few of its wealthy occupants had great ambitions for the place in terms of promoting growth and prosperity. 

An important starting point was a railway link to the City of Hull and this opened in 1864. Hornsea became the favourite watering hole for the urban masses who came to the coast for leisure and recreation. 

Those holding tracts of land in and around Hornsea saw an opportunity to develop for housing and the amenities that an emerging resort would require to compete with towns further north such as Bridlington, Filey and Scarborough. 

Often referred to as The King of Hornsea, Joseph Armytage Wade was a prominent advocate for change. 

He had been the instigator of the rail link as well as bringing gas and civilised facilities to what was still little more than a small crab fishing town at that time. 

In 1865 Wade had the idea of building a Pier or Pleasure Palace of 1200 feet length into the North Sea and at a provisional budgeted cost of £10000 which is in excess of £800000 in todays money. His vision did not however secure the imagination of the townspeople and it was not until eleven years later that a Pier was again on the horizon. This was through the Hornsea Pier Bill of 1876.

Unfortunately the hype and speculation was not that of Wade but a consortium of out of town developers and speculators headed by the rather grandly titled Pierre Henri Martin du Gillon. His background seems to have been in West Country Ship Building and Repairing but he apparently had a connection with Leeds. He had bought land at South Cliff in Hornsea and had plans drawn up for a large housing estate . Du Gillon and his fellow Promoters of the Hornsea Pier Bill proposed a mixed development including, as well as a pier, a new road and tramway from the railway station to an area of reclaimed land behind an embankment and sea wall. They claimed that the civil engineering works would solve the regular tidal surge flooding of the area and also give an opportunity for fishing boats to land their catches and then utilise the rail link to Hull. This would save sailing time from the fishing grounds to Hull as well as generate jobs and money for Hornsea. Local support came from the Coastguard Chief and fishing boat owners. 

The scheme would be costly, the wall alone was estimated at £10000 to establish but the Promoters would cover the cost in return for the Compulsory Purchase of the land it required. 

That is where Du Gillon became unstuck. The land was in the ownership of Joseph Wade and a Mr Botts who were naturally opposed to the plans and indeed Wade himself founded and fronted The Hornsea Pier Company in 1877. 

This prompted Du Gillon to propose another scheme, the South Pier, and the small, sleepy town was faced with the prospect of having not just one, but two of these iconic structures on the seafront. 

Wade's was the first of the projects to commence but only to the extent of sinking ten piles which the locals referred to as The Ten Virgins. 

As for Du Gillon and his grand vision the burden of financing and legalities soon brought about bankruptcy and they were quickly out of the running. 

Wade and The Hornsea Pier Company recommenced work in 1878 on a 2 year build on the 327 metre (1072 feet) structure but from the start they became bogged down in costly disputes. Actions were brought against Wade's Company by Engineers, Contractors and there is also reference to the Paris Skating Rink Company on the grounds of non-payment and with counter-suing for poor workmanship and performance of contracts. 

These legal setbacks were settled or resolved but in the Great Storm in October 1880 a distressed sailing brig, Earl Derby, was thrown onto the Pier destroying some 91 metres (300 feet) of the newly built structure. 

The Pier did open for the Hornsea Regatta in 1881 with pricing for public use at One Penny or for a Day Ticket at Tuppence. However, costs continued to rise and in 1882 strengthening and repairing works whittled away at any prospective income stream. The day trippers and holiday makers were not evidently prepared to fork out for what was a disappointing attempt at a Pier and debt began to mount up. 

Advertisements and promotions tried to drum up business. 

In 1892 Tenders were invited for renting and use of the pier. Concerts and Performances were held but again not to the level of public participation expected by the Pier Company. A report of 1896 described a scene of semi dereliction and abandonment with dangling gas lamps resembling the hat of a drunken man. 

There was no option available to the  Directors than to place the company into voluntary liquidation in 1897.

