Poet Laureate of Disappointment

Early in the morning the Philip Larkin statue at Hull Paragon Station looks like just another darkly clad person rushing to catch his train to get to work. The statue was inspired by the opening line of his poem The Whitsun Wedding (1964) which begins “I was getting late away”. Personally, it makes me think of the white rabbit from Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland. The 7 foot bronze statue was sculpted by Martin Jennings who also did the John Betjeman statue at London St. Pancras. Larkin holds onto his trilby hat with his left while clutching a manuscript under his right arm. He’s rushing towards the platforms surrounded by snippets of his own poetry, which are engraved on the floor such as this stanza from Days (1953):

What are days for?

Days are where we live.

They come, they wake us

Time and time over.

They are to be happy in:

Where can we live but days?

Who is Philip Larkin? 
He’s Hull’s little, big treasure. Born in Coventry in 1922 Larkin studied English language and literature at Oxford University. He worked as a librarian in Wellington, Shropshire and Belfast before moving to Hull in 1955 where he lived until his death thirty years later. In Hull he worked at the Brynmore Jones Library; a place where I spent too many hours on Sunday evenings trying to finish my dissertation.

He is one of England’s most popular poets and is also known as the poet laureate of disappointment. I cannot deny that this makes me smile. Hull, poetry, disappointment, grimness... and now we also have a lugubrious poet laureate of disappointment! Larkin was offered the post of poet laureate in 1984 but he actually declined as he wasn’t one to be the centre of attention and besides he didn’t feel like he had written any meaningful poetry in a long time. A year later he died of cancer.

Larkin Toad at Museums Quarter

I first heard of him during my first year at Nijmegen University when we read his poems This be the Verse (1971). From what I can tell he wasn’t the most cheerful character but rather cynical and sceptical. This shows itself beautifully when he talks about Hull. He is known for describing it as a "dump" and in regards to living here he said: 'I don't suppose I'm unhappier there than I should be anywhere else.' Clearly the kind of person you want to surround yourself with! Well, we’ll just take that as a compliment. Hull seems strangely fitting for such gloomy character, though. It’s the attitude that comes with talking about Hull. Everyone is aware of its, in my opinion, hugely undeserved bad reputation. You have to take the good with the bad and when you talk about Hull you cannot say that it is amazing because plenty of things are wrong with it. But I like it! So I find his phrasing hits the nail on the head. After all, a huge part of your happiness is linked to what you make of a place.

When I came to Hull in 2010 the city was busy commemorating Larkin’s life and opus in an event called the Larkin 25. Centrepiece of this festival were forty toad sculptures scattered all across the city. Why toads? Because Larkin wrote a poem called Toads (1954). The sculptures were later put up for auction and raised £60,000 for charity. I remember there being toads everywhere, when I got here and one of my quests was to find every single one of them. Sadly, I did not succeed because at the time I didn’t know that the toads were only on display temporarily. Quite a few toads are still around though so keep your eyes peeled. The Larkin 25 ended with the unveiling of his statue at the station on 2nd December 2010, exactly 25 years after he died. I have yet to find his grave in Cottingham and I haven’t taken a photo of his house at Pearson Park either... so... see ye later!

A Few Thoughts on the English Crazy

Living in the UK has made me much more aware of my own Germanness. Usually, it is in everyday situations that I notice it. I observe differences and similarities and pick what I like best from both worlds. It starts with the accent (I can say ‘squirrel’ just fine!) and includes drinking obscene amounts of tea. I cook a mean English breakfast, put vinegar on my chips and no longer stare at people in amazement when they only wear jeans and a t-shirt in January because the sun is shining. You got to think to yourself “What the hell!”, kick back, relax and find British strangeness endearing. So here are a few things that have made me go: “U English so crazy!”

The Toast Conspiracy
In England bread turns into toast as soon as you toast it. Before the toasting process it is just bread. The German equivalent is “Toastbrot” (literally “toast bread”). It’s white or brown, soft, pre-cut and solely made for the purpose of being toasted. It’s toast whether it has been toasted or not. We are a nation of bread eaters. For us it is not something you use as an excuse to eat Nutella. It’s a foodstuff in its own right and “Toastbrot” is just one of thousands of bread types... and not even a very good one. Any German who has left their former homeland will have had cravings for warm potato bread, an authentic pretzel or just “ein Normales” and not to forget some sweet Teilchen, hmm...

