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Published: September 6th 2011
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Welcome to the second reel, glad that you could make it. With the first five songs of the track listing down, ending with the wonderfully fun trip to the Lake District for my birthday, after a brief break it is time to flip the metaphorical record and make hasty plans for the remainder. Hyperballad has been a long time coming, not only because of a mid-summer’s break, but because it is probably the hardest of all to decide what exactly we are doing. It’s not through a lack of ideas though; Bjork’s 1996 classic is descriptive of a place, on top of a cliff, of a feeling of warmth from those close to you, of wanton rebellion, and of car parts, bottles and cutlery. The problem is, there are too many ideas, so I starting wondering how many I could bring together. Cliffs, of course, but maybe also the concept of strong friendship, maybe something connected to Bjork’s Icelandic heritage, possibly some cutlery somewhere along the line. Then it came to me. A memory of a place we visited. A small village on the southernmost tip of Iceland. Looking out to sea from the beach was a monument of a man, built and placed there to show a warm connection with another sea port in England. Surrounded by cliffs, Icelandic heritage and a show of companionship. All that was missing was the cutlery. Incredibly, the port to which the monument faced was once well known for exporting cutlery, and that port, if you hadn’t guessed, is Hull.
I admit, I have a small problem with Hull. It just doesn’t sound very interesting. There’s even a blog on the internet that is called ‘hullisneverdull’, the posts on which appear to focus on proving that Hull is never interesting. The Facebook page ‘It’s Never Dull in Hull’ is littered with wall posts advertising scrap metal businesses in the area and has 1984 likes, which just serves to remind me of George Orwell’s grim depiction of the Big Brother controlled world. In short, the only thing that attracts me there is the matching monument that looks out to sea in the direction of Iceland’s Vik and, at a push, the Humber Bridge, which was once the largest suspension bridge in the world (though it isn’t anymore, but there’s not much else to say about it. It’s just a bridge). And that is why, after much research, I decided that we could possibly pop into Hull on the way home if we park ourselves slightly further north and have a spare half an hour on our return trip. I took a good look on the map above Hull, and made a tough choice between Bridlington and York. York has a huge cathedral and a museum about Vikings, Bridlington has a beach and a Tesco. Tough choice, but I am erring on the edge of York. That said, whoever wants to come, there is still time to decide. Let’s just say for now somewhere on the eastern side of Yorkshire. I’m looking at late September or early October, maybe if you’re free we can make a weekend of it?
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