Although the failure had been anticipated after the long years of struggle it must have caused considerable stress and anxiety to Joseph Wade. It is not too much to speculate that the chain of events may have contributed to his death in 1896 albeit at the good age of 79 years old. 

The appointed Official Receiver did offer to sell the pier to Hornsea Town Council for £300 but the holders of the public purse did not feel it appropriate to purchase. 

The inevitable point was reached and the pier was broken up for scrap in the same year after only 16 fitful seasons. A building associated with the pier did survive in use as a cake shop until 1912 but otherwise only memories remained. 

The idea of a pier seems to have been merely slumbering in Hornsea and in 2018 there was talk of a project featuring a wind turbine as the virtual "end of the pier" feature for the 21st Century. 

Best of One Last Soul. You have not been watching.......

 

Elizabeth Mainwaring (pronounced Mannering) was the wife of George, the Captain of the fictional Home Guard of Walmington on Sea as depicted in the comedy classic- Dad’s Army. 

For all of the long running and still repeated episodes Elizabeth remained as an unseen character at the end of a phone conversation, heard moving about upstairs at her home, at best as a vague shadow or in the bulging shape of someone on the top bunk in the bomb shelter. 

Her influence over her husband and as a consequence his subsequent moods, attitudes and behaviour in relation to the members of the Platoon was nevertheless tangible and an important undercurrent to the adventures and antics of the principle characters. 

The writers, Perry and Croft did invent a back story for Elizabeth to give her depth and as an explanation for some of her later unconventional or illogical outbursts and acts. 

These regularly ran within the main scripted dialogues. For example, Captain Mainwaring surprised everyone in his ability to play the bagpipes which he attributed to spending his honeymoon on a remote Scottish Island where there was nothing else to do. 

In conversation with the haughty Sergeant Wilson Mainwaring tells him about his wife’s fondness for silent movies but only because she was so shocked to hear a character on a film speak a line that she refused to return to any cinema. 

Her regular criticism of George is attributed to a privileged fictional upbringing as the daughter of a Suffragan Bishop and that she and her family believe that she married below her own social standing.

George is very hard done by as he has attained the heady heights for a provincial town of Bank Manager through working hard at his education and banking exams. He does have her best interests at heart however and strives to provide goods and services even though these sometimes go against his own morals and sense of citizenship, especially in wartime. 

This is particularly evident in his turning a blind eye to contraband from the black marketeer spiv Private Walker or gifts such as an extra portion of sausages or offal from the good natured Corporal Jones, the town butcher. 

He is also protective of Elizabeth in saying that she had led a sheltered life in not even trying tomato sauce before she met him and a fondness shows through in his referring to her as the little woman and alluding to a blissful married life. 

His selflessness is to be admired as Elizabeth’s reclusive nature will have impeded any upward mobility that George may have hoped for within the hierarchy of the Bank at a time when socialising and hospitality were an essential part of getting ahead in commerce. The actuality of his domestic situation will have been behind his complete lack of hesitation in putting himself forward, uncharacteristically pushily, as leader of the Local Defence Volunteers, or as they became known, the Home Guard. 

Mrs Mainwaring’s persona is achieved, in her very obvious absence, by clever writing by which we assume that she is a larger than life woman ( described as being a bit bigger in physical dimensions that the effervescent Mrs Fox- a friend of Jonesy), a bit handy with her fists with George suffering a black eye in a hushed up domestic incident and always making an excuse on the grounds of health or fear of being bombed so as not to participate in the social functions of the platoon family. One visualisation, conjured up in my mind, of the mysterious Elizabeth is of her in a siren suit, a sort of one piece flight or boiler suit so much trademark attire of Winston Churchill when out and about visiting his blitz affected countrymen and women. Unfortunately this produces the startling image of a character part Michelin Man and part Gas Engineer so hardly flattering.