Black and White Opinions on Marmite
While your bread choice in England is limited, you have a whole range of spreads to choose from. You can keep it simple with salted butter. A rookie mistake made by unknowing foreigners from countries where salted butter isn’t very common (Hello, Germany!) is to have salted butter with sweet jam. My 11 year old self made that mistakes only once. Instead why not try some bitter orange marmalade? Again, poor 11 year old me was surprised by this novel flavour. It was cereal for the rest of the holiday for me! If you want to try something really English then thinly spread out some marmite on your hot toasted toast. Marmite is yeast extract and the only rule attached to it is that you have to have an opinion on it. It doesn’t matter whether you love or hate it as long as you can utter either of those two opinions with conviction. Being neither here nor there on the issue of Marmite is incredibly un-English. However, it seems a spread that only an English person can like. All that mimicking and I still can’t pretend Marmite is edible.

Everything Will Be Alright with Tea
Tea is England’s answer to any minor and major catastrophe... and at all other times when nothing else is happening. You had a bad day at work? Have a cuppa. The zombie apocalypse is descending upon us? Put the kettle on while we plan our next move. Have half an hour to spare and don’t know what to do? May we suggest tea? It seems one of those incredibly stereotypical things to say about England but I was made to have seven mugs of tea at work today and put the kettle on as soon as I got home. Sometimes I don’t even want any but make a cup anyway. My co-workers will have a cup and forget to drink it but as long as there is one within reach they feel like they can survive the day. You should avoid our office at times when we're out of milk. I even carry emergency tea bags in my bag with me at all times. Surely this can’t be right and I fully blame the English for turning me into such a crazy.

F*ck the Red Man
When you are a pedestrian in England be sure to ignore whether the traffic lights are green or red. You walk whenever you deem it safe to cross. After all you might save a whole ten seconds. Nobody cares about traffic lights. I have seen English police officers cross the road while the lights were red. Absolutely unthinkable in Germany! We Germans are taught to wait until the traffic lights tell you that you may now cross. At times I can find that rather relaxing especially in an unfamiliar city. I don’t have to observe the traffic and weigh up if my attempt to cross the road to save precious seconds will cost me my life. I just stand there and wait for the traffic light to tell me when it is safest to cross. In England you will stand there like a lemon while every other pedestrian rushes past you clearly with business that cannot be delayed. It makes you feel like an idiot and it won’t be long until you pick up that naughty habit yourself.

Cream
Be suspicious when an English person asks you if you want cream with your dessert. “Kuchen mit Sahne” is not quite the same here. The English don’t always bother with whisking the cream or adding sugar to it. You just pour the liquid cream over your cake. After an initial frown I tried it and it’s absolutely fantastic with hot apple pie.

I will be adding to this list as time passes but you might have guessed from my food-related observations that I’m rather famished.

So for now:
Bye bye und Tschö mit ‘ö’!

Revising the Beverley Twenty

Beverley Minster from the Westwood

The Beverley Twenty is a 20 mile walking path that takes you from the Beverley Minster all the way to the Humber Bridge via Walkington, Skidby and Welton. Officially, it is the other way around: you start at the Humber Bridge and then head towards Beverley but since we live in Hull it seemed more right to walk back home rather than away from it. We hiked the reverse version of the Beverley Twenty for the first time in April and did it again this month. So the fact that we walked it twice in a fairly short period of time means it’s really awesome, right?

Skidby Mill during the second walk

The first time we walked it we followed the official route meticulously. We set off from the Beverley Westwood at approximately 8am. The weather was good, it was still a little bit chilly but the sun soon warmed everything up nicely. A lot of the walking you’re doing in East Yorkshire will be along hedges and fields and this trail was no different. You will see a lot of hedges and fields until you get to Skidby. There is a windmill in Skidby which is still in use. We could see it from a distance but the Beverley Twenty takes you a safe few hundred metres parallel to it. Umm, okay...

As you leave Skidby you walk past some hedges and fields again. You’ll pass the occasional farm but it’s fields and hedges all the way until you get to Welton. There is a beautiful little valley in Welton. It’s hard to believe it’s so close to Hull because it has a very North Yorkshire feel to it. But the Beverley Twenty doesn’t take you through this valley. Again, its path runs parallel to it along some... yes, fields and hedges. You then walk through a wooded area before arriving in Ferriby. From there it is a straight line along the Humber all the way to the Humber Bridge but the path is closed for maintenance work at the moment. At this point I had a blister on my left foot from having walked 15 miles the day before already and I didn’t feel too strongly about taking a parallel path along a main road. We have walked from Ferriby to the Humber Bridge before so I knew what we were missing as we hopped on a bus and went back to Hull. We were in slight disbelief that the Beverley Twenty would miss some beautiful landmarks, which could have been included so easily.

Ruin at Risby Park

To prove that this can be a beautiful and interesting walk we did it again three weeks later. We trailed off the original route for the first time near Walkington. On the quest for a Full English and a cup of coffee we ventured to the Folly Lake Café. The café resembles a Canadian log hut with a wooden porch overlooking Risby Park Fishing Lakes and a little ruin. The dark trees surrounding it and men in chequered shirts sitting on little piers with their fishing rods only supported that image and as soon as I uttered my thoughts two geese landed on the lake. Perfect timing! The sun was out so we had breakfast on the porch and watched a boy catch two carps in the time it took to drink our coffees, eat our breakfast and fend off a hungry, little chaffinch.

