Parisian
This week’s Time Out contains the preposterous claim that Stroud Green Road has a Parisian air about it. I’m not quite sure what inspired the writer who made this comment – though I don’t know Paris as well as I might, I’m pretty sure it doesn’t consist of a long line of Wig Worlds, Polish bakeries, Caribbean goat curry haunts, pizza parlours, Asian supermarkets, charity shops and tut-tut containing Thai restaurants. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t dislike Stroud Green Road, though I spend more time viewing it from the inside a traffic-jam bound W3 bus than anything else. But it’s just not French.
A similarly ridiculous claim was made to us recently about Hull. Dave is currently applying for jobs outside of London and this included the post of Head of Policy at Hull City Council. We’d heard bad things about Hull, but a friend assured us that the capital’s long wide-open streets (albeit only wide because they had been cleared by the Luftwaffe) had something of the feel of a Parisian boulevard about them. Well, this has to be the biggest clutching of a straw I have ever heard. Hull is hell. Nearby medieval Beverley, where we thought we might lay our hats were Dave’s application to prove successful, was fairly pleasant with its mini-York Minster and gorgeous open pastures of the Westwood, but it also proved insufferably dull once the shops closed at five, and totally lacking in employment opportunities. So you were faced with the prospect of commuting to Hull for your day job, and staying there after hours if you fancied a trip to the cinema or theatre. And if that isn’t a reason to slit your wrists, then not much is. I have never seen so many chavs per square metre, so many teenage mothers screaming at each other in the streets, and so many people requiring Shopmobility wheelchairs because they were too obese to walk. Even the Princes Quay branch of Monsoon sold shellsuits. Large screens in Victoria Square showed propaganda films about how the City Council aim to reduce crime to “nearer the national average”, improve the health of the population and make Hull “a nice place to live by 2011.” Fortunately Dave didn’t get the job – he arrived for his interview to discover that the Council had sent him a letter to turn up on a Monday but had told his interview panel to expect him on the following Tuesday. A true shambles. Not exactly the Champs Elysées.
I suspect a trip on Eurostar may be in order.
REBECCA
A similarly ridiculous claim was made to us recently about Hull. Dave is currently applying for jobs outside of London and this included the post of Head of Policy at Hull City Council. We’d heard bad things about Hull, but a friend assured us that the capital’s long wide-open streets (albeit only wide because they had been cleared by the Luftwaffe) had something of the feel of a Parisian boulevard about them. Well, this has to be the biggest clutching of a straw I have ever heard. Hull is hell. Nearby medieval Beverley, where we thought we might lay our hats were Dave’s application to prove successful, was fairly pleasant with its mini-York Minster and gorgeous open pastures of the Westwood, but it also proved insufferably dull once the shops closed at five, and totally lacking in employment opportunities. So you were faced with the prospect of commuting to Hull for your day job, and staying there after hours if you fancied a trip to the cinema or theatre. And if that isn’t a reason to slit your wrists, then not much is. I have never seen so many chavs per square metre, so many teenage mothers screaming at each other in the streets, and so many people requiring Shopmobility wheelchairs because they were too obese to walk. Even the Princes Quay branch of Monsoon sold shellsuits. Large screens in Victoria Square showed propaganda films about how the City Council aim to reduce crime to “nearer the national average”, improve the health of the population and make Hull “a nice place to live by 2011.” Fortunately Dave didn’t get the job – he arrived for his interview to discover that the Council had sent him a letter to turn up on a Monday but had told his interview panel to expect him on the following Tuesday. A true shambles. Not exactly the Champs Elysées.
I suspect a trip on Eurostar may be in order.
REBECCA
posted by Rebecca Dodgson | 8:47 pm
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