Jokes at her expense are regularly inserted into the dialogue such as her not having left the house “since Munich” or when George, excited at having obtained some scarce cheese rang Elizabeth to say that he might have a surprise for her that evening. This double entendre meant that he ended up eating the delicacy with Sergeant Wilson in the Vicar’s Office. 

Gradually we come to the realisation that she is always to be an elusive figure but then are shocked, as is George,  by revelations such as her playing the role of Lady Godiva on horseback riding through Walmington to raise funds for a Spitfire fighter plane. 

It is not all one way traffic in terms of who obviously wears the trousers in the Mainwaring household as in one series episode George has a platonic tea room and station platform liaison with one of the new female recruits to the platoon but is mindful of his married status and upholding his position of responsibility in the bank and town. 

There is an underlying melancholy to the relationship between George and Elizabeth but it works so very well in the cleverly woven story lines and characterisations that have made Dad’s Army such a loved bit of British television. 

Best of One last Soul- The King of Hornsea

 I like a bit of a challenging trail when putting together a bit of writing.

Today's starts from a brief reference that I came across in the pages of an account of a 2014 Archaeological dig at a site on St Lawrence Street, York.

I am often stationary at the traffic lights right at that point which is a major junction just outside the defensive walls. There has been fairly frantic construction activity over the last 12 to 18 months  and the site is now under a large student accommodation block . The standard (for historic York) excavation process prior to the development unearthed a great and diverse range of items, mainly ceramicware from the Roman occupation of the city through the Anglo-Scandinavian era (Vikings), the Middle Ages and the following :

"Twelve sherds of unusual form were present, these clearly all originated from objects of a single design, but despite the number of sherds no single original object could be reconstructed. The sherds were from flat fish-scale shaped tiles stamped Wade & Cherrys Patent Hornsea on one site and are widely known as ‘acorn tiles’. 

The tiles are roofing tiles which were known as fish scale or acorn tiles, and they have a raised rim on the top half of the uppermost side of each tile which overlaps with a rim on the lower half of the adjacent tile. The design was aimed at reducing the area of overlapped tiles on the roof, and the rims were designed to hold the tiles firm on the roof"

The fragments for a product dating from the 1860's from the small East Yorkshire coast town of Hornsea were found in very auspicious company in the York excavations.

I was intrigued about the use of the descriptive terms as "unusual", "fish scale"and "acorn tiles" and this led me to recall that I had recently been working opposite a house in Hornsea which seemed to have all of the attributes of an unusual appearance and yes, the external walls were clad in what seemed like the scales of a fish.

The house occupies a prominent corner position overlooking the town Memorial Gardens, an ideal location to showcase its unique elevations.

Wade and Cherry's Tiles were an association of John Cherry, a brickmaker and who appears to have been the more flamboyant of the pairing, Joseph Armytage Wade referred to by the title of a book about him as "The King of Hornsea". This alludes to his championing of the town which included his support for the arrival of the railway line and various entrepreneurial enterprises.

Interestingly Wade and Cherry also appear in the records of the United States Patents Office for engineering inventions mainly it seems, pumping equipment which they needed to remove groundwater from their clay pits which were at the end of Marlborough Avenue, subsequently the location for the iconic Hornsea Pottery and now a shopping Freeport complex.

The York Archaeologists referred to the  sherds (fragments) as roofing tiles but in fact the clever design, each shaped something like the ace of spades, so that their form renders the amount of lap smaller than in ordinary tiles, were equally suited to vertical hanging on external walls.

Now to the science and technology of the design:

 "A flange, or raised rim, of dovetailed or under-cut section is formed on the top half of the uppermost side of each tile and on the lower half of the undermost side.This interlocks with two neighbours from the course above, and on the opposite face, again slightly chamfered or dovetailed, is a flange to fit with the lower course. This holds them firm, excludes wind and rain and makes render pointing unnecessary."

