SORRY HULL
In one of our workshops we read an article in Dumbo Feather about how guilty tourists are posting rocks and sand they have taken from Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park in Australia back with ‘sorry letters’. We imagined what we might steal from Hull and wrote our own sorry letters to return with the stolen articles.
Dear Hull
I got off the train and at Poundland I turned left. It’d been a while since I’d come this far east, traipsed here from somewhere with wealth, aspiration and a TGI Friday (Leeds maybe or York) on a train that had almost given up. No buffet car, no first class, just one last glimpse of economic opulence before The End Of The Line. Selby, Howden, after Brough there’s no escape, no hope, after Brough it’s terminal. I pulled into Paragon and got off because there’s nowhere else to go.
Austerity’s made museums of Jameson Street, Victoria Square, White Friar Gate. That’s where Textile Direct was. Used to be a Millets down that way. There’s the old Pizza Hut, kids liked going there in the holidays. I followed the fish trail to nowhere in particular and saw the shopping centre with a dozen empty units grin a toothless smile at a weary city.
Stiff upper lip. I walked down cobbles to a confused marina. Yachts like San Tropez, muddy water like Grimsby. What’s the point? It’s too polite to ask. I passed a fruitless fruit market and a cannon that pointed at nothing. I reached the empty water and looked back on a city holding its breath, a grave yard of failed regenerations and broken promises, and I was sorry.
Sorry that I’d taken the fish out the sea. Sorry that that took the ships out the Quay, the trawlers out of work and the point out of Hull.
With that I got on the train and headed west to somewhere with wealth, aspiration, a TGI Friday and a sense of what you could have been.
Good luck Hull.
Lydia
[by Lydia Marchant]
Dear Sir/Madam,
I would like to start out by apologising for my actions in late February last year. Assuming you have received the parcel that accompanies this letter, you will know that I am referring to the bricks with ‘Thieving Harry’s’ printed on the side which I stole from the centre of a wall during my trip to Hull. I was struck by the uniqueness and authenticity of the bricks, and in a moment, or rather few hours, of madness, I proceeded to steal several of these bricks from the building by chiselling at them in the early hours of one Thursday morning.
There are two things I would like to apologise for, starting with the theft itself. I am deeply sorry for taking a part of Hull’s culture and heritage and removing it from its habitat; it has dawned on me since then that the bricks do not belong in my living room as I believed at the time. I hope the bricks can be reunited with the wall someday, but I am aware that this may be difficult, which brings me to the second part of my apology.
I understand that the bricks which I removed were not just of cultural importance, but also structural, and as the building collapsed as a result of the missing bricks, I feel I am somewhat to blame. I am terribly sorry for the part I played in the destruction of Thieving Harry’s, and I hope that the building can be reconstructed, of course using the bricks that I have returned to you.
It would be appreciated if you could pass on my sincerest apologies to Thieving Harry himself as I am aware that it is his business, and life, that I have destroyed.
Once again, I am very sorry for stealing a part of your wonderful city, and I hope that you can take this as a compliment to the richness of your city’s architecture.
Yours sincerely,
Alex
[by Alex Waterson]
Dear East Riding Council
I’d like to apologise for my borrowing of Spurn Point. The spit of land the sea wants to whittle away from the maps, blunting off England’s nose at Kilnsea. It’s had so much success, the sea. How many maps are there now, that bother to show the spit?
Still I made an error of judgement – investing too much meaning in the taxonomy of ‘spit’, as if Spurn Point was as pointless as fleg, a small gobload the sea was trying to catch in its bucket. Why did I devalue it? Saliva breaks down enzymes and that’s necessary. The sea’s fight is necessary too. And I suppose my thinking was ‘is this piece of land so needed?’ I didn’t think that anyone would miss it. It was on its way to going under and becoming a paperweight in a room of one of the wrecks beneath.
And then I saw the news. The outcry. The picketeers endangered by every high tide. And then, in the archive room at the library, old footage showing people hauling sandbags, which could only momentarily redirect the North Sea skywards, forcing it to buffet and ripple backwards with the shock it would yet overcome. The houses on the cliffs, their driveways leading out into nowhere, and the bones of an old road in pieces on the rocks.
There was something earnest in those people with the sandbags, scared beyond their wits. And so I am giving it back now, having packed Spurn Point into sandbags, though I’m no real expert at packing. The brittle old spit is bellying out inanimate legions of sacking.
Yours sincerely
Katherine
[by Katherine Horrex]
Dear All at East Yorkshire Council,
I wish to apologise for borrowing Spurn Point – the spit of land the sea wants to purge from the maps. It’s done very well, the sea. I mean, no weatherman stands before any map on which Spurn Point is a feature. Still I know the council misses it. What with those postcards in the tourist office, giving it pride of place. I suppose there’ll be a lot less aerial photos of it now, especially since the police force has to share its helicopter with Wakefield. A lot less photos since I took it too, hell bent as I was on improving my rockery. Well I had to have my pond filled in, soon as my grandkids got to toddling.
Anyway my nosey next doors were jealous, weren’t they, went to the council and grassed me up. I got a letter saying I’d need planning permission first. I said ‘it’s a geological feature, not a block of flats.’ ‘Yes but it looks like a bomb’s hit it’ said this chap they sent round – ever so nice he was – well he might’ve had a job to do but he stuck around for a cuppa. It’s a bit rich, mind you, him saying it looks like a bomb’s hit it. It took a lot of effort to dismantle and even more to reassemble and it’s not like it’s an Airfix kit or anything like that. My old fella used to be fond of them, bless his cottons.
Anyway this chap from the council had a boss, didn’t he, and he came round a month later. I said ‘what should I do with it, it’s already up now’. I was pleasant, you know what these bureaucrats are like, it’s no sense riling them further. He said to try Tesco. That got me. I was confounded in fact! Until I realised he meant UNESCO. And then he got on his high horse and said ‘you can’t have a point in your rockery.’ Anyway I’ve left it in Albion Street Carpark. I think Hull needs it more than you lot. See what they make of it.
Yours sincerely
Sandra Troy
[by Katherine Horrex]