Brew Break

Our next stop was Skidby windmill. Built in 1821 it only managed to survive the Great Agricultural Depression of the late 19th century by shifting its production to animal foodstuffs. The mill was restored to its original state in 1974 and is now producing flour again in the traditional way. The lady in the shop let us try some bread made with Skidby flour - yum. There is also a café there but we were still full and didn’t want to be too gluttonous! We met the Beverley Twenty again south of Skidby and walked along fields and hedges for quite a while.

The next alteration took us through Nut Wood, one of East Yorkshire’s few remaining ancient forests. Parts of it date back to the 13th century and locally it is also known as Bluebell Wood. We went in the height of the bluebell season and except for the walking path, the whole ground was covered in bluebells and ramsons. The smell of garlic overpowered everything else. We took a break at a random shelter we found in the middle of the woods. It was made from branches and covered up with old leaves and moss. Somebody even went to the trouble of putting together a bench and tying a hammock to the branches. It was a shame that whoever built this left a lot of plastic tarps and rubbish. Not at all in the bushcraft ”leave no trace” spirit!

Nut Wood covered in bluebells and ramsons

Then it started to rain and it wouldn’t stop for the rest of the day. As we got to Welton Dale we couldn’t quite appreciate the valley as much as we would have liked. We stopped for a while to watch the Highland cows graze by the yellow gorse and I hid my pack under a matching rain cover. While the contents of my pack were safe I got pretty drenched. It was still a few miles to Ferriby, where we caught the bus again back to Hull. We dried out over a pint in Hull’s old town. Needless to say I slept very well that night.

It’s a shame that the official route misses all of these great spots along the way. With the few alterations made to the trail it was an interesting and stunning walk I’d be happy to walk again in the near future.  

Daffodil Miracle in Farndale

Legend has it that the daffodils were planted by monks
 at nearby Rievaulx Abbey (1132-1538).

Spring sure took its sweet time this year but it’s been super summery and lovely in Hull last week! To cool off we ventured to North Yorkshire to see one of northern England’s most spectacular miracles of nature. It occurs every spring along the river Dove and annually attracts approximately 40,000 people: wild daffodils (also known as Lent Lilies). Myriads of them turn the sleepy North Yorkshire village of Farndale into a busy tourist attraction.

Early May seemed awfully late for going to see daffodils but this long winter has really taken its toll and delayed the daffodil season by a few weeks. On top of that, North Yorkshire’s climate always struck me as a little colder and wilder than what we’re used to in Hull. So daffodils might be in full bloom here but that doesn’t mean they will be out 60 miles north of us yet.

We took the Walking Englishman Daffodil Walk, which is a little longer than the traditional walk most people take. We started off in Lowna and headed North towards Low Mill. The footpath took us by some typical Yorkshire stone cottages, through people’s gardens, fields full of sheep, old woods (with plenty of tasty wood sorrel) and across the rugged North Yorkshire Moors before leading us back to the car along a river.

Wild daffodils are smaller
than our garden variety.

Despite going really late in the season there were still a lot of daffodils out. However, if they could have talked they would have said something along the lines of “Tell your sister, you were right...” before taking their last breath. A week later and I reckon we would have missed most of the spectacle. Having said that, there were still thousands and thousands of them in full bloom to make the daffodil valley live up to its name. Wild daffodils grow in clusters and I’ve never seen so many in my life. They used to be widely spread in Britain but in the 19th century intensification of agriculture, clearance of woodland and uprooting of the bulbs for use in gardens diminished their population drastically. That’s why injuring or plucking daffodils in Farndale will be fined with £5.

The walk is worth it even when the daffodils aren’t out. It’s incredibly scenic and there’s plenty of wildlife to be seen along the way... well, mostly pheasants: “Oh look, these people have a pheasant in their garden... no two.. three... seven.... what the hell!” At 7 miles it’s not a very long walk (I even hesitate to call it a hike... when does a walk become a hike anyway?) and we only managed to squeeze in three coffee breaks by trying really hard. But it isn’t a walk I wanted to rush as there are ample opportunities for photos along the way! Many of them featuring sheep looking silly.

So to round it all off here are some famous words on how uplifting daffodils can be!

For oft, when on my couch I lie

In vacant or in pensive mood,

They flash upon that inward eye

Which is the bliss of solitude;

And then my heart with pleasure fills,

And dances with the daffodils.

William Wordsworth - Daffodils (Final Stanza, 1807)