The Hornsea clays are a heavy boulder type originating, I believe, from the retreat of the glaciers at the end of the last Ice Age. Hornsea itself spreads our over a series of low hillocks or Moraines from this time in prehistory. The clay is well suited to both commercial products and fancy ceramics.

The York discovery suggests that Wade and Cherry distributed their distinctive tiles regionally if not wider afield. Urban regeneration, wartime damage and yet more demolition and clearance will have relegated many of the buildings clad or roofed in the wonderful acorn tiles to, at worst hardcore rubble and at best a corner of a reclamation yard.

These tiles are very much sought after today, and the best example thought to remain is situated at the corner of New Road and Westbourne Road, Hornsea.

I stop at giving an accurate address or infringing copyright and privacy with a photo. You have the clues as to what to look for and where, so just go.

Just as additional background. The aforementioned Joseph Armytage Wade also ventured into property development and in the 1860's, perhaps the height of his wealth and influence he bought land on both sides of New Road. He will have sold off the plots to individual purchasers and a Legal Conveyance dated 8 January 1879 made between (1) Joseph Armytage Wade and (2) Alfred Maw it seems, afforded an opportunity for Wade to sell off a good stock of the acorn tiles for the construction of the property in question.

Although not strictly specified in the small print there is a strong suggestion that any villa or house shall be built of good white or stock bricks or such other material as shall be mutually agreed on between the said Joseph Armytage Wade his heirs or assigns and the said Alfred Maw his heirs or assigns and which may be deemed by the said Joseph Armytage Wade not to be a disfigurement ".

He may have been the professed King of Hornsea but that Wade was quite a shrewd cookie as well.

Pevsner's book on The Buildings of York does refer to a 12th Century converted church, Old St Oswalds in Fulford as having a Wade and Cherry Acorn Tile roof and this would be worth a drive out some time. If anyone has any other sightings of the distinctive fish scale tiles I would be grateful. Perhaps there is a case for a geeky tile spotting movement.

Best of One Last Soul- Great railway journeys

 

Great Railway Journeys

Amongst the great railway journeys in the world one of my favourites does not really figure in say, the top ten thousand.

There are no dramatic mountain peaks hovering vertically overhead, no sheer drops into a raging torrent in the bottom of the valley, no risk of rock falls or landslide in a constant battle against the forces of nature, no need to carve a snaking route through a harsh environment with dynamite or to provide an armed on board presence to discourage attack and insurrection.

My journey starts at a typical red brick railway station in the west of Hull commuter town of Hessle.

The old ticket office sits at street level in a leafy suburb and looking onto large late Victorian properties originally built as superior residences for the well to do of the East Riding but now either split into flats or operating in the Health and Social Care sectors.

In terms of progress in the latter part of the 19th Century having a railway station at your front door would be quite an attraction, a modern amenity. The platform for trains to Hull is set at a lower level following the topography of a narrow plateau between Hessle Cliff and a further, shallower slope down to the Humber Foreshore.

For those venturing westwards and served by the far platform it is a case of using a large metal gantry bridge with the accompanying whistle of a prevailing wind as it hugs the contours. The Station, once employing perhaps upwards of a dozen employees is now unmannned and only frequented by the distant voice of the announcer over the tannoy. As the sound system suddenly bursts into life with someone playing a xylophone those waiting can be seen to be startled or grimacing in equal numbers.

The early morning trains are the short local ones, two sections, bench seats, no frills, deserted apart from a few shop workers and early bird shoppers. I am excited as we move off. There is some deep rooted emotion about being conveyed by a train. I have tried to fight it by refusing to stand on a bridge to await the arrival of a specific named or numbered engine with binoculars, camera and anorak.

As part of my self imposed therapy I stare out of the window. On the north side of the line to Hull leaving Hessle stands a large area of post war built housing infilling between the grand Victorian Villas and a small terrace of railway workers cottages. Once isolated and well out of the town the neat engineering brick faced  properties are now hemmed in and squeezed by industry. The train rattles over a bridge where it crosses Hessle Haven although in land drain guise before it widens at the estuary mouth. I recall many a ship launch sideways into the tidal outlet of the same watercourse just out of sight.

As business and commerce has followed the trend over the last decade or so to vacate the old central city areas it has relocated to the floodplain between Hessle and West Hull. There are acre upon acre of sheds, multi purpose with the same basic pattern and style being adapted for either office, showroom, factory or recreational use. The out of town retailers have followed with large Sainsbury and Aldi stores. The new Park and Ride has also become established and always, when overlooked from the competing train, seems to be well patronised.

The low rise business district contrasts sharply with the large and tall edifice of a Hotel with coffee shop franchise and Health Club but even this yellow stone monument is dominated by the powder blue stanchions of the Arco Warehouse. The span and tension in the metalwork creates a huge clear working space for the storage and distribution of every manner of safety equipment. At 6pm every evening a fleet of parcel carriers leave the premises, straining on their axles to meet the 24 hour delivery promise for steel capped work boots or padded ear defenders and so much more. The articulated trucks complete a 12 hour cycle of peak activity on the industrial estate which started with the vans and lorries going to and from the wholesale fruit and flower market at its eastern end.

Having run quite close and paralell to the river and business district the railway line turns inland, north easterly at about the position of Cod Farm, a promontory, man made into the river where lines of filleted fish were hung out to air dry in the halcyon days of the trawling industry. Large mounds of gravel and salt can be seen in the marshalling yards where in the 1970's the sections of the Humber Suspension Bridge were assembled and gathered before being floated up river and lifted into position.

There is another estate of factories including a large manufacturer of Yorkshire Puddings but of older and now rather dated buildings. I avert my gaze from an area of open ground where, to the open mouthed amazement of the occupants of a train from London to Hull, a man was seen having sexual relations with a tethered goat.

The older terraced housing  on the outer approaches to the city made way in the 1960's for bland modern council houses . Current demolition and clearance has led to some striking town houses in deep glazed brick panels with gable balconies and neat wrought iron fenced in forecourts. Nice but probably only good and sustainable for about 50 years whereas the former housing had survived over 100 including wartime bombing.

A series of level crossings frustrate the busy city traffic but a vast improvement from the 1950's when constant rail freight traffic to and from the thriving docks meant that the crossing gates on the main arterial roads of Hull were closed for a cumulative total of 15 hours a day. My window flashes in and out of light and shade as the train passes under the Anlaby Road Flyover, one of the civil engineering remedies to bypass the physical severance of the road by the rail lines.

Houses close to the course of the railway have metal tie bars in their brickwork to counter the rattling and wobbling effect that a procession of diesel engines, and steam engines before can exact on an already fairly unstable foundation on a shrinkable clay.

The Infirmary is a large sprawl of old and very modern buildings, mostly in the shadow of the now very dated multi storey tower of Hull Royal. The train is slowing now, tic-tac sounding across points where the main lines into Hull Station converge. I laugh aloud at a piece of humorous graffitti on the underside of a road bridge and depair at the rest of the indiscriminate and illiterate offerings on walls, obsolete signal boxes and on every other accessible available surface.

The vast arched profile of Paragon Station is in view, a magnificent example of functional and beautiful architecture, much featured in film and television. It will have been marvelled at by the 2.2 million immigrants awaiting transit from Hull to Liverpool and beyond at a turbulent time in their own lives and world history over 100 years ago. Their onward journey will have been of epic and dramatic proportions. My own, about 6 miles and 7 minutes.

The Best of One Last Soul- The Infamous Pot Noodle

 The recent demise of the train robber Ronnie Biggs brought to mind the transition that often occurs from arch villain/blaggard/right nasty piece of work to just "a bit of a loveable rogue".

I am in sympathy with those individuals and families directly and indirectly affected by the aforementioned rail heist and other heinous crimes. The passage of time may have permitted them to arrive at a place of forgiveness in order to achieve some form of closure even if it is still not reasonable in any universe to expect  acceptance of the perpetrators as modern day Robin Hood characters.

There have always been heroes and villains and the moral position between them can often be vague and ill defined. Take Nelson Mandela. In the eyes of his comrade campaigners against the injustice to humanity that was Apartheid he was a freedom fighter. To the white supremacists holding desperately onto any recognisable sovereign power he was a terrorist. Many dictators have, before falling to moral corruption and their own God Complexes, been held as saviours of their nations.

On a not dissimilar theme the Pot Noodle was voted, in 2004, the most hated of all branded foods.

It took some time to attain that position of vilification from the consumer nation of ours. The origins of the quick snack were in the days of post war shortages and austerity in Japan and its first incarnations fulfilled a desperate requirement for a simple filler for empty stomachs.

The introduction of the more recognisable rebranded versions of Pot Noodle to the wider world and in particular the UK came in the mid to late 1970's. It was a logical addition to a freeze-dried line-up of cuppa soups and Vesta meals which represented the pinnacle of the industry in dehydrated foodstuffs.

I recall my first exposure to a Pot Noodle as a teenager.

Peer pressure was at play to try this new fangled lifestyle and aspirational product.

I was afraid to be caught sneaking back home before family tea-time with dry powder on my face or the unmistakable odour of chicken flavouring on my breath. In my year at school we all partook to one degree or another. Some became addicted to the infusion, the huge infusion of salt, preservatives and MSG and a little bit stupid on the highly charged sauce sachets.

I swear that I never inhaled. It was banned from packed lunches and had to be locked away if found in duffle or kits bags on the bus on the way to a Scout Camp.

It was the height of sophistication to treat the opposite sex to a beef and tomato Pot Noodle.

Unfortunately, the product was soon to fall from the high standing in which it had been launched through misinformation of its composition and not a little ridicule in popular humour. Doubt was cast on the nutritional benefits of the compact meal and rumours were rife as to what actually formed the ingredients. There were the usual, highly hilarious but ultimately upsetting jibes of "Not Poodle" and so on.

The product was however good enough in commercial performance to entice the massive Unilever Corporation to purchase the rights and intellectual property of Pot Noodle from Golden Wonder in 1995. A factory in Wales churned out 155 million of them a year as an endorsement of their popularity, albeit very much clandestine, underground and closeted.

The undercurrent of hatred never really waned through the 1990's and beyond. It was not helped by controversial marketing campaigns playing on the venomous attitudes of a noisy minority hell bent on driving Pot Noodle out of existence. It was as if they were personally offended by a dehydrated mix of noodles. "Slag of all snacks" was a strapline in the succession of negative reinforcement from slick marketing and advertising companies.

The accusers persisted in their criticism of Pot Noodle as low quality when in fact it was a cloaked attack on the main perceived consumer market of the lazy and the poor.

Pot Noodles have never been marketed openly to the Middle Classes although the newest Piri Piri Chicken may appeal to those spying it on the shelves in the petrol station shop or large bulk sale supermarkets. It may even become a matter of inverted snobbery like matt black and de-chromed motor vehicles.

Pot Noodle has been the perfect excuse for an "us and them " situation.

Wars, throughout history have started on similar pretences.

I have today attempted a personal crusade to act as an intermediary between the Noodlers and the Abstainers. My position has been strengthened by the recessionary conditions afflicting our nation which have inevitably led to an increase in Pot Noodle consumption out of necessity for a good proportion of the population to meet minimum nutritional needs.

I have, for my lunch today, consumed a Piri Piri and after a brief lie down and recuperation from the overall experience am ready and fully prepared to rally forth my troops for a long and bitter campaign towards the full and unconditional acceptance of the Pot Noodle as a National Pleasure.