I often have a look at the website of "The Hull Daily Mail" based in the city of my childhood - Kingston-upon-Hull in Yorkshire's East Riding. I never lived in Hull but it was my city. It was the commercial, cultural and sporting magnet for all outlying towns and villages. And of course it was the home of my beloved Hull City A.F.C..
At the age of eleven, I passed the critical Eleven Plus examination with flying colours. My score won me a free scholarship to a prestigious direct grant school in which 90% of the boys paid termly fees - well, their families did anyway.
That September I began travelling to and from Hull city centre by public bus. It was a journey of some forty minutes. Every morning I had to get from Paragon Station to the posh school which was a further mile. Along Ferensway and then all the way down Spring Bank, past "The Polar Bear" pub then over the railway crossing and left past the cemetery till Hymers Avenue came into view.
Many was the time I walked or jogged down Spring Bank. It was all low rise and flat and an inner city artery that had seen better days. In 1965 there was still evidence of World War II bomb damage. "The Polar Bear" was where I first bought a pint of bitter, dressed in school uniform. I must have been fifteen. Also on Spring Bank, in a seedy bookshop I bought my first soft porn magazine. It was second hand and called "Parade". I studied it with the kind of intense interest that I could never muster for Physics, Chemistry or Maths.
In "The Hull Daily Mail" today there was a special photo album showing old photos of Spring Bank. It brought back a number of memories but there was one particular photograph that caught my eye because it looked so odd. It was taken in 1982 in the "Gimmikz" hair salon. Hairdresser Simon is "beautifying" customer Andrea's hair but there's an optical illusion going on.
It is as if Simon has plunged his arm into the back of Andrea's head. The expression on his face is slightly menacing - like a magician who is about to saw a woman in half but Andrea seems perfectly happy with the arrangement:-
from Yorkshire Pudding https://ift.tt/ZLPYsrI
