Reunion

Another great day!  We were about early as Tony took me down to the train station via the polling station and I was off to Grimsby to meet friend Pip from our teacher training days at Middleton St George College of Education, only a gap of nearly forty years since we last met!

Pip collected me from the station and we drove across the Humber Bridge to Hull to sample something of the City of Culture.  It was lunchtime when we arrived and Pip recommended we eat at Silvers Bar.  A fine choice!  The building appears to have been a bank in its original form so it is open plan and roomy and decorated with artwork from a local artist Doug Smelt.  You can see some of the artwork in my blip and it is celebrity bodies with animal heads, making for a fun visual quiz.  We had to prise some of the answers out of the waiters, others we were able to recognise.

Having enjoyed our lunch (I had the posh fish finger buttie!) we returned to the streets and stopped off at the Ferens Art Gallery to look at their exhibit 'Skin'.  This includes a photographic record of the 'Sea of Hull' installation which was 3200 folk from across the world, naked and painted blue, creating a sea of bodies through the streets of Hull - amazing!  There were also several exhibits by Ron Mueck who creates spookily lifelike human forms from silicon.  We were both impressed by these.

After leaving the gallery we ambled awhile through the old quarter and along the bank of the Humber, then Pip suggested Cake at Cleethorpes.  Who am I to turn down cake?  So we were in the car, back across the bridge and to the seaside and Marples Coffee House.  Cleethorpes was a pleasant surprise as it has come on greatly since the visits I remember as a child.  It has retained its 'seaside resort' atmosphere with gardens and pier and candly floss/rock stalls and amusement arcades but interspersed with these are independent bars and restaurants.  The beach looked in fine fettle and deserves its blue badge.

Where did the day go, so much talking!  There was just time for a quick stop at Pip's lovely home and a hello to hubby Kevin then, all too soon, it was back to the station and the train home with promises to do it all again.

My blip is of Pip snapping the celebrity penguins.  Can you spot Twiggy?