Again and again and again...

Stupid KC. Fortunately you're not a monopoly so I can move to somebody else. Oh hang on...

The Hull Faith Forum talks are pitched for young people of secondary school age.

They are held on Monday Evenings at 7.30pm at the Endsleigh Centre, Beverley Road, Hull

Monday 9th June
How to get the most out of the readings at Mass
Fr Stephen Maughan - Curate at St Charles, Hull

Monday 16th June
Do Miracles Happen?
Fr Mark Vickers - Diocese of Westminster

Monday 23rd June
The Pope speaks to the young: The Message from the World Youth Days
Fr John Paul Leonard - Head of the Middlesbrough Diocesan Youth Service

Monday 30th June
Why the Church is Right about Contraception
Fr Tim Finigan - Diocese of Southwark

Monday 7th July
How to be Good in a Fallen World
Sister Roseann Reddy - Sister of the Gospel of Life, Glasgow

You may recall recently I mentioned when we here in Hull experienced the worst floods in twenty years. Today, the rain was back.

This time it's worse, for a start a man has died which kind of takes away from the fun side of things. It's rained literally all day and almost everybody in Hull apart from me seems to have had the day off. Our garden is underwater...

While I was at work Ella monitored the water levels by taking photographs of bricks. At times the water level moved alarmingly fast.

The grass under the water made the water look green. This combined with steps going down in to the water created a scene not unlike Venice (you may need to squint to see it).

Now came the dilemma. We had rented a DVD from Blockbuster video and it was due back today. What to do? I phoned the store and there was no answer, probably they had closed due to flooding but maybe they were just not answering the phone. Would we be fined if we failed to return the DVD? I decided to cycle in the direction of Blockbuster and see how I fared, after all I had already made it home from work and I wanted an excuse to cycle around taking photos of flooding. As it turned out Blockbuster was closed but I dumped my DVD in the slot and went on a little sightseeing trip.

I saw a flooded pub (tragic):

I saw the emergency services. In this case they were rescuing elderly folk from an old peoples home.

I saw lots of policemen wandering around just watching people and one of them frowned at my picture taking. He didn't say anything, he just frowned. I think he would have preferred me to be at home or maybe he just frowns a lot.

Anyone who came to Hull to watch football at the old Boothferry Park stadium will recognise this bridge:

The road dips under the bridge here so in places that water is pretty deep. Just by the bridge I saw this lady who is not suitably dressed for the occasion:

It's not often you get to see a bikini on a Catholic blog but that's not just a bikini, that's an M&S bikini. Presumably it's made from hand picked Alaskan salmon or something.

The flooding at St. Joseph's:

Note that the flooding here is nowhere near as bad as the stained glass windows.

Finally, here's the ornamental lake at Peter Pan Park. Usually, the water is confined by a small oval wall and those craggy walls you can see sticking up are well outside of it:

So there you have it. Hull flooded. I phoned Fr. Massie to check there were no elderly parishioners stranded in flooded homes in need of youthful types with buckets and he didn't know. "People don't come to the Church in their hour of need anymore" he said forlornly. I phoned St. Charles (which has cellars underground) and all was well there also (some flooding but Fr. Stephen said all was in hand). Fr. Massie assured Michelle that all his three parishes are okay and we don't need to rush around and save any pews so if it turns out anything is ruined it's all. his. fault.

The rain has stopped now (nearly midnight) and we hope it will stay that way. Michelle now has water in her house! Hopefully the damage will be limited but I am sure she would appreciate your prayers. Prayers all round really.. I can't help but think of all elderly living on their own (in four bedroom houses - the swines) with water seeping under the door, it must be pretty frightening.

It was a rainy day in Greendale Hull

I don't know if it really was the worst floods in twenty years, but the Hull Daily Mail seems to think so.

Our garden was a bit wet...

Our friend Lizzy came up to visit at the weekend. We've not seen her for aaages so it was good to catch up. She is working as an ecologist with bees in Leicester.

Lizzy has done the fish trail before so we decided to go off the beaten track and show her around a different way. On friday night we had to take Leona for a calming walk so we wandered over to Peter Pan Park for a lap of the pond. We were enjoying ourselves so we just kept it going, we crossed Fiveways roundabout and went to Pickering Park as well. The plan for Saturday was settled, we would take Lizzy on a tour of the parks of Hull.

We started out early at 10.30am (it's hard to leave early with a baby) and went to East Park first. Despite it being a busy bank holiday we were disappointed to see the water ride was not in action and there were no boats for hire. Never mind, it was quite nice to explore the new revamped layout. The lake has moved, the bank has new brick paving and the kiddies swings have been demolished and rebuilt anew in a different location. The old location has an animal center where we took Leona to see Guinea Pigs, Peacocks, Wallabies, Llamas, all kinds of birds and of course, goats...

Leona seemed to like the goat but we put her back in the pram under the parasol (babies aren't supposed to get too much sun). We walked around the Khyber pass and then back in the car and away.

A visit to East Park used to include climbing a hill not far from the Khyber pass and going inside an old turret (that stank of urine - lovely). Said turret is no longer in the park but has been returned to it's original location as part of Hull Citadel. It's now a lot cleaner looking but you can't go inside which makes it much less exciting.

Following the river around we parked up near the Minerva (which is where we had a beer with peeps the day before our wedding) and instead of following the traditional fish trail route around towards The Deep we instead headed Humber Bridgeward over some lock gates (where we waited for rich people in yachts to pass by) and up towards the Albert dock where there is an exciting curiosity that even I didn't know about. Thanks to a tipoff from my mum (who recently walked all the way from the King George dock to the Humber bridge) we learned that there is a place in Hull where a public footpath actually goes over the roof of one of the warehouseses that run between the River Humber the dock. It's really cool (though the stairs are steep).

By now we were in serious need of food so we went in search of Chip spice which is best experienced in Chicken George (pronounced gee-ow-j). Hot chicken roll and a bag of chips, wash it all down with a bottle of Dr Pepper. Mmmmmm.

We decided to eat the Chicken George in West Park but we couldn't park the car because of a concert at the KC Stadium, West Park was a childhood haunt of mine and it's all a bit strange now. It used to be practically deserted an great for all kinds of boyish adventures like climbing over fences and building dens. Since they built the stadium it's now crawling with all manner of stewards and security types and you can't just drive through and park where you like. A pity. No matter, we went instead up to Pearson's Park which is the oldest park in Hull and you drive in to it through a lovely painted cast iron arch. They have a pond and we sat by it and had our chicken and chips with chip spice. Mmmmm. We went in the conservatory and saw the giant lizard and the fish. They have a rather handsome Plecostomus and Ella says if you touch it then it sticks spikes in you and the only way to get it off is to kill it. Sounds unlikely to me.

All parked out we headed home for the evening. We bought some kidney beans and Ella made a lovely Chili Con Carne. Speaking of chili, Lizzy helped me re-pot my baby chilies, sweet peppers and cherry toms in to bigger pots (thanks to Michelle for the pots). They are now labeled up lovely and will hopefully grow well.

On Sunday we went to my Mum and Trevor's for Sunday dinner. Leona cried all the way through, we hope she hasn't caught Lizzy